At the Coalface' of gender discrimination

| Friday March 12, 2010 00:00

Research by Gender Links has shown that advancement of women in Botswana still lags behind and hinders national development. Lack of political will to address gender issues and cultural beliefs also hinder progress not only for women but for the community at large.

In their research book 'At the Coalface', Pamela Mhlanga, Susan Tolmay and Colleen Morna say Botswana has not committed to the advancement of women since she did not sign the gender and development protocol in 2008 when other SADC countries signed to commit themselves to achieving at least 50 percent representation of women in decision-making positions in the public and private sectors by 2015.

'This could be considered yet another setback by the government on issues of women empowerment,' the authors say. This protocol is a comprehensive legal document that provides clear objectives, strategies and targets for achieving gender equality in SADC. This involves monitoring, tracking progress and reporting by member states of achievements made. Botswana did not participate and this has seen the country lag behind on representation of women in Parliament or in any power holding position, the study says. 

The book says during the 2004 elections, representation of women dropped by six percent from 17 percent in 1999. Currently the representation of women in Parliament is four out of 57 members.

Culture and patriarchy are also blamed for the setback of women empowerment in Botswana.  The authors of the book derived this statement from comments by participants in a study group who said once females become councillors or hold a certain position, they 'do not behave like women any more' or 'are trying to prove a point'.The authors say these kinds of responses reinforce the stereotypes that women do not have a place in politics.

The authors stress that while there is general awareness of gender equality, lack of political will and passion remains a challenge.  However, Senior Clinical Psychologist Mohammad Rahman says there are biological, hormonal, and bio-chemical differences between men and women which will always influence the way a woman thinks, feels and behaves, compared to a man. He says because of certain biological characteristics of women, they are more socially insecure. 'It's really hard for insecure women to keep fighting to go up their career ladder.

Moreover, women usually have double burdens, compared to men in society,' he says. Rahman holds that to become really successful, a career-oriented woman needs a lot of family and social support to keep her family intact and happy. 'But how much emotional and social support, caring and security does she receive from her husband or others related to her when she needs it?'

Rahman says due to their biological makeup, men are more after power and money-oriented professions such as in business, the army, or the legal profession, while women choose more caring professions like teaching, nursing, or secretarial support jobs. 'Even talented women who are capable of becoming scientists, judges, army officers, or owners of large industries or corporate businesses settle with a medium pace in their education and choose a moderate career to cope with the pressure from family and society,' he says. Sometimes parents, brothers, sisters, friends and husbands all discourage women from getting involved in too much challenging or risky professions.

Rahman says women listen to discouraging social suggestions like 'since you are a woman, you should not take risks in a career-oriented job, rather choose some career which you can afford or can handle peacefully, putting your less energy and effort'. He says such voices she often listens to at home, school, and in society, even in a hidden way through the media. 'Such repeated suggestions work as a hypnotic effect on the mental world of a woman and she then starts setting lower levels of aspirations and chooses a career with low risk,' he says. More women usually suffer from anxiety, depression, and attempt more suicide than men of the same age group, which indicates poor mental health status of women in society. 

'How can you reach the top of your chosen career if you suffer from poor mental health? It gets even more complicated when it remains unrecognised and untreated throughout one's life due to lack of proper consciousness about the importance of mental health promotion and mental illness prevention strategies for ensuring national mental health and its link to national human resource and economic productivity,' says Rahman.

But other than such biological differences, there are not many differences between men and women intellectually or in terms of their potentiality to be successful in a chosen career. Rahman says psychological, social and cultural aspects around the life situations faced by men and women in each society, from birth to death, lead to men being more successful than women.

To overcome such psychosocial or cultural barriers which work as an obstacle to women's career development, both women and society will have to re-think and re-evaluate their current personal and social cognition about women's capacity, roles and responsibility in comparison to men. 'There is always room for fair negotiation between men and women in society, to stop all forms of discrimination, neglect or abuse against any child, specially a girl-child, which must be stopped, starting from family, while she is taken care mostly by her own parents or relatives,' says Rahman.

He holds that there is a need to re-evaluate attitudes and cultural patterns which are unsupportive of normal and healthy psycho-social development of females in society. 'These changed attitudes and cognitions about women's roles and responsibilities, and with the creation of extra opportunities for women, they would definitely be capable of overcoming or by-passing their natural biological barriers or handicaps for which they sometimes doubt themselves or give up their struggle to be the best or keep on trying to go up to the top in their chosen careers,' he says.