Women’s action mandate
International Relations Director of the Network, Dr Kris Rampersad said the Network is demanding these issues be integrated into all policies and decision making, budget design and implementation and action.
The release stated that the Women’s Mandate for Action presents women as a political constituency as has labour, the private sector and religious groups.
“Our constituency is one to whom political parties can make commitments for action and to whom they can be held accountable,” she said.
Rampersad noted that their goal is to transform the culture of politics in the country by ensuring all persons have equal opportunity to participate in public life and to ensure there is no discrimination either direct or indirect, on the basis of gender, ethnicity, class, age or sexuality.
She explained that women have been excluded from political decision-making at the highest level but they are confident of the positive impact their contribution will have on the development of our society.
“Our mandate for action which has emerged from our work of women’s organisations over many years and from commitments agreed to by successive governments as the Convention of the Elimination of All Rights and the Nairobi Forward Looking Strategies. These provide the basis for a comprehensive framework for the advancement of women and the enjoyment of basic rights to gender equity, the principles of which must further inform the national gender policy,” she said.
Rampersad added that a gender policy must reaffirm the commitment in the constitution to gender equality and social justice and provide a framework to guide and inform transformation of existing inequitable gender relations.
