ON THE FACE OF IT MAURITIUS has done very well as far as gender is concerned compared to other Sub-Saharan countries. The Mauritian Government is well-known for ratifying international conventions or adopting gender policies embracing the rights of women. Is it to please donors? Because sadly enough only a handful of women make it to the decision-making corridors. The Constitution of Mauritius guarantees that all Mauritians are equal before the law. Discrimination based on sex, religion, ethnicity, colour, etc. is not permitted. Discriminatory laws have been amended. Women can now form part of a Jury. Professional women can be assessed separately from their husbands for tax purposes. The flame of the largest gathering in women?s history, the 1995 Beijing Fourth World Conference, was activated by the signing of the UN Convention on the Elimination of All Forms of Discrimination against Women (CEDAW) by all SADC Heads of States including Mauritius in 1997.

One of the clauses of CEDAW is ?ensuring the equal representation of women and men in the decision-making of member states and SADC structures at all levels, and the achievement of at least thirty percent target of women in political and decision-making structures by year 2005.? In 1997 Mauritius became the first country in the region to have passed a Protection from Domestic Violence Act. The Mauritian model was used in many countries including South Africa and Seychelles. This «avant-garde» Act protects survivors by providing them with Protection Order, Occupation Order, Tenancy Order as well as free legal advice.With the Sex Discrimination Act of 2002, Mauritius goes even further by giving powers to the Sex Discrimination Division to investigate into discrimination at work, in education, accommodation, disposal of property, in clubs as well as sexual harassment. Mauritius made a pledge in the United Millennium Development Goals to eliminate gender disparity at all levels by 2015. But will we be able to honour our commitment? Where are the women?

Women in Politics

Women in the region had their eyes pointed on Mauritius during the September 2000 general elections hoping that in a country where elections are free, fair, democratic, and peaceful women would have a chance to ring up the figures. Contrary to all hopes the figures went down. Only four women were elected on a total of 62 seats and none as best losers.Women?s participation in political life is an essential part of democracy. And yet ever since Mauritius obtained its independence, participation of women in politics has been very thin. Under Seewoosagur Ramgoolam, the first Prime Minister, there was only one woman, Emilienne Rouchecouste, who participated in politics until 1995 when six women were elected. Now this has dropped to four. Mauritius boasts itself to be the model of democracy in the Sub-Saharan region and yet it has the lowest percentage of women in politics. Our next-door neighbour Seychelles has reached the target of 30% of women parliamentarians compared to 5.7% in Mauritius and while Seychelles has 27.3% women as Ministers Mauritius has only 4.0%. Mauritius has slid backwards by ?2% since the last elections. This is so in spite of the fact that women are the majority of voters and account for more than half of the population. With such a dramatic decline, meeting the challenge of the SADC declaration by 2005 is indeed a wild dream.

Women?s increased representation in decision-making never happens by miracle. There is increasing international and regional consensus that while quotas are not a permanent solution, they are necessary short-term means of ensuring that women get a foot in the door. Other than Seychelles all the other Southern Africa countries have made it through quotas. Quotas might not solve all our problems but women do make the difference and it is important to get them in. Gender quotas are usually introduced to enhance the participation of women in politics. It serves as a mechanism to correct imbalances and can be established either by national legislation or political parties.

Women in posts of decision-making

According to the latest Central Statistics Office figures women labour force has increased by 21% from 1993 to 2003 compared to the male labour force, which has increased by 8% only. But where are they?

It is not only at the political level that women have been sidelined. Only 5% women occupy senior positions in the 100 top companies including the very large groups. This figure may be six times higher in the public sector where women are doing quite well at senior level as Permanent Secretaries and Principal Assistant Secretaries but women still dominate in the clerical and factory occupations. The highest post that women have attained in factories is that of supervisor and yet most of the workers of the Export Processing Zone (EPZ) are women.

At Board meetings women are good for distributing minutes, hand-outs and making tea. According to a survey done by the newly created Sex Discrimination Division on 43 Boards of Para-statal and Local Authorities there are only 79 women compared to 767 men. There is not a single woman who is chairperson on these Boards. If women can hold responsible posts in the public sector it is difficult to understand why they cannot sit on Boards let alone be the Chair. The situation is even worse in the private sector where there are even less women on Boards let alone chairperson.

Women are good at wriggling themselves for visiting dignitaries. Allowing themselves to be used by politicians in dinner parties by wearing their sega dresses or their Miss Mauritius costumes do nothing to raise their status. The more they wriggle themselves the more the figures of women in decision are dwindling. It is not enough to change policies and legislation; we also need to change attitudes.

Women are waging peace outside the system. Women like Audrey D?Hotman, Juliette François and Veronique D?Unienville, to name a few, are fighting tooth and nail to include the exclude. People living with HIV-AIDS, intravenous drug users, drug and alcohol addicts as well as their families are getting support and comfort from these women. Nearly all heads of NGOs in the caring sectors are women and yet the head of the umbrella organization of all NGOs, MACOSS (Mauritius Council of Social Services), has always been and is still a man. Paradoxically enough nearly all the sub-committees of MACOSS where all the hard work is done are headed by women. The women do the job and the men get the credit!

Trade Union is a flourishing business in Mauritius. The majority of workers in the sugar industry, EPZ, pre-primary, primary, secondary schools are women and yet there is only one woman trade unionist. She has made a solid reputation for defending workers both male and female and yet she too has not been brought to the table. The trade unionists sitting on the National Economic and Social Council are all men. Being a woman Jane Ragoo has the advantage of being humane and hard as well as charming and firm. She would certainly have done a great job at the table.

From 1993 to date not a single woman has obtained the two first Presidents Awards Grand Commander of the Order of the Star and Key of the Indian Ocean (GCSK) and Grand Officer of the Order of the Star and Key of the Indian Ocean (GOSK) and only two have obtained the third one which is the Commander of the Order of the Star and Key of the Indian Ocean (CSK) on a total of 61 recipients. Yet all past and present Presidents of the Republic of Mauritius have never failed to recognize the contribution of women in the development of Mauritius.

Women in the Export Processing Zone

The contribution of women has been an important factor to the success of industrialization. The Export Processing Zone (EPZ) gained momentum in the early eighties when women joined this sector in large numbers. This was also made easy by the traditional culture and natural penchant for the sewing machine and needlecraft. They were engaged in low skill activities and knowledge transfer merely occurred on the job training of very short duration. They had little control over the production process although they were two-thirds of the labour force. Their economic and social status improved but they had very limited options for advancement. Now that this sector is becoming more and more computerized they are the first to suffer.

The EPZ has reinforced and intensified traditional gender roles so much that with the computerization of this section these women are being marginalized. «Pe met later dan zot manze». They are bearing the brunt of job losses. The only solution that their oppressors have found is to send them to follow courses at the Industrial and Vocational Training Board (IVTB) when some of them have never sat on a school bench before. This is stigmatization for the third time. Some of these women can?t even read or write. They went into low paid and unskilled jobs to cover costs of food, education, transport and health for their families. And now that factories have closed down, to add insult to injury they are sent to an alien environment without the basic literacy. Meanwhile the cost of living is going up, their economic power is at ground level and training received at the IVTB is not boiling the kettle.

Women and HIV-AIDS

Poverty, gender inequality and the unequal gender power relations have increasingly made women vulnerable to HIV infection.

Women are more and more infected and affected by HIV-AIDS. According to official figures, 48% of women living with HIV-AIDS are homemakers, which is cause for concern. These women are infected through heterosexual relationship with their own partner. This is something we rarely hear but it suggests a continued gender inequality. Women who are highly dependent on men for social and economic support may find it difficult to negotiate for safe sex.

The drug injecting community is the second leading exposure category for women. According to PILS most sex-workers who are intravenous drug users (IDU) are either HIV positive or Hepatitis C or both. Because of poverty, women share their needles more than men, which mean that the disease is being transmitted not only through unprotected sex but also by contaminated needles. The main concern of PILS is harm reduction. Women are advised to look after their body, to protect themselves by not sharing needles. But as PILS cannot give them needles, the figure of HIV in this category is reaching alarming proportion.

We have often heard of the feminisation of poverty but rarely of the feminisation of HIV-AIDS. This is now a reality in Mauritius. The drug injecting community needs a programme to stop them sharing needles. Social workers cannot keep on working in the shadow because of the stigmas attached to sex-workers. Countries like Australia, New Zealand and Poland have saved hundreds of lives with their syringe programmes for the IDUs. But in Cyber Island Mauritius there is not a single center where women can go for rehabilitation and treatment. IDUs exemplify the poverty conditions that women face at increasing rates.

Women and Violence

The recent rape and sodomy of a 78-year-old woman in her home in the affluent region of Floreal; the brutal murder, rape and sodomy of a 20-year-old university student, Nadine Dantier, in July; and the well-publicised gang rape of Sandra O?Reilly are more than enough evidence that underneath the layers of Mauritius? seemingly calm and progressive society, are deep-seated misogynist temperaments.

Except for the street protests organized by O?Reilly herself after her attack and again after the justice system released several of her attackers on bail, no one has raised an outcry outside of the whispers about the cases within our homes.

The media articles spared no details and affronted our «pious» sensibilities about sex with gruesome descriptions of what these women went through. So, it is hard to imagine that no one was roused to anger and a call for very urgent action.

Talking about sex may be taboo in Mauritius, but when such atrocious crimes are committed against women, we have to throw off the cloaks of self-righteousness. Our silence and inaction are strangling women?s right to justice and a society free of violence.

Gender violence concerns us all. The media, non-governmental organizations, politicians, religious leaders and stakeholders must take their share of responsibilities. There is no age limit for violence against women and older women are now even more at risk. They are easy targets and because they are considered at the end of their reproductive life cycle, the medical, social and counseling services available to them are often inadequate.

The signal is indeed very bad for women when four of the five alleged attackers in the O?Reilly case were released on bail, and in the Dantier case, the results of the DNA test sent to South Africa in August are still not known.

Where are our voices? How can we be at peace when at any time, at any place, our daughters, mothers, grandmothers and even ourselves can be sexually attacked?

Women in the Media

According to the most comprehensive study done on gender in the media, women?s views and voices are grossly under-represented in the Mauritian media. Women constitute only 17% of the news sources while women are 52% of the population. Women in the media still carry their private identity more than men. Women are virtually absent in all the hard news categories. They constitute only 10% of the news sources in the economy and sports categories and are only 11% of the sources accessed in the political stories.

Unfortunately the media has not been an agent of change for women. It has acted as mere mirrors of the social and cultural traditional patterns.

Images are the most powerful tools both for conveying and challenging gender stereotypes but unfortunately advertising in Mauritius have used these tools to further downgrade women showing them as commodities and objects.

Conclusion

The World Women Entrepreneur Conference held in Mauritius recently has shown that the nimble fingers can do more than holding thimble. It is, therefore, high time that the Ministry of Women?s Rights, Child Development and Family Welfare changes the recipe of cookery and sewing courses that have been going on for years in women centers. The same mechanism, the Ministry, which is fighting gender stereotyping, is perpetuating it.

True democracy will only be obtained when women are integrated fully into politics, governance and in boardrooms. Eliminating gender disparity at all levels by the year 2015 looks like a wild dream in Cyber Island, Mauritius unless as Kofi Annan, Secretary General of the United States said: «There is no time to lose if we are to reach the Millennium Development Goals by the target date 2015. Only by investing in the world?s women can we expect to get there».

Loga Virahsawmy