BACKGROUND.

During the past few years there has been a lot of gender sensitization in
schools and the media, both print and audio-visual. In the print media
respected ladies like Adelaide Sosseh Gaye, Satang Joberteh, Juka Jabang,
sarah Grey-Johnson etc, contribute to the opinion column of the Daily
observer, enlightening people about the need to recognize that the
development of the country cannot be left in the hands of men only. Like I
said earlier, it is just a pity that our online don't put online the opinion
columns. Then you would have had a better picture than the one I am
painting.

Anyway, in addition to this, there is an ongoining programme whereby young
school girls are "twinned' with established ladies who achieved something
for themselves despite all the odds against them. The idea is for these kids
to make supervised visits to the place of work of these people as well as
their homes to enable them to see that education is as important to ladies
as it is to men. They can also see for themselves that being a professional
lady does not in any way affect your role as a wife and a mother.

There has also been a lot debates to encourage ladies to go into politics
and for the political parties to introduce some form of affirmative action
to encourage them. There have even been calls for some sort of quota for
women in the national assembly to kickstart the process of women's active
participation in politics.

THE UDP CALLOUSNESS.

When the UDP propaganda secretary was asked about his opinion of these
ongoing activities, he replied that WOMEN HAVE NO REASON TO COMPLAIN. When
asked about his opinion of gender equality and the participation of women in
politics, he said "When we talk about gender equality, this has nothing to
do with participation of women as professional politicians. The decision of
someone to go into politics as a profession depends on the individual and,
there is no gender bias attached to it at all". According to him, there
exists no party for males only. He accused our women educatinists of
"SCHEMING TO BE NOMINATED INSTEAD OF PUTTING A FIGHT.

With elections expected in less than 6 months from now and with more than
half our population being women, what sort of stupidity and callousness
would you call this? While the APRC is wooing the women voters by
establishing a special scholarship fund for girls, special credit schemes
for our women farmers, appointment of qualified professional ladies to key
possitions in government such as the secretary General of the civil service,
Auditor General, Director of SIMA vocational training centre, Director of
MDI, the vice president, deputy speaker and other secretaries of state, the
UDP propaganda secretary is instead antagonizing them. In his opinion,
"there will be absolutely no room in the interest of gender balance to hand
pick people and give them cabinet posts when they refuse to join us in the
opposition to fight against the current state of affaires in the country".

I wonder what people like Jabou Joh would say about such callous remarks by
none, other than the UDP propaganda secretary Lamin Waa Juwara, a supposedly
educated and experienced political scientist.

Hava a good day and bye 4Now, KB Jobe.
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