Women still lagging in getting employment

Despite the advances women have made in the workplace, they still lag behind men in gaining employment, including here in Barbados, according to a United Nations (UN) Women official.
Even as she offered words of support and encouragement to female secondary school students gathered for the I am A Girl workshop held in recognition of International Women’s Day on Wednesday, Representative of the UN Women Caribbean Multi-Country Office Tonni-Ann Brodber said while women have made strides and flourished in new job areas, there was still a way to go.
“It is important to know that although more girls and women are getting degrees and certifications, this does not translate to employment. There are still more men employed in Barbados than they are women. There are still very few women entrepreneurs in the Caribbean…. Eight per cent of all persons who indicated that they were self-employed were women in the Caribbean and one per cent of that eight per cent had employees,” she told the audience at the Lloyd Erskine Sandiford Centre that included Government Parliamentarian Marsha Caddle.
“MP Caddle is an economist; she can tell you what that means for sustainability if you are your only employee,” Brodber added.
In keeping with the UN’s mandate to help create opportunities for women and girls, particularly in tech-related sectors, Brodber disclosed that Minister of People Empowerment and Elder Affairs Kirk Humphrey is in New York at the Commission on the Status of Women engaging in important discussions around the topic.
“Barbados and Guyana are co-leading CARICOM’s negotiation on the Commission on the Status of Women. What comes out of the negotiation in New York is going to be a new international standard on how governments engage in getting more women and girls included in ICT,” she explained.
“That means what laws are going to be put into place, or should be put into place, around violence that you may experience online.”
Meanwhile, Brodber stated that work still needs to be done to drastically reduce the level of abuse of girls and women in the region.
“We have high levels in the Caribbean of child sexual abuse, of incest, of intimate partner violence. Unfortunately, violence is a norm that is intertwined with loving relationships and it goes through a life cycle,” she said.
“We work with the police [and] the judiciary to strengthen the response but we also work with people – men and boys, women and girls – to prevent it from happening in the first place.”
(SB)