Full house this Sunday morning at LPT Hall, GRNW. The MLF was holding a Round Table to “take stock of the situation of Mauritius in crisis”. At least 70 to 80 representatives of women’s associations had come from places far and near –Medine Camp de Masque, Cite Vallijee, Pamplemousses, Bel Air Riviere Seche to name but a few. The majority were women of a certain age who evidently have a lifetime of social ‘engagement’ behind them. Others were younger and some had come to voice their own individual difficulties. All were preoccupied to an extraordinary degree with the present economic and social crisis facing the country.

Linsey Collen who presided the Round Table outlined the depressingly familiar situation: the drop in sugar prices leading to a loss of jobs for men in the factories and for women and men in the fields, closures in the textile sector – and the prospect of more job-losses in the near future .Two-thirds of those who find themselves jobless are women.

The government, she said, presents tourism as the answer to our woes –but tourism is a fragile sector, as the chikungunya episode showed all too clearly. Rising petrol prices could also have a devastating effect. The Information Technology sector, equally toted by government as a source of employment, is not going to absorb those who lose their jobs in the sugar or textile industries –or the CPE failures…The government has no new proposals to guarantee employment nor does it have a vision for the future. Society is already feeling the strain of unemployment and increasing poverty in the present upsurge of dissatisfaction and violence in the country.

Women need to get together and make specific demands of the government. The seven speakers in the Round Table had three minutes each to make their comments and suggestions –and I must say they kept to their allotted time!

<B>1 CINDY</B>: In a situation of unemployment, women often have to ‘roule la case’. Some may prone the ‘chacun pour soi’ approach but this is not a real solution. An extension of it may lead to communalism and we all know the dangers and evils of that. The government has the duty to provide secure employment for the people and should if necessary force the private sector to co-operate with them in order to do so. It should also control prices and help street sellers to earn a decent living.

<B>2 SADNA</B>: Women are looking for work but not finding it. There are 54 thousand unemployed people in the country. Ages for VRS are getting lower while the old-age pension is receding into the future. The government is promoting PMEs as a solution for women but this option is full of pitfalls. Who can be sure of finding a market for the goods they manage to produce? And who will save the situation if things go wrong? The state must provide more back-up.

3 RAJNI</B>: Women like to get together in moments of crisis to talk about things and to gain a better understanding of what is going on. This is the meaning of liberation and is what the women’s movement is all about .Loss of employment for women means back to the home with all its implications of patriarchal power [and in many cases violence.] The same ‘triangular’ pattern with a powerful male at the top is seen in most of our institutions: parliament, the police force, companies…A few women are given high-powered positions, supposedly to keep us happy, and there is a lot of celebratory talk about ‘gender’ but nothing gets any better for the ordinary woman…