Dr. Sangeet Harry Jooseery
Consultant
Chairman,
Association for Population and Development (APD)
- BACKGROUND
28 years ago, 189 countries, including Mauritius adopted the Beijing Declaration and Platform for Action, which to date has been the most comprehensive and far-reaching agenda for women empowerment and gender equality and an impressive advancement over the 1985 Nairobi Forward Looking Strategies for the Advancement of Women and the 1994 ICPD Programme of Action. In 1997, the UN adopted Gender Mainstreaming as a strategy for the attainment of gender equality, and this eventually rolled out throughout all programmes of governments, institutions, organisations and the civil society worldwide. “Gender” became the ‘add and stir’ and ‘lipstick’ component of all programmes.
In Mauritius, despite the creation of a short-lived Minister of Women’s Affairs in 1976 and a full fledged Ministry of Women’s Rights in 1982, women’s development programme became more articulated only after Beijing Conference of 1995. The Constitution of Mauritius was amended in 1995 to ensure that no discrimination is made on the basis of race, caste, place of origin, political opinion, color, creed and sex.
The Protection from Domestic Violence Act was proclaimed in 1997 and subsequently reviewed in 2004, 2007, 2016 and 2021 to ensure that all women victims of domestic violence are provided with adequate support and assistance. Applications made under the Protection from Domestic Violence Act are now governed by the Protection from Domestic Violence (Hearing of Applications for Protection, Occupation and Tenancy Orders) Rules. In 2016 the National Coalition against Domestic Violence Committee was set up.
In 1998, within its poverty alleviation programme, the Government of Mauritius introduced a micro credit scheme based on the Grameen model of Bangladesh to provide loans to women without collateral for their economic empowerment. In 1999 a Gender Action Plan was developed and sensitization campaign on gender started through women centres. In the same year, an Information Technology Centre exclusively for women was opened. In 2008 a National Gender Policy Framework was developed and the Employment Rights Act was passed, which provides that:
- An employer shall not require a female worker to perform work in excess of a normal day’s work or work during night shift, two months before her confinement;
- Subject to medical recommendation, a female worker who is pregnant shall not be required to perform duties requiring continuous standing or that may be detrimental to her health or that of her baby;
- An employer shall not give to a female worker, who is on maternity leave, notice for termination of employment during such leave or that would expire during such leave for any reasons, unless the grounds relate to the economic, technological, structural or similar nature affecting the employer’s activities.
In the same year, the Civil Status Act, the Immigration Act and the HIV and AIDS Act were amended to ensure that there is no discrimination and stigmatization against women living with HIV/AIDS.
In order to provide equal opportunity to men and women, the Equal Opportunity Act was passed in 2008. The Act was amended in 2011 to enable the setting up of an Equal Opportunity Commission to safeguard and protect the rights of all citizens, including girls and women. In 2009 the Combating of Trafficking in Persons Act was passed to counter trafficking of persons, protect and safeguard the interest and safety of persons, especially children and women victims of trafficking.
To ensure more representation of women in local Government the Local Government Act was voted in 2011 and stipulates that “Any group presenting more than 2 candidates at a Village Council election shall ensure that not more than two-thirds of the group’s candidates are of the same sex”. The gender quota came into force on 1st January 2012 and accordingly, all political parties were compelled to field more women to contest in local elections in 2012.
The Criminal Code Act of 1838 was amended in 2012 to legalize Termination of Pregnancy in very specific circumstances, namely where:
- the continued pregnancy will endanger the pregnant person’s life;
- the termination is necessary to prevent grave permanent injury to the physical or mental health of the pregnant person;
- there is a substantial risk that the continued pregnancy will result in a severe malformation, or severe physical or mental abnormality, of the foetus which will affect its viability and compatibility with life; or
- the pregnancy has not exceeded its fourteenth week and results from a case of rape, sexual intercourse with a female under the age of 16 or sexual intercourse with a specified person which has been reported to the police.
This ground-breaking amendment in 2012 to the Criminal Code Act was a bold step taken by Government, despite opposition from a section of the civil society and some religious leaders, especially the Catholic Church. In 2016 the National Coalition against Domestic Violence Committee was set up.
The Employment Rights Act was amended in 2019 to ensure that men and women enjoy the same rights as workers and that there is no discrimination whatsoever based on gender. The Child Sex Offender Register Act was passed in 2020 and a Children’s Act was passed in 2020. In 2022, the Government released the new National Gender Policy (2022-2030) with the objective “to engineer women’s empowerment and do away with outstanding gender inequalities in the social, economic and political settings”.
- GENDER: THE MISSING AGENDA
Despite all the good intentions of different governments that succeeded, the Gender Mainstreaming Strategy has failed to create the desired impact for real change in the living conditions of women.
In Mauritius, we hold the strong pretentiously claim on diversity, human rights, freedom and justice because these make good business sense, especially to politicians. We have always bragged that our policy has always focussed on inclusiveness, integration and a holistic approach and that the Constitution of Mauritius boldly upholds the country as a “ Sovereign Democratic State”, protecting rights and freedoms of all.
Different Governments have claimed to promote women’s emancipation and development, but unfortunately without addressing the core impediments to gender equality. From the National Gender Policy Framework of 2008 to the National Gender Policy of 2022, the slogan has remained the creation of a “fair, resilient and gender inclusive” era, which has unfortunately remained static. The “ Framework” has indeed disappeared, just like in 2010 when the Government renamed the Ministry of Women’s Rights, Child Development and Family Welfare to the Ministry of Gender Equality, Child Development and Family Welfare, without having a framework for gender equality.
A distinction needs to be made between economic and social indicators for change. Changes measured with economic indicators do not necessarily reflect the soft social and cultural evolution and development. Gender Gaps are measures through indicators like women’s participation in the world of work and their educational achievements. It is noted that Gender Gaps continue to narrow on some key indicators in Mauritius, such as the literacy rate (4.8 per cent less for women in 2011, 3.3 per cent in 2022); the sex ratio in higher education (138 men per 100 women in 2011; to 98 men per 100 women in 2022,); or the sex ratio in the workforce (182 men for every 100 women in 2011, and 165 in 2022). Despite an improvement in the Gender Gaps in some sectors, women are still not at par with men in many spheres. Gender is multi-faceted and needs to be addressed in a holistic manner. Treating men and women on equal terms does not necessarily mean that gender equality is ensured. Many have failed to understand that it is gender equity that leads to gender equality. Today more girls are in schools and are even performing better than boys, and yet, they are still looked up as ‘girls’ in the family, at work and in society.
Th effacement of ‘women’ and its replacement by the generic term ‘gender’ has just eased the entrance of the spurious “gender mainstreaming strategy’ to suit but without challenging the existing organisational culture, thus reinforcing patriarchy.
- RECONCILING WOMEN’S PRODUCTIVE AND REPRODUCTIVE ROLES
Women have different productive and reproductive roles, needs and functions and our policy should be geared towards ensuring that they assume these roles fully. They need specific care for premenstrual syndrome, high quality maternity services at child bearing age, menopausal bursitis, reproductive tract infections, polycystic ovarian syndrome etc. A gender sensitive policy caters for all these needs and makes provisions for special care to women. It is unfortunate that the current Government population policy is based on outdated premises and does not do justice to a Fertility Management Programme tuned to the present day concern.
Our brave new Mauritius cannot continue with the same demographic concern of tweaking people to make “less” and now “more” children. Incentives provided by Government to encourage more births are incongruous with the concern of the modern couple. Additional resources on traditional Family Planning and contraception are wasted resources. What is needed most is the professionalisation of parenthood and the provision of quality care to those who desire but cannot have children. We tend to compare Mauritius with uncomparable African countries and yet we are aspiring to become a “high-income country”. It is true that we have one of the lowest Infant Mortality Rate (10) in Africa, but compared to “high -income countries”, we are far behind Singapore (1.5), Hong Kong (2.5), UK and France(3.1), Reunion Island(4.6). We still depend on Reunion Island for its Assisted Fertility Management Programme and India for its high-tech medicine. We continuously adopt a case to case damage control programme without any structured and planned strategy for fertility management.
COVID 19 has proved our health system powerless and “colonised” by powerful actors with conflicts of interest, sustaining inequity and exploitation within the health system. We have all been powerless and complicitly watching increased gender-based violence on women in their own houses during the confinement period. Lessons learned should shape our policies to accommodate preparedness to health emergency situations, unpacking the complexity of gender/health relationship, harnessing the engagement of civil society in health policy and programme.
- GENDER IDENTITY
Gender Identity is an individual and personal feeling of one’s gender, which may or not correspond to the sex at birth. A person may not place himself/herself in the traditional male/female binary. A transgender person is someone whose gender identity differs from that typically associated with the sex assigned at birth. Mauritius should ensure that a person of any gender identity is respected and acknowledged. Public policy, legislation and jurisprudence should ensure the depathologisation of same sex attraction.
Modern Mauritius cannot tolerate bigotry and fanatism. Mauritius witnessed fearful public misogynistic demonstrations and contempt towards LGBT people in 2016 and 2018. People with diverse sexual orientations have got rights that need to be respected and protected. Gender disaggregated data should include crime motivated by sex or gender, classing misogyny as a category of hate crime. It is refreshing to note the breakthrough decision of the Supreme Court of Mauritius in October 2023 to decriminalize same sex relations. The Court ruled that Section 250 of the Mauritian Penal Code, which had criminalized “sodomy”, was discriminatory and unconstitutional: a giant step of Mauritius towards the protection of the human rights of everyone, including lesbian, gay, bisexual, transgender and intersex (LGBTI+) people.
Mauritius needs a Gender Recognition Act to enable transgender people achieve legal recognition in their acquired gender and change their recorded sex on their birth certificate from male to female or vice versa. On the verge of the general election, while the manifestos of political parties are being prepared, it is time that bold statements are made to decriminalise homosexuality like many countries of the region, namely, Angola, Botswana, Cape Verde, Gabon, Guinea-Bissau, Lesotho, Mozambique, Sao Tome and Principe, Seychelles and South Africa. It needs political mettle and fortitude to frame a political manifesto that goes beyond succumbing to the imperatives of vote chasing.
- PARITY REPRESENTATION IN PARLIAMENT
Recently, India’s legislature passed the “landmark” Reservation Bill, requiring the lower house of parliament (the Lok Sabha), the Delhi Legislative Assembly, and state legislative assemblies across the country to set aside one-third of their seats for women. While this is laudable and Mauritius is a step ahead securing 33% of women representation for the local Government in 2011, the rationale behind one-third representation of women in Parliament is not known. This is a tokenistic inclusion as it does not reflect the true proportion of women’s representation. 50.7 percent of Mauritius’s population is female, while 49.3 percent of the population is male.
As of January 2023, 34 women in 31 countries were serving as head of state and/or government; 22.8 percent of government ministers were women; 13 countries achieved the quota of 50 percent or more women in cabinet; and in national parliaments, just 26.5 percent of members in single or lower houses were women. Only six countries have 50 per cent or more women in parliament in single or lower houses: Rwanda (61 per cent), Cuba (53 per cent), Nicaragua (52 per cent), Mexico (50 per cent), New Zealand (50 per cent), and the United Arab Emirates (50 per cent). At current rate of progress, the Sustainable Development Goal of having equal participation of women in political and public life and gender parity in national legislative bodies would be achieved in 130 years and not in 2030. A bold and forward looking political manifesto, mindful of not undermining contemporary democratic principles of equality and equity, needs to adopt a 50/50 percentage of male/female representation in parliament.
- CONTAINMENT, REDUCTION AND ELIMINATION OF GENDER DISPARITY
Gender stereotypes are deeply entrenched into the socio-cultural fabrics, and eliminating them constitutes a long term process requiring a thorough change in mindset and system, and synergistic efforts of all stakeholders, including the civil society and the private sector. They need first to be contained and reduced. Containment implies controlling adverse factors and preventing their growth, reduction implies building up on opportunities for positive change leading to elimination of impediments for achieving gender equality.
Serious impediments on the pathway for elimination of gender disparity are the low level understanding of gender concepts, unclear strategies, and the inadequate engagement of stakeholders. Politicians are key actors in the process of creating the enabling environment for change through advocacy efforts and legislative reforms and also in ensuring the development of a concerted Responsibility Framework for Gender Equality, to promote concrete and positive engagement of all actors, including the civil society and the private sector. In Mauritius, despite some positive but faltering efforts by the public sector, the private sector has not taken adequate measures to promote gender equality, especially at the managerial level, for “self-enrichment” motives. Responsibilization would ensure accountability and rational choice making.
- CONCLUSION
Equating Gender Equality to Women Empowerment is erroneous and delusive. Women empowerment programmes are women centric and aim at equipping women with tools to control over their own lives. These are necessary but not sufficient. Gender Equality programmes are transformative, inclusive and sustainable in nature and aim at systemic change, challenging long-lasting engrained socio-cultural practices and power relationship.
Given that achieving Gender Equality is a time process, a political manifesto of 5 years would not suffice to attain the desired goal. Hence, it requires initially meeting the Practical Gender Needs that bring concrete and immediate fields results, like containing and reducing gender based violence, narrowing the income gap etc. At a later stage, the Strategic Gender Needs are to be addressed: those that usher systemic transformation leading to elimination of all barriers and impediments to Gender Equality, like addressing women’s rights as human rights and socio-cultural stereotypes etc..
This approach requires strong leadership, will and commitment coupled with innovation and far reaching avangardist disposition. With a redefinition of masculinity and femininity, and through the promotion of a more nuanced and inclusive understanding of gender, we can create a more equitable and accepting society.
Our hope is that the 2024 electoral manifestos embrace explicitly gender as a driver force for change and that gender concerns cut across all proposed development agenda.
3 November 2023