Women’s day’s forgotten women

The world celebrates today another annual International Day dedicated to women. Various women’s organisations from Jaffna to Colombo and beyond are holding programmes to mark the day with themes ranging from gender equality and empowering women to protecting them.

The Human Rights Commission of Sri Lanka held a seminar on Friday on technology-based violence against women -- an increasing form of violence that occurs via offline and online media. Technology, they say, is the newest tool that is used to commit violence against, and exploit women. Women In Need together with the Criminal Investigation Department (CID), also addressing the issue of cyber harassment, has just launched the Standard Operating Procedure (SOP) for the Police in Addressing Complaints on Cyber Harassment while presenting key findings on their research on the technology facilitated violence against women and girls in this country.

While these are growing and dangerous problems, each year, the same old issues persist with little done for the emancipation of the so-called ‘weaker sex’. The majority are quick to cash in on the marketing opportunities International Women’s Day presents – with numerous offers of consumer products for the fashion conscious and more privileged.

But it is no different the world over – women’s issues not receiving the attention they should. In neighbouring India, nationwide protests continue over gang rapes and assaults on young women, while in the US and Europe campaigns against sexual harassment at workplaces continue as too the movements demanding equal pay for equal work and attempts at breaking the ‘glass ceiling’ that prevents women from advancing to high positions in management. This is while there are still countries where women are expected to live as in medieval times -- forced to dress according to the dictates of their male family members, not allowed to pursue their education or drive a vehicle.

Easily ignored in this country are the problems of the thousands of courageous, persevering women who continue with back-breaking work – on the plantations of this country, the garment factory worker, and particularly the women toiling in West Asia, Europe and the Far East doing menial work to keep the home fires burning.

It is the Sri Lankan women working abroad who must attract the highest priority of any Government. Unfortunately it has not been the case with whichever Administration of recent years even when numbers rose to nearly a million Sri Lankan migrant workers, the bulk of them women.

A Government does not need a new Constitution or to change the 19th Amendment or a two-thirds majority for an Executive President or Prime Minister to take charge of the subject that brings in USD seven billion annually into the country helping to pay the country’s oil bill and for other essential exports.

The video clip of the Sri Lankan woman who has contracted the coronavirus from the household in which she works in Italy should pull at anyone’s heartstrings as she relates her plight, and her anxiety, all alone in a hospital in a faraway country.

A Government owes much more to these women.