Dear Editor,
The theme for this year’s International Women’s Day is “Invest in Women: accelerate progress”. It highlights the importance of gender equality, women’s and girls’ empowerment, and their rights to healthier lives. It’s a powerful development tool. (United Nations, 2040). On this special day, I take this opportunity to salute all our women in Guyana and the world. I wish to reiterate that you are the cornerstone and foundation of humanity, a very important and significant societal role that needs to be highlighted; which requires investing more in women and promoting the importance of gender equality. For Indigenous people in Guyana, I salute all women in our communities. Thanks for your great contributions in helping to foster the promotion of the language and culture of our people, among other important works you are engaged in.
It is good to see some women in Indigenous communities making progress over the years, but there is more work to be done. We need to see more of our ‘sistren’ taking up the mantle of becoming leaders in some important sectors in our villages. One area is to be Toshaos to lead our people. I hope I am not sounding gender biased against men even though I may sound ambitious for power and leadership, but I am not. Over the years, Indigenous men have been given many chances in
leadership positions and some did well; especially those who are disciplinarians and who possessed the gifts of good governance, service-oriented, decency, God-fearing, and influencing villagers to work together to develop their communities holistically. Others are striving but need support from cooperative and service-oriented village council members to get things done.
Amid this male-dominated Toshaos experience in our communities, there are women who most times, are the driving force of things but who are in the background. In this reality, given the upcoming Toshao elections this year, I applaud the brilliant and promising young men who are on the verge of becoming leaders once they are elected by their villagers. But as Baltasar Gracian said, “It’s not enough to be intelligent; you must also have the right character”. The same applies to women. Nowadays, most of our young male Toshaos are smart and can talk well in public, etc., but most times are accused of indiscipline, exaggerated alcohol consumption, and lacking of morality, thus, the result is not being good role models in our villages and cannot lead their people in proper and edifying examples.
As such, there is a need for brave women to take up the challenge and lead our communities with qualities centered on: discipline, soberness, good governance and dialogue with modernity and other skills, besides those who can display strictness to put an end to slackness in most communities. For this to happen, there is a need for most of us indigenous men and villagers to unlearn our biased attitudes towards women, perceiving that they cannot be leaders, and give them a chance. Let’s use this International Women’s Day to examine ourselves and de-school our conditioned way of perceiving our ‘sistren’ and promote gender equality by having more women Toshaos for the upcoming elections.
Sincerely,
(Name and Address Provided)
