Lisa Allen-Agos­ti­ni

One of the Mil­len­ni­um De­vel­op­ment Goals (MDGs) is to "pro­mote gen­der equal­i­ty and em­pow­er women." Goal Three of the MDGs makes sense be­cause women and girls world­wide are al­most al­ways the least ed­u­cat­ed, the worst paid, and gen­er­al­ly the most vul­ner­a­ble mem­bers of the so­ci­ety.

"The goal of gen­der equal­i­ty (...) re­mains un­ful­filled, (...) with broad neg­a­tive con­se­quences, giv­en that achiev­ing the MDGs de­pends so much on women's em­pow­er­ment and equal ac­cess by women to ed­u­ca­tion, work, health care and de­ci­sion-mak­ing," said UN Sec­re­tary-Gen­er­al Ban Ki-Moon in a 2012 re­port by the UN on the progress of the MDGs (which, re­mem­ber, are due for achieve­ment in 2015).

The re­port states that there has been ad­vance­ment in most of the goals set in 2000, but notes, "Gen­der in­equal­i­ty per­sists and women con­tin­ue to face dis­crim­i­na­tion in ac­cess to ed­u­ca­tion, work and eco­nom­ic as­sets, and par­tic­i­pa­tion in gov­ern­ment. Vi­o­lence against women con­tin­ues to un­der­mine ef­forts to reach all goals."

I have been for­tu­nate enough to have been grant­ed a schol­ar­ship to at­tend the Women De­liv­er Con­fer­ence in Malaysia in May, a con­fer­ence or­gan­ised around MDG Five–"to re­duce ma­ter­nal mor­tal­i­ty and achieve uni­ver­sal ac­cess to re­pro­duc­tive health." Women De­liv­er, its Web site says: "is a glob­al ad­vo­ca­cy or­gan­i­sa­tion bring­ing to­geth­er voic­es from around the world to call for ac­tion against ma­ter­nal death.

Launched at a ground­break­ing 2007 con­fer­ence, Women De­liv­er works glob­al­ly to gen­er­ate po­lit­i­cal com­mit­ment and fi­nan­cial in­vest­ment for ful­fill­ing (MDG Five)." The Con­fer­ence's 2013 theme is Em­pow­er­ing Women and Girls.

I am one of three T&T women who will be at­tend­ing the con­fer­ence on schol­ar­ship; the oth­er two are Ife Smith and Khadi­ja Sinanan, both of whom are among the con­fer­ence's 100 Young Lead­ers.

In an e-mail, Leah San­dals, se­nior as­so­ciate of Glob­al Health Strate­gies, an in­ter­na­tion­al con­sult­ing com­pa­ny that works with clients to en­sure de­vel­op­ment and world­wide de­liv­ery of health prod­ucts, tech­nolo­gies and in­for­ma­tion, quot­ing from the Women De­liv­er Web site, de­scribed the 100 Young Lead­ers as "a group of in­spir­ing young peo­ple se­lect­ed to re­ceive schol­ar­ships to at­tend the con­fer­ence, where they will have the op­por­tu­ni­ty to learn more about these is­sues and con­nect with ex­perts from around the world."

Smith is an hon­orary mem­ber of the Fam­i­ly Plan­ning As­so­ci­a­tion of T&T's Youth Ad­vo­ca­cy Move­ment and an ex­ec­u­tive mem­ber of the MSJ's Youth So­cial Jus­tice arm. She is pur­su­ing her mas­ter's in labour and em­ploy­ment re­la­tions at UWI, Cave Hill.

Sinanan will rep­re­sent Ad­vo­cates for Safe Par­ent­hood: Im­prov­ing Re­pro­duc­tive Eq­ui­ty (As­pire). "As a fi­nal year un­der­grad­u­ate stu­dent, study­ing law at UWI, Cave Hill, I was ex­posed to what was to be the sin­gle most en­gag­ing course of my le­gal ed­u­ca­tion," Sinanan wrote to me in an e-mail.

"The course was gen­der and the law and it was lec­tured by Tra­cy Robin­son un­der whose tute­lage I was ex­posed to fem­i­nist le­gal the­o­ry and came to crit­i­cal­ly un­der­stand gen­dered is­sues in a way I had nev­er be­fore. I have since then vol­un­teered with lo­cal civ­il rights group, As­pire, whose spe­cif­ic fo­cus is on is­sues of ma­ter­nal health, and I hope to con­tin­ue to work with them in the fu­ture.

Through my in­ter­ac­tion with As­pire, I came to un­der­stand more com­pre­hen­sive­ly the re­al­i­ties of Caribbean women and the need to ad­vo­cate for im­proved sex­u­al and re­pro­duc­tive health and rights for all Caribbean cit­i­zens."

Look­ing at the broad pic­ture of life in T&T, one might jus­ti­fi­ably ask what dis­ad­van­tages women and girls en­dure. As a de­vel­op­ing na­tion–some say de­vel­oped, but that just de­pends on the part of the coun­try in which you live–we have many women in po­si­tions of pow­er, many women who are high achiev­ers in all in­dus­tries and ar­eas of na­tion­al life, from re­li­gion to sport, ed­u­ca­tion, pol­i­tics and busi­ness.

How­ev­er, our HIV epi­dem­ic still has its high­est rate of new in­fec­tions among young women, women are still paid less than men in equiv­a­lent po­si­tions, and women are still more like­ly to die as a re­sult of in­ti­mate vi­o­lence than men.

Ad­di­tion­al­ly, we still have an un­ac­cept­ably high rate of ma­ter­nal mor­tal­i­ty. Dr Bharat Bas­saw, con­sul­tant ob­ste­tri­cian and gy­nae­col­o­gist at Mt Hope, was quot­ed in an Oc­to­ber 2012 ar­ti­cle in the T&T Guardian as say­ing: "If 100,000 women are preg­nant, we ex­pect 60 or 70 to die. This is very, very high. In the Unit­ed King­dom you can ex­pect ap­prox­i­mate­ly one woman in 100,000 to die."

Women De­liv­er, at which 5,000 women from around the world will meet to de­lib­er­ate on prob­lems and so­lu­tions, is a step in the right di­rec­tion and I am ho­n­oured to be a part of it.