Ac­cord­ing to his­tor­i­cal da­ta, women can han­dle pow­er! Janet Ja­gan, Eu­ge­nia Charles and Por­tia Simp­son Miller, were all suc­cess­ful past women Prime Min­is­ters of our Caribbean is­lands. They gave us the in­cen­tive to re­alise that women can and will take charge where and when need­ed. My part­ner and I strong­ly agree with the state­ment - Caribbean coun­tries would be bet­ter served by hav­ing women Prime Min­is­ters.

Janet Ja­gan's life was mo­ti­vat­ed by a strong, car­ing con­cern for peo­ple; and the dri­ving pas­sion of her pol­i­tics was the pur­suit of their rights, par­tic­u­lar­ly those of the poor­er mar­gin­alised class­es. In­ter­est­ing­ly, Ms Ja­gan made a name for her­self in those ear­ly days through her ad­vo­ca­cy for birth con­trol and fam­i­ly plan­ning. She saw for her­self how large un­planned fam­i­lies were an al­ba­tross around the necks of the poor. Ms Ja­gan did not care about pos­ses­sions and was al­ways will­ing to go out of her way to help oth­ers.

She was apt­ly award­ed the Gold­en Medal for Peace, Democ­ra­cy and Women's Rights in trib­ute to the con­tri­bu­tion she made in these ar­eas and par­tic­u­lar­ly for her strong ad­vo­ca­cy for women's rights in Guyana. Af­ter the death of her hus­band and col­league Ched­di Ja­gan, she was sworn in as Prime Min­is­ter of Guyana. With the ad­vent of the 1997 elec­tions, Ja­gan be­came the Pres­i­den­tial Can­di­date of the PPP/C and won the elec­tions re­ceiv­ing a larg­er per­cent­age of the votes than in the elec­tions of 1992. With that vic­to­ry she be­came Guyana's first fe­male to hold the high­est of­fice of the land from De­cem­ber 19, 1997. She was a woman who strug­gled all her life for the ad­vance­ment of her coun­try, her peo­ple and fu­ture gen­er­a­tions. Ms. Ja­gan shows here how as a woman, she was able to iden­ti­fy and re­solve prob­lems sur­round­ing fam­i­lies.

Dur­ing Eu­ge­nia Charles' time as Prime Min­is­ter of Do­mini­ca, she en­abled the in­crease in adult lit­er­a­cy rates, ex­pand­ed the num­ber of sec­ondary schools in the coun­try, pro­vid­ed an ed­u­ca­tion trust fund, a youth skills train­ing pro­gramme, and ini­ti­at­ed the Do­mini­ca State Col­lege. By 17 March 1981, Ms. Charles un­veiled a plot to over­throw the gov­ern­ment and it's Do­mini­can Free­dom Par­ty (DFP) by an armed mer­ce­nary group. In 1992, Eu­ge­nia Charles was giv­en the ti­tle Dame Com­man­der of the Or­der of the British Em­pire (DBE), hav­ing been knight­ed by Queen Eliz­a­beth II at Harare, Zim­bab­we for her lead­er­ship and achieve­ments.

She had re­tired in 1995 as Prime Min­is­ter af­ter 15 years [1980-1995] of con­tin­u­ous pop­u­lar re-elec­tion to of­fice, based on ser­vice and lead­er­ship to that po­si­tion and to her coun­try. The Heads of the Caribbean Com­mu­ni­ty award­ed Dame Charles the Or­der of the Caribbean Com­mu­ni­ty in Feb­ru­ary 2003. The OCC is the Caribbean's high­est and most pres­ti­gious ho­n­our. She was de­scribed as The Grand Dame of the Caribbean. Ms. Charles shows as a woman, her con­cerns about ed­u­ca­tion and al­so her strength as a leader to be com­pe­tent, as she was able to dif­fer­en­ti­ate cor­rup­tion.

Por­tia Lu­cre­tia Simp­son-Miller de­vel­oped a rep­u­ta­tion as Road War­rior and a tough com­rade. In 1970, she was ap­point­ed par­lia­men­tary sec­re­tary in the Min­istry of Lo­cal Gov­ern­ment and in the of­fice of the Prime Min­is­ter. She was Ja­maica's Leader of the Op­po­si­tion and was the coun­try's sev­enth Prime Min­is­ter from 30 March 2006 to 11 Sep­tem­ber 2007. She was Ja­maica's first fe­male Prime Min­is­ter. Por­tia Lu­cre­tia Simp­son-Miller is al­so a mem­ber of the Coun­cil of Women World Lead­ers, an In­ter­na­tion­al net­work of cur­rent and for­mer women pres­i­dents and prime min­is­ters whose mis­sion is to mo­bilise the high­est-lev­el women lead­ers glob­al­ly for col­lec­tive ac­tion on is­sues of crit­i­cal im­por­tance to women and eq­ui­table de­vel­op­ment. Por­tia Simp­son-Miller has been de­scribed as one of Ja­maica's most pop­u­lar politi­cian hav­ing served in the Peo­ples Na­tion­al Par­ty for 34 years. Ms. Simp­son–Miller shows as a woman, her pas­sion for egal­i­tar­i­an­ism.

Por­tia Simp­son Miller cre­at­ed his­to­ry by join­ing the likes of Mar­garet Thatch­er, Dame Eu­ge­nia Charles, and Janet Ja­gan who rep­re­sent­ed their coun­tries at the high­est lev­el of lead­er­ship in their coun­tries. The world has de­scribed these women as be­ing out­spo­ken, sin­cere, firm, de­ci­sive, ho­n­ourable, prin­ci­pled, prag­mat­ic, in­cor­rupt­ible, tough, de­ter­mined, strong-willed and quick on the re­tort. Women in gen­er­al are strong and are more con­cerned about fam­i­ly, the en­vi­ron­ment and life in gen­er­al. As in­nate nur­tur­ers, they have the nat­ur­al abil­i­ty in any and every role that they choose to serve in. Women are al­ways bet­ter pre­pared. Their per­for­mance in po­si­tions of lead­er­ship and team­work as­pires to­wards ex­cel­lence. We the peo­ple of the Caribbean need Prime Min­is­ters who are keen about help­ing the re­gion pros­per and progress. We need women to take charge and start mak­ing changes just as Janet Ja­gan, Por­tia Simp­son-Miller and Eu­ge­nia Charles did for the Caribbean in their time.

A woman - as a Prime Min­is­ter? Wouldn't that show the young girls or young women of the Caribbean that any­thing is pos­si­ble? It would give them the mo­ti­va­tion to strive for bet­ter jobs, good ed­u­ca­tion and most im­por­tant­ly, in­de­pen­dence. The progress of Caribbean women is fun­da­men­tal to the de­vel­op­ment of fam­i­ly life. A woman serv­ing our very own coun­tries can un­der­stand and ar­tic­u­late the prob­lems con­cern­ing women, fam­i­lies, and by ex­ten­sion, so­ci­ety. Yes, in­deed, we need a woman Prime Min­is­ter who can re­late and ad­dress these is­sues. Why not make a su­pe­ri­or change for the Caribbean? We are pos­i­tive that a woman of great char­ac­ter could make a mag­nif­i­cent trans­for­ma­tion in our Caribbean is­lands.

We need to con­sid­er that the men who have been in charge have failed us as is ev­i­denced by the high in­crease in the crime rate and so much pover­ty just at our doors. As it ap­pears, our male Prime Min­is­ters lack the sen­si­tiv­i­ty that women were born with to deal with these mat­ters. As a young woman along with my male part­ner, we strong­ly think that we need a Prime Min­is­ter to care about the coun­try and more im­por­tant­ly the peo­ple they are serv­ing. We need a woman to help our beau­ti­ful chain of is­lands be­come a bet­ter place. Women would def­i­nite­ly make bet­ter Prime Min­is­ters, they are strong and high­ly con­cerned about what mat­ters most. Why not make a bet­ter change? Caribbean coun­tries would be bet­ter served by hav­ing women Prime Min­is­ters.

Re­nes­sa Kan­galee and Shane Layne

Ari­ma Cen­tral Sec­ondary School