International Women’s Day messages - ‘Be bold for change,’ says ambassador |08 March 2017

“Empowering our women does not just mean giving them equal rights, job opportunities and equal pay on paper, but rather driving the change in mindsets that will enable our young girls and women to venture boldly into work areas and careers that are still considered jobs for men.”

The statement comes in a message by Dr Erna H. Athanasius (MD FAAP),

Seychelles’ ambassador for women and children, on the occasion of the International Women’s Day today.

Ambassador Athanasius’ message reads:

“The 2030 Agenda for Sustainable Development has as an overarching goal ‘to realise the human rights of all and to achieve gender equality and the empowerment of all women and girls’.

“Goal 5 has a specific pronouncement in itself stressing its importance to sustainable development and whereby ‘all human beings can fulfil their potential in dignity and equality and in a healthy environment’. 

“In this regard, it is important that we, as a country, continue in the drive to empower our women in line with this year’s UN Women’s Day focus on ‘Women in the Changing World of Work: Planet 50-50 by 2030’.  Empowering our women does not just mean giving them equal rights, job opportunities and equal pay on paper, but rather driving the change in mindsets that will enable our young girls and women to venture boldly into work areas and careers that are still considered jobs for men.

“Diane Elson, an adviser to UN Women, argues in her contribution that ‘the disproportionate responsibility that women bear for carrying out unpaid work is an important constraint on their capacity to realise their rights... Both women and men need time to care for their families and communities, and time free from such care’.

“Our young girls should be encouraged to follow their hearts and passions rather than the traditional paths already neatly laid out by society. And at the same time, our boys and men must have a change in mindset to fully embrace the active involvement and partnership of our young girls and women in the work places, especially those in the scientific, mechanical, manual and digital spheres that are presently male dominated. Such changing mindsets require a national effort to ensure formative years eliminate stereotyping.

“By empowering girls and women to venture into uncharted waters with confidence in their skills and abilities, we will also be ensuring their liberation from the chains of certain customs that have traditionally created the enabling environment for abuse and violence against women and young girls.

“UN Women executive director Phumzile Mlambo-Ngcuka mentioned in her address for International Women’s Day 2017 – ‘We have to start change at home and in the earliest days of school, so that there are no places in a child’s environment where they learn that girls must be less, have less, and dream smaller than boys.’

“Although we do not have a tradition in Seychelles, of child marriages, genital mutilation practices on women and girls, inequality of salaries, inequality of distribution of land and property,  and have an appearance of equal opportunity for all, we must look below the surface and realise that our familial conditioning and socialisation, education system, public media output are still strong forces of oppression of our women and children, preventing them from realising their full potential in the country’s economic development.

Beginning in the homes, parenting must be conscious of the traditional gender limitations imposed on children that stunt their creativity and mold them into passive subjects of gender discrimination.  School curricula, TV programmes, advertising and entertainment must also be reshaped to break the stereotypical lenses from which we view our norms and our values. Such adjustments require a strong national commitment that is translated into bold action that challenges existing preconditioning and reshapes the looking glass with a determined eye towards gender equality and true empowerment of women and girls.

“It is through education and concerted effort that women and girls can leap forward to balance the scales of visibility and power in the work force, to dare enter the male dominated realm of certain professions, and contribute fully in the economic development of the country. Education and concerted effort by all will also empower the boys and men to welcome women and girls as equal partners, with equal dignity and honour in laying a brick, commanding an oil rig, programming a computer, becoming a scientist or any other career that calls one to serve.

“In addition, the public and private sector organisations also need to be educated to review their own internal customs and biases that tend to perpetuate myopic views and policies that are insensitive to the special needs of women in the workforce, which ultimately results in discriminatory practices that maintain the stereotypic mentality of male versus female jobs, and expected outputs. Where internal imbalances exist, there is a need for organisations to proactively address them for maximum outputs irrespective of gender differences.

 “‘When women participate fully in the labour force, it creates opportunities and generates growth. Closing the gender gap in employment could add $12 trillion to global GDP by 2025. Increasing the proportion of women in public institutions makes them more representative, increases innovation, improves decision-making and benefits whole societies.’  – UN Secretary-General, 6-3-2017.

“But all is not doom and gloom; as we commemorate the International Women’s Day, we in Seychelles need to count our blessings and we need to celebrate the many social, economic, cultural and political achievements of our Seychellois women who have shown courage, determination, perseverance, as well as integrity, in achieving their dreams and making their impact in male dominated jobs.

“We need to applaud our women and reach out to the other Seychellois women and girls and pull them up onto the wagon of empowerment through education, promotion and support, all the while creating visibility and awareness across the country in the continuous drive to bring about the positive change we wish to see, the positive change for our women and girls, the positive change for our male counterparts, a positive change for our country!

“Let us join with the rest of the world in the International Women’s Day call to all: ‘Be Bold for Change’.