Let us ‘Press for Progress’

JAMAICA FIRST recognised International Women’s Day (IWD) in 1978, almost 80 years after it was declared. On March 8, 2018, when we celebrate and promote the efforts to achieve gender equality for the 40th time, we will embrace this year’s theme ‘Press for Progress’, and all that it represents.

The fact is that the goal of IWD has still not been met, because gender inequality exists today, and in some quarters it is felt that this will be the case for another 100 years. Despite that daunting prospect, the last century has recorded some solid achievements that we should rightly acknowledge.

Jamaica was the first Englishspeaking country in the Caribbean to achieve full universal adult suffrage on November 20, 1944. That meant, among other things, that women had the right to vote. And when Iris Collins won the St James North Western seat on December 12, 1944, she became the first woman in the English-speaking Caribbean to be elected to Parliament.

The Maternity Leave Act came into effect on December 31, 1979, and it provided the right of female workers to be granted maternity leave, and in some cases, paid maternity leave. Importanly, it also included a mechanism to prevent women from being dismissed from their employment because they are pregnant, ensuring that the employee is entitled to return to work after maternity leave.

MCGREGOR

In December 2005, the Maintenance Act was amended to include the right of both spouses to seek maintenance from each other. Previously, only a wife could make such an application against a husband, and common law spouses were not recognised as potential claimants for maintenance.

On April 1, 2006, the Property (Rights of Spouses) Act came into effect, which, among other things, put the homemaker’s contribution (which is traditionally the role of a woman) on par with financial contributions in determining the interests of spouses in the property.

In 2011, the Jamaican Constitution was amended to include the Charter of Fundamental Rights and Freedoms. Among the provisions of the Charter are the rights to equality before the law and freedom from discrimination on the ground of being male or female.

With that said, there is much more to be left to be achieved, and the #MeToo movement in Americ, underscored the need for a sexual harassment, assault and abuse (particularly in the workplace) to end. Jamaica has taken its own strides in that direction with the Sexual Harassment Bill, but the enactment of that legislation is anxiously being awaited.

There are other pieces of legislation that do not effectively pro- mote gender equality. Below are two examples:

1. Although the Employment (Equal Pay for Men and Women) Act Fundamental Rights (Additional Provisions) (Interim) Act Housing Act is intended to ensure that men and women are paid equally for the same work, it includes no monitoring mechanism, and is not enforced particularly because no data is collected to compare salaries.

2. The Maternity Leave Act does not account for the fact that fathers need time off from work to bond with their newborns and to assist in raising children.

Perhaps the challenge to all Jamaicans is to defy the projections that gender equality cannot be achieved in our lifetime, and agitate for more aggressive changes to promote the efforts.