More women, especially those who are leaving university in such great numbers, need to get involved in communities at the grass-roots level.

So said Member of Parliament Sharon Hay-Webster during a recent forum on women in politics at the University of the West Indies (UWI), Mona. The forum entitled, 'Women in Politics: Reflections on the 2007 General Election', was put on by the Centre for Gender and Develop-ment at the UWI, in association with the Freidrich Ebert Stiftung Institute, the Women's Resource and Outreach Centre (WROC), the Jamaica Women's Political Caucus (JWPC), and other local women's groups.

Much work being done

Responding to the concern of members of the university's academic community and local women's groups that the level of women's participation at the highest levels of political decision-making is declining in quality and number, Hay-Webster said that much work was being done behind the scenes by those who had beaten the odds to secure seats.

"We have made the push with incest, with the Sexual Offences Bill and other initiatives," the MP protested.

Hay-Webster said that more women at the university level should get involved in community work because men and women at the grass roots need to feel that tertiary-educated women are involved in national development, and are not only represented in crime statistics.

She said that a marked exception was the work of Linnette Vassell and WROC in assisting some communities with the technology for roof construction in recent disaster- mitigation efforts.

Men get more support

Hermione McKenzie, chair of the JWPC and member of the Association of Women's Organi-sations, remarked that men had more support from women than women did in the bid for political power and, as a consequence, some women went into campaigns mortgaging everything they had.

She stated that a "critical mass" of women was needed to speak for women, especially "at the highest levels". When there are too few women, "they just allow the men to do what they want to do," the JWPC head said.

According to McKenzie, over the last 25 to 30 years, an average of seven women have been elected to Jamaica's Parliament, with the highest number being the 1997 General Election, with nine.

In 2007, eight women were elected, representing just 13 per cent of the Parliament. "While we are standing still, others are running ahead. If women are 51 percent of the population, there is no reason why they should not be 50 per cent of Parliament," McKenzie stated.

- A.C.