ISO: LCA *************************************************************************** The electronic version of this document has been prepared at the Fourth World Conference on Women by the United Nations Development Programme (UNDP) in collaboration with the United Nations Fourth World Conference on Women Secretariat. *************************************************************************** AS WRITTEN ADDRESS BY THE HONOURABLE LORRAINE WILLIAMS ATTORNEY GENERAL AND MINISTER OF LEGAL AFFAIRS AND WOMEN'S AFFAIRS OF SAINT LUCIA TO THE FOURTH WORLD CONFERENCE ON WOMEN HELD IN BEIJING, CHINA, SEPTEMBER, 1995 Madam President, Distinguished Heads of State, Ministers, Officials, Sister Delegates I have the honour to represent the small Island-State of Saint Lucia which can easily be swallowed up in the expansive anonymity of a Beijing Conference. My Island-State faces marginalisation at the International level, patronising recognition at the Regional level and a proliferation of all the handicaps and disadvantages of gender, at the National level. But we are not a people to wallow in frustration and hopelessness. The Island of Saint Lucia has escaped the crippling hold of illiteracy and economic hardship to reach the pinnacle of world excellence, by producing Nobel Prize-Winning Laureates in the field of Economics and Literature. I refer, of course, to the distinguished Economist Sir Arthur Lewis, who was awarded the Nobel Prize in 1979, and the distinguished Poet and Playwright Derek Walcott who was awarded the Nobel Prize for Literature in 1992. Alas, both of these Saint Lucian achievers were male, and even this fact highlights the structural imbalances in our society which make the Platform for Action such an urgent priority for women the world over. Madam President, I wish to take this opportunity to identify my Island- State of Saint Lucia with the Mission Statement which informs the Platform For Action currently engaging the attention of this Conference. My country has raised its voice in International and Regional Fora in support of the Agenda for Equality. We have made unequivocal statements seeking to safeguard women's human rights throughout the life cycle and have refrained from indulging in the type of double-speak and ambivalence, which would water down the cardinal principle of EQUALITY with a more blurred notion of equity. Madam President, The Platform For Action starts appropriately with a consideration of the chronic and structured link between gender and poverty. The statistics are eloquent all over the globe, and attest to the fact that women are inextricably linked to the Poverty Syndrome and are vehicles for the transmission of their indigence and desperate poverty to generations of mothers, daughters and sisters. A UN-ECLAC study in 1992 states that 22.8% of Saint Lucians live in poverty, and although the statistics do now allow for extrapolation by gender, we can deduce from other statistical indices that numerically women bear the brunt of the increasing poverty and deprivation. From this lofty Forum in Beijing we must telescope our attention to the least common multiple of human suffering - rural women and women who grub for a living in the ghettos of crumbling cities, in order to satisfy the daily needs of their families. In our small islands we see our women as the pack-horses of agricultural production, working ceaselessly for wages which bear no equitable relationship to the comparative wages of their menfolk. We see our women grubbing as domestic workers exposed to the whims and abuses of both male and female employers in the household they serve. Some endure the exploitation and abuse of their male employers and the anger, frustration and hate of their jealous mistresses. The vicious cycle of exploitation and abuse leaps over the gender wall to further degrade and demoralise our womenfolk. The Platform For Action should strike a telling blow at this level of exploitation by constructing a Charter of Rights for Domestic Workers and persons at the ground level of the economic spectrum. Such a Charter should outline the human rights of Domestic Workers, their salary and wage levels, their conditions of work, their duties and responsibilities and the facilities and benefits due to them. The Charter should embody not only human rights and women rights, it should make a loud statement of affirmative action designed to correct the imbalances and inequities in our social systems Our Caribbean societies are historically seen as being matriarchal societies, but these glib categories often mask the male-dominated nature of our social systems and the substantive inequality in the position of women. For too long our women have been honest brokers for a society rigged perversely against their development and progress. The long and arduous road from Mexico City to Copenhagen, Nairobi and Beijing has had only a marginal impact on the structural disequilibrium against gender in our economic and social systems. It is time to break these bottlenecks to female empowerment! It is time for Governments and Organisations to re-rig our system with a gender bias in favour of women, in order to achieve some measure of equilibrium in the long term. One might conceivably argue, Madam President, that it is unethical to replace a male bias with a female bias, but the built-in economic disadvantage which our women suffer are so chronic that it necessitates strong affirmative action by Governments and Community Organisations to redress the inequities in the short-term. Both at the micro and macro levels of our economic systems, the chronic gender imbalance is so strong that the structural adjustment solutions of the International Monetary fund impose a multiplier effect making the poverty impact on women even more intense and desperate. Our women are the last to be hired and the first to be fired. They are the butt of all retrenchment programmes and the easily disposable assets of our gender-insensitive society. We must all stand firmly on this Platform For Action to remove all disabilities to the economic emancipation of our women, whether it is in land-holding, succession, employment, equal wages and benefits, credit facilities and loans, the waiver of collateral requirements, or day-care and pre-school services, as part of a complete health-care programme. Madam President, forty years ago our own Sir Arthur Lewis addressed this acute perception to this problem of persistent poverty and he made an incisive observation which should ring around the corridors of this landmark conference. He said “THE CURE FOR POVERTY IS NOT MONEY BUT EDUCATION”. So when the Platform For Action calls for the eradication of illiteracy among women worldwide, it is targeting the problem of chronic poverty and reaching for a fundamental solution to the problem. A 1992 UNlCEF Report has pegged the level of illiteracy in Saint Lucia as high as 46 percent, and in consonance with our findings on poverty, women have been the main casualties from the restricted availability of formal and non-formal education. In the past, formal education has been a major strategy for perpetrating the male-biased gender ideology which has prevailed in under-developed societies like ours. In recent years however, we have seen a crack of light at the end of the dark tunnel. Between the period of 1981 to 1992 boys have consistently outnumbered girls at the primary level of education; but the situation is reversed at the secondary level with girls outnumbering boys at 56 percent. At our Community College in Saint Lucia, girls have moved from 47 percent of students in 1985 to 64 percent in 1991 at the tertiary level. These fledgling achievements emphasize the need for the Platform For Action to accelerate the thrust for the creation of an educational system that ensures equal education and training opportunities and develop curricula, textbooks and teaching aids which are free from the sex- stereotypes existing at present at all levels of education. Madam President, we in Saint Lucia and the Caribbean Region sit on the horns of the same global dilemma with regard to the horrifying situation of violence against women. We are at a loss to understand the phenomenon that increased development, progress and prosperity seem to exacerbate the incidence of domestic violence. The Saint Lucia Crisis Centre which was formed in 1988, the Division of Social Affairs and the Police Force have all reported steep increases in the reporting of violence against women in the form of physical abuse, indecent assault, incest and rape. We find it difficult to accept the implication that material and social progress bears an inverse relationship with inhumanity and bestiality. The United Nations fact sheet tells us that a survey in Barbados revealed that one in three women was sexually abused during childhood or adolescence and in Peru a study at the Maternity Hospital in Lima found that ninety percent of mothers aged twelve to sixteen had been raped, often by a father, step-father or other close relative. These are grim statistics which should move this Conference to turn a hostile Community face against all forms of domestic violence. Saint Lucia will stand firmly behind any Platform For Action which seeks to enact and enforce legislation against the soul-less perpetrators of violence against women. Saint Lucia has in 1994 signed and ratified the Belem Do Para Convention on the Prevention, Punishment and Eradication of violence against women. We have passed in our Parliament Laws on Domestic Violence. Our Government is in the process of erecting a Shelter for Abused women and setting up of a Family Court where women and families can resolve disputes in an atmosphere of respect for all parties concerned. Madam President, the National Report on the Status of Women in Saint Lucia speaks to the Inequality of the sharing of Power and Decision making at all levels. Despite our achievements in our country women 's involvement in Politics and Top Management positions in both the Public and Private Sectors are very limited. Our women still perceive Politics as "Dirty" and do not want to be associated with it and there is still a tremendous lack of confidence and reluctance on the part of our women to face the Electorate. There is, at present only one female member of the Cabinet and two female Senators in the Upper House of Parliament. Notwithstanding this dismal ratio, the Government of Saint Lucia is fully committed to encouraging and involving women in the Decision- making levels of Government to further the advancement of women in the country. In conclusion, Madam President, I want to express my own excitement and that of my Delegation, in seeing this vast cavalcade of womanhood which has turned up in Beijing to seek for meaningful strategies to achieve some measure of gender respectability. In our excitement there is hope. We hope that at the end of this historical Conference we will see the emergence of a New Woman - the Beijing Woman. The Beijing Woman must be committed, determined and strident, yet she must retain an equanimity of spirit and a calmness of soul. She must be aggressive in promoting the goals of our conference but not at the expense of her humanity, her graciousness and her godliness. The Beijing Women must never lose sight of the overall target of human co-existence. Our gender victories, however small, must be seen as arrows shot in the direction of a broad humanity, a warmer family embrace and a diminution of man's inhumanity to man. In the end men and women must embrace in a warm partnership of love and understanding. Madam President, my Government, my Delegation and My People of Saint Lucia salute - THE NEW BEIJING WOMAN!