On page 41 of the man­i­festo for the May 24, 2010 gen­er­al elec­tion, the Peo­ple's Part­ner­ship told the vot­ing pub­lic that its "vi­sion is to cre­ate a more gen­der-sen­si­tive so­ci­ety with a greater aware­ness of women's is­sues and rights," and that if elect­ed at the poll, the ad­min­is­tra­tion promised to "shape pub­lic pol­i­cy and im­ple­ment prac­tices which are gen­der-sen­si­tive."

More con­crete­ly, the five par­ties that then made up the PP ad­min­is­tra­tion gave a com­mit­ment that "our Gov­ern­ment will: Cham­pi­on the elim­i­na­tion of all forms of dis­crim­i­na­tion against women by pro­mot­ing gen­der eq­ui­ty en­forced by strong equal op­por­tu­ni­ties leg­is­la­tion and in­formed by a na­tion­al gen­der pol­i­cy."

Sad­ly, 33 months af­ter the PP was elect­ed by a land­slide, the coali­tion group­ing led by the coun­try's first fe­male Prime Min­is­ter ap­pears to have done very lit­tle to ad­vance the cause of gen­der equal­i­ty and gen­der main­stream­ing.

There have been no moves to pur­sue poli­cies to "al­low women to have flex­i­ble work­ing hours in recog­ni­tion of the dual bur­den of women at home and at the work­place," no spe­cif­ic leg­is­la­tion to com­bat sex­u­al ha­rass­ment in the work­place and not a whis­per with re­gard to laws gov­ern­ing equal pay for equal work.

Even the draft na­tion­al gen­der pol­i­cy seems to have been al­lowed to lan­guish be­yond the back­burn­er of pub­lic pol­i­cy for­mu­la­tion, even though there is a Min­is­ter of Gen­der Af­fairs, Mar­lene Coudray, part of whose job must sure­ly be to fi­nalise the draft, make the doc­u­ment pub­lic, en­cour­age dis­cus­sion and de­bate on the is­sues and ac­tion items in the pol­i­cy doc­u­ment and fi­nal­ly turn the pol­i­cy in­to ei­ther leg­is­la­tion or ac­tion.

The fact that Ms Coudray does not ap­pear to have done any of these things–al­though there is clear guid­ance from the man­i­festo–re­flects as much on her and her stew­ard­ship of her min­istry as it does on the Prime Min­is­ter and the en­tire Gov­ern­ment that she leads.

Ms Coudray has main­tained a deaf­en­ing si­lence on gen­der is­sues and some of the good ideas out­lined in the man­i­festo since com­ing in­to of­fice, while sev­er­al in­ci­dents which the pol­i­cy would have ad­dressed have oc­curred. Like Ms St Rose-Greaves be­fore her, Coudray should be cham­pi­oning the cause of the pol­i­cy to en­sure all cit­i­zens feel they are treat­ed equal­ly.

In light of the Gov­ern­ment's ap­par­ent cool­ness to gen­der is­sues, the role of the for­mer Gen­der Af­fairs Min­is­ter in re­leas­ing a draft of the pol­i­cy to the T&T Guardian must be recog­nised and ap­plaud­ed. Work on the pol­i­cy was said to be at an ad­vanced stage by both Ms St Rose-Greaves, when she was there, and then Ms Coudray, when decades lat­er this coun­try re­mains stag­nant on the is­sues the pol­i­cy was sup­posed to ad­dress.

In the in­ter­im, in­ter­est groups con­tin­ue to cry dis­crim­i­na­tion and in­no­cent vic­tims con­tin­ue to be preyed up­on by peo­ple who take ad­van­tage of the fail­ure of Gov­ern­ment to put in place the pol­i­cy, which would then fa­cil­i­tate a leg­isla­tive frame­work to deal with many is­sues.

Prime Min­is­ter Per­sad-Bisses­sar ought to re­vis­it some of the promis­es made in the man­i­festo and en­sure that her min­is­ter moves the is­sue to the fore­front of pub­lic pol­i­cy.