COMMENTARY Inside CEO Small’s Pandora’s Box

GUYANA, UNLIKE MANY COUNTRIES, DOES NOT HAVE CULTURAL CONSTRAINTS
WHICH TRAMMEL WOMEN’S PARTICIPATION IN PUBLIC LIFE.
This South American multi-racial and multi-religious former British colony, facilitates women’s
participation in every strata of national life.
At the turn of this century and by the early 2000s there were approximately just a dozen women in
the country’s National Assembly. By the Tenth Parliament however, that figure almost doubled with
20 female Members of Parliament MP.
According to the 2010 Global Status of Women in Parliament Report, Guyana had ranked 25 th of 186
countries, with a whopping 30 percent of its MPs being female.
“This is no small achievement for a developing country,” the country’s parliament noted on its
website.
There was a steady climb in the number of female parliamentarians ever since. Females comprise
some 36 percent in the country’s unicameral parliament by the time the 2020 polls rolled around.
The 1995 World Conference on Women in Beijing, China warned countries then that neither
prosperity nor advancement would be possible unless they embrace, equally, the quest of the genders
to live fulfilling lives.
Despite Guyana’s phenomenal achievements in the gender sphere, it is accurate to say there still exist
pockets of social structures and relics of past gender relations which keep affecting how Guyanese
women and men perceive, and how they actually participate, in national life.
Needed urgently now, are increasing and sustained gender-sensitivity training programmes
spearheaded of course by the government, through its Ministry of Human Services and Social
Security.
Through these programmes all Guyanese must try to understand how our country’s history, rooted in
chattel slavery and indentureship, has shaped our existing gender relations. The programmes must

also pay keen attention to the multiple hurdles women especially must jump to be active, legitimate,
deserving participants in the evolution of our national life.
The training’s focus on the obstacles women face need crafting relevant content that spotlights the
interests and needs of both genders and help close the growing gaps wherever they exist, in women’s
participation.
The strategy of gender sensitive training must legitimise the needs, priorities, and expectations of both
women and men throughout the planning, implementing and evaluating activities to ensure they share
equitably in the benefits from the learning process.
About a decade ago, the World Bank counselled that gender-sensitive capacity-building programmes
can help the poor, among other things, beat the pinch of poverty, and at a macro-level contribute to
sustainable development of their individual states.
The International Centre for Integrated Mountain Development (ICIMOD) referring to World Bank
information on its website, noted that “evidence demonstrates that when women and men are relatively
equal, economies tend to grow faster, the poor move quickly out of poverty, and the wellbeing of
men, women, and children is enhanced (World Bank 2001).
ICIMOD is an intergovernmental knowledge and learning centre based in Kathmandu, Nepal and works on
behalf of the people of the Hindu Kush Himalaya (HKH).
The Asian grouping comprises eight regional member countries, viz. Afghanistan, Bangladesh, Bhutan,
China, India, Myanmar, Nepal, and Pakistan.
ICIMOD stated proudly, that its work helps improve the lives and livelihoods of men, women, and
children of the eight states, four of which are international cricketing nations: Afghanistan, Bangladesh,
India and Pakistan.
The ICIMOD also helps protect the peoples of the mountain environments and their cultures.
“The knowledge we create and share helps the people of the HKH become more resilient, make the most
of new opportunities, and prepare for change,” the online statement said.
It is not a lack of competence or interest in technical matters that perpetually debar women from a place at
the discourse table, but stubborn, traditional beliefs; an unregenerate patriarchal system; their time-
consuming multitasking in the home; persistent social and cultural restrictions, and limited
involvement in decision-making processes exclude women from the public sphere.
It continues limiting their access to information and therefore a multiplicity of capacity-building
activities.

Many guidelines exist when undertaking gender-sensitive training, but www.aroundtheregions.com
initial commentary on this issue will zero in on the one we feel is most relevant in the debacle
precipitated by Linden Hospital Complex (LHC) Chief Executive Officer (CEO) Rudy Small’s loose
remarks and the effete response by the Ministers and Ministries of Health and Labour respectively.
CEO Small in a taped interview with Mr. www.aroundtheregion.com’s Rawle Nelson disclosed that
nurses on night duty at the LHC leave clandestinely for trysts with their lovers. His interview was a
bombshell in the bauxite-mining community.
Nurses are still on industrial action triggered by Small’s explosive revelations and the Health Ministry
responded by deductions from their salaries, a move that their labour representative, Guyana Public
Service Union (GPSU) intends to challenge legally.
But it was the country’s Women and Gender Equality Commission which helped refocused the
industrial controversy politely demanding the nation take a deeper look inside the Pandora’s Box
inadvertently pried open by CEO Small for all to gaze.
The Commission called for Small’s replacement, blasting his verbal bombs on the LHC nurses as
irresponsible, insensitive, unprofessional, disrespectful, discouraging and dehumanizing.
“It seems he lacks the professionalism, leadership and gender sensitivity required for the job at hand,”
the Commission’s release stated bluntly.
Small in the taped interview, the Gender Commission said, placed the LHC nurses “at risk of
victimisation and gender-based violence”
Gender sensitivity programmes ensure the implications of planned programmes are taken into
account. So, for example when decision-makers plan new legislations, policies or programmes, their
effect on males and females are considered in detail. This will ensure that women and men benefit
equally from any national endeavour.
Such specialised programmes understand similarity and celebrate differences.
Unlike other training programmes we are accustomed to, gender sensitivity training challenges the
beliefs of participants and trainers, consciously and unconsciously. It forces everyone to re-examine
themselves and the assumptions they carry into their relationships. Once initiated, insights from the
training sessions influence the daily lives of participants.
It is high time the Human Services and Social Security implement its National Gender and Social
Inclusion Policy which seeks to strengthen the ability of this country to adequately address exclusion
and persistent gender inequality and to acknowledge the unique conditions and barriers that limit or
deny vulnerable persons and communities’ access to services, resources or benefits.

What seems lacking is the political desire to achieve it.
Among the pillars of gender-sensitivity programmes, participants are encouraged to embrace good
communication practices in which misunderstandings, insults, blaming, and demands are recognised
and resolved, and participants are constantly brought back to facts, views, values, and requests.
The Ministry of Health must learn from the ongoing fall out involving CEO Small and the LHC
nurses.