Adequate maternity and paternity leave for parliamentarians and increases in women's representation in cabinets, parliaments and local governments to a minimum of 30 percent.These are among some 17 recommendations to regional and global Governments in a communiqué from regional women leaders.The communiqué, titled the Port-of-Spain Consensus on Transformational Leadership for Gender Equality, was drafted at the Caribbean Regional Colloquium on Women Leaders as Agents of Change held in? The women leaders are also recommending that governments and political parties:
• Include a minimum of 40 percent of either sex on their lists of candidates for parliamentary and local government elections and senatorial appointments.
• Develop and implement initiatives that facilitate women's full participation in all internal party policy-making structures, appointments and electoral nominating processes.
• Review of the criteria and processes for appointments to decision- making bodies in the public and private sectors to facilitate increased women's representation;
• Gender-sensitive leadership training programmes for men and women, including young people who are preparing to assume or are in decision-making positions in the public and private sectors;
• Provision of resources to national gender/women's machineries so they can effectively implement, monitor and mainstream commitments on gender equality;
• Gender-responsive national budgets and plans;
• Women's equal participation in economic diversification and governance.
Prime Minister of T&T , Kamla Persad Bissessar announced at the colloquium's closing ceremony, that the recommendations will be taken and tabled at the meeting of CARICOM in St Kitts on July 1, 2011. She also said they will present the outcomes at a fringe meeting of global women leaders on the eve of the UN General Assembly in New York in September and the Commonwealth Heads of Government meeting in Australia in November.The colloquium was attended by leaders of organisations as the UK-based intergovernmental agencies as the Commonwealth Secretariat, the US- based Organisation of American States (OAS) and the United Nations Entity for Gender Equality, the Empowerment of Women (UN Women), included women leaders in politics, academia, and civil society from Barbados, Jamaica, Bahamas, Antigua and Barbuda, Grenada, St Kitts/Nevis, Belize, St Vincent and the Grenadines and T&T.The document noted that while women's political participation is now recognised internationally as a key element in social progress there are less than 15 percent of women elected to Caribbean parliaments.
"Despite high levels of participation by women as voters and campaigners, relatively few women are selected by political parties for leadership positions or as candidates to contest parliamentary elections, and even fewer are elected as members of parliament," it stated."There is a similar inequality in women occupying ministerial positions and seats in public and private sector boardrooms. As a result, the Caribbean lacks a critical mass of women political leaders committed to promoting gender equality in areas such as women's economic empowerment and security, ending gender-based violence, advancing sexual and reproductive health and rights, equal pay for work of equal value, and shared family responsibilities."The forum also commended the organisers of the Caribbean Institute for Women in Leadership (CIWiL), involved in generating research, documentation, analysis, training and advocacy and its efforts to increase the number of women in politics, leadership and decision-making in the Caribbean through training, mentoring, advocacy and policy advice.
