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Dynamics of gender equality in government programme 2020-2024: From rhetoric to policy practice

4 décembre 2019, 07:56

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When it comes to women representation in Parliament, Mauritius still lags behind with only 20 % of seats.

Introduction If you cannot distinguish among socialists, democrats, conservatives, radicals, reformers, republicans, liberals, patriots and that you can ‘pick and pull’ any of them and still be comfortable, you are living in Mauritius. Systems, values, ideologies, institutions, organisations, groups, actors, relations, are interchangeable making political discourse analysis in Mauritius ambiguous and discursive.

From the Nomination Day, the 22nd October 2019, till the eve of the general election of the 7th November 2019, party-politics have concocted and sold “reality construction” based on sets of events compiled, narrated, interpreted through a process of retrievals, projections and promises aiming at creating the “imaginary real”. Politicians from all sides spoke the same language, promoted the same ideology; prompting defensibly the then outgoing Prime Minister to label opponents as “copy and paste” machines.

Political discourses have been characterised by mainly tit-for-tat retaliations and with very little constructive argumentations on strategic national interests, like changing population structure and parenthood, climate change and sustain- able development, migration and social security, gender inequality and deprivation. Strategic orientations that the country would undertake to position itself as a forerunner at least in the region in the implementation of the Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs) and in fulfilling its aspiration towards a high-income country are still vague and outwardly pretentious. Most politicians have fallen into the demagogical, manipulative and didactic trap and have literally failed to inform, educate, advocate and even entertain.

The forgotten gender equality agenda

One of the compelling observations is the lack of a forceful voice from politicians from all sides on the issue of gender equality. While many female candidates like Danny Perrier, Gayatree Dayal, Joanne Tour, and Aurore Perraud forcefully addressed the issue of women development during the political broadcast sessions, Sandra Mayotte, who was until recently the chairperson of the National Women Entrepreneurs Council, Lindsay Collen, who has been for long an ardent supporter of women empowerment and Arianne Navarre, who fought vigorously as Minister for Women, chose to address the issue of culture, democracy and social justice respectively, side-lining as all others, the issue of gender equality, so distinctive as the 5th SDG and a cross cutting pillar, central to any development agenda.

Gender inequality in Mauritius re- mains a serious impediment for progress and cannot continuously be ignored as in the past. In the previous ‘Government Programme (2015-2019): Achieving Meaningful Change’, the issue of gender equality was completely ignored. Section 144 of the Programme only announced the setting up of a National Coalition against Domestic Violence Committee under the aegis of the Prime Minister’s Office. The Economic Mission Statement: Vision 2030 of August 2015 was totally gender blind.

However, important initiatives have been taken since 2012 to mainstream gender into the development agenda. Almost all ministries, including the new Ministry of Financial Services and Good Governance, have a Gender Strategy and a Gender Cell to ensure that the line-ministries mainstream gender issues into their programme at all levels. Unfortunately, the strategies have remained shelved and very little has been achieved in terms of strategic gender mainstreaming activities, more so as most of the Gender Cells have remained dormant for the past five years. The PMO developed a new and robust Gender Strategy in 2018, but unfortunately actions towards its implementation have been sporadic and non-sustained, translating a widespread gap between rhetorical commitment and policy practice.

While some achievements have been noted in terms of women labour participation, girls’ education and access of women to resources, women’s health care and security, gender inequality has remained pervasive in many dimensions of life. Women are vastly underrepresented in decision-making positions especially in the private sector. Gender parity in parliamentary representation is still far from being realized, despite an improvement in the proportion of seats held by women in Parliament, from 5.7% in 2000, to 18.8% in 2014 and 20% in 2019. Mauritius ranked 149 in the world in 2017 in terms of women representation in Parliament and is far behind our neighbours like Namibia with 46.2 % and South Africa 42.7%, and Rwanda with 61.3% of women parliamentarians.

An inclusive society entails that women are fairly represented in Parliament and in all decision-making instances and that gender concerns permeate all programme at all levels. Government’s commitment to ensure and promote a philosophy of “développement à visage humain et chances égales pour tous” in all its endeavour is commendable but does not translate explicit gender sensitivity. Gender is a concept that needs to be articulated overtly and made to be understood by all. Unfortunately, we are still living in a patriarchal milieu, the ramifications of which transcend the family to influence other aspects of life, including the world of work. Senior executives in both the public and private sectors are yet to understand fully the concept of gender and very often remains the main obstacles to the process of gender mainstreaming, relegating it to the sole responsibility of the Ministry of Gender Equality and Family Welfare. Given the dearth of information and scanty awareness of concepts like gender equality, gender equity, gender mainstreaming, gender gap and gender blind among the elite few who are destined to shape the rest, not much is expected to be realised in the process of engendering development. If the Gender Cells in the different ministries have not been functional, it is essentially due to poor intellectual absorptiveness of gender concepts among its members and the few elite decision-makers. The process of gender mainstreaming must hence, not take precedence over the need to mainstream ‘gender awareness’ as a new kind of policy practice; that which creates the conditions for policy makers and implementors to fully comprehend and internalise gender concepts and be convinced of the importance of wearing gender lenses at all instances.

Ensuring gender intersectionality

Gender Inequality is to be under- stood in its complexity and multifaceted and concurrent social, cultural, economic, legal dimensions. Beliefs, behaviours, perceptions and practices are so closely interlinked that a snapshot approach to understanding gender issues is always limited. A whole picture approach does not isolate any impending influencing factor on Gender and hence should form the very basics of Gender Analysis. Unfortunately, research on Gender in Mauritius is grossly inadequate and scanty, resulting to limited evidence-based approaches to gender programming. Data collection are “sex disaggregated” in all important sectors, like health, education, social security, and employment. Sex disaggregated data are not gender disaggregated data.

A “Gender Data Revolution” is needed to reengineer the whole mechanism of data collection and information gathering to ensure that gender concerns are integrated into sex disaggregated data. Statistics Mauritius produces quantitative “statistics by gender” which are quite comprehensive and essential but not sufficient to reflect the power relations between men and women, the outcomes of a particular policy, programme or activity for women and men, or changes in the status or situation of men and women, such as levels of poverty or participation. An Intersectional Approach is needed to collect data on gender. Intersectionality has emerged as a new framework for understanding the complexity and particularity of gender inequality, which is related to a multitude of factors like race, class, age, ableness, sexual orientation and others.

Respecting gender identity

We should be inspired by the Gender Equality Strategy (2018-2023) of the Council of Europe and adopt an intersectional approach that addresses also gender stereotypes and sexism for the promotion a gender equality and inclusion, so essential in abiding to the social justice mandate and in ensuring that the rights of every individual are respected, including those with diverse sexual orientations. The issue of gender identity and sexual orientations has always been considered as “politically incorrect”, despite ratifications of international and regional human rights conventions protecting all ‘persons’regardless of their sexual orientations or gender identities. The International Commission of Jurists, through the Yogyakarta Principles on the Application of International Human Rights Law in relation to Sexual Orientation and Gender Identity (2007) urges the international community to specifically respect the rights of LGBTI (Lesbians, Gays, Bisexuals, Transgenders and Intersexuals) people.

This new Government has the obligation to respect the rights of all and adopt a bold and proactive inclusion policy. It is high time to shed away religious bigotry and avoid peeping behind the curtains and promote effective gender balance while respecting gender identity of all. No political leader during the October/November 2019 electoral campaign has dared to tread on this issue, one that sparkled hatred and fear at a street demonstration against the LGBTI in Port Louis on the dark Saturday evening of 2nd June 2018.

Conclusion

The United Nations (UN) urge its member states to continuously strengthen their legal, economic, social and political structure to ensure that men and women participate and enjoy the fruits of development on equal terms and in respect of the fundamental human rights. The commitment to gender equality can be traced back to the 1948 United Nations Charter and the Universal Declaration on Human Rights which testify that individual rights and freedoms shall not be limited by a person’s gender and establish that “all human beings are born free and equal in dignity and rights”. Since then, the milestones include the 1975 Mexico City 1st Women’s Conference, the adoption of Convention for the Elimination of all forms of Discriminations Against Women in 1979, the 1980 Copenhagen 2nd Women’s Conference, the 1985 Nairobi 3rd Women’s Conference and the landmark Beijing 4th Women’s Conference in 1995. The Millennium Declaration and Millennium Development Goals in 2000 and the Sustainable Development Goals in 2015 reinforced the promotion of Gender Equality as a cross cutting issue.

Commitments that Mauritius made at the international level cannot remain declarations of intent and be relegated to political statements but should be understood and addressed as State obligations.

An intersectional approach ensures that gender mainstreaming initiatives move beyond the “addition” of women on decision making bodies, to the day to day incorporation of the dynamics of gender into cross-disciplinary programmes. The new Government Programme is expected to reflect a real change in the art of governing by positioning gender at the centre of the development agenda; by being explicitly “gender-driven” and “gender-enabled”, and acknowledging and ensuring women’s right as human’s rights while promoting effective participation, involvement and engagement of women in the affairs of the country. Effective gender mainstreaming entails commitment, determination coupled with positive and innovative initiatives aiming towards the construction of a new institutional order.

Our hope is that Ms. Kalpana Devi Koonjoo-Shah, the new Minister of Gender Equality and Family Welfare, who has already position herself as outspokenly pro-active on the 26th November 2019 on the occasion of the International Day for the Elimination of Violence against Women, and as having “l’engagement, volonté et détermination”, forcefully singles herself in adopting a real transformative approach that addresses the root causes of gender in- equality and unfair power relations and dares to question and challenge inhibitive gender-blind socio-cultural norms and practices and institutional barriers that constrain shared gender strategic goals.