Camille Clarke

Af­ter 200 years of fight­ing for equal­i­ty, things have not tru­ly im­proved.So said Keisha Cruick­shank, pres­i­dent of the As­so­ci­a­tion of Fe­male Ex­ec­u­tives of T&T and di­rec­tor of ad­min­is­tra­tion at the Net­work of NGOs for the Ad­vance­ment of Women.In a phone in­ter­view yes­ter­day, Cruick­shank said the pur­pose of the re­mem­brance of In­ter­na­tion­al Women's Day, be­ing cel­e­brat­ed to­day, is at­tempt­ing to achieve change and in­spire women against vi­o­lence and oth­er is­sues.

The Unit­ed Na­tion's theme for In­ter­na­tion­al Women's Day this year is "Eq­ui­ty for women is progress for all."The Min­istry of Gen­der, Youth and Child De­vel­op­ment has added, "Em­pow­er­ing rur­al women in busi­ness de­vel­op­ment."Cruick­shank said women make up 51 per cent of the world's pop­u­la­tion and are re­spon­si­ble for 66 per cent of the world's out­put yet they on­ly re­ceive ten per cent of the world's in­come.

"Equal­i­ty, free­dom, sol­i­dar­i­ty, jus­tice, and peace are its dri­ving force. We have the pow­er to cre­ate this world. We rep­re­sent over half of hu­man­i­ty. We give life, we work, love, cre­ate, strug­gle, and have fun. We cur­rent­ly ac­com­plish most of the work es­sen­tial to life and the con­tin­ued sur­vival of hu­mankind. Yet our place in so­ci­ety con­tin­ues to be un­der­val­ued."Cruick­shank said women are still not re­gard­ed as equals to their male coun­ter­parts.

"Women still are not present in equal num­bers in busi­ness or pol­i­tics, while the vi­o­lence against women and girls con­tin­ues to rise."The in­ter­na­tion­al theme is in­spir­ing dif­fer­ent agen­cies who are us­ing it and fo­cus­ing on dif­fer­ent things. Equal­i­ty means busi­ness, it means that gen­der equal­i­ty means busi­ness. Women are a pro­duc­tive part of the so­ci­ety and of­ten have the bur­den of care for chil­dren and el­der­ly and these fac­tors af­fect them with their pro­duc­tiv­i­ty in the work­place," she said.

Cruick­shank said there are gen­der-gap is­sues in en­ter­prise as men are paid more than women for the same job."The whole fo­cus of this ob­ser­vance is re­al­ly to draw aware­ness to the fact that even in the busi­ness com­mu­ni­ty you have to pay at­ten­tion to gen­der equal­i­ty if you want to be suc­cess­ful in busi­ness," she said.Da­ta still show men get paid more for the same job than women, that they are mov­ing up in lead­er­ship but many po­si­tions are still held by men, she said.

"T&T is mak­ing ad­vances in Par­lia­ment and the state boards but there are still more men than women." Cruick­shank said there are is­sues con­cern­ing the vi­o­lence per­pe­trat­ed on women more than men.The Min­istry of Gen­der, Youth and Child De­vel­op­ment said to­day is the of­fi­cial launch of a month of ac­tiv­i­ties to pro­mote busi­ness and smart part­ner­ship.A se­ries of busi­ness clin­ics will be launched to­day at Table­land High School, Moru­ga. The min­is­ter, Clifton De Coteau, is sched­uled to give the fea­ture ad­dress.