Tuesday, 29 July 2014 00:01
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Health Minister and Sri Lanka Freedom Party General Secretary Maithripala Sirisena has joined his deplorable colleague Child Development and Women’s Affairs Minister Tissa Karaliyadda in making narrow-minded, uninformed, sexist and buffoon-type statements regarding women in public.
According to media reports, Sirisena while addressing the Polonnaruwa Sri Lanka Freedom Party Women’s Federation meeting on Sunday has said he hopes all women be born as men in their next life and has compounded the statement by saying that when his wife kneels before him, “as a Buddhist” he wishes her to be reborn as a man.
In his crackpot statement, Sirisena has completely disregarded the fact that Buddhism is a religion historically based on equality and respect of women. Lord Buddha himself not only acknowledged that women were capable and deserving of equal rights, he went so far as to ensure that they were given these rights when they became his followers. He also promoted the concept of equality among a traditionalist Indian society, dispelling norms that segregated or limited women.
The inference that women are somehow less blessed or even ‘cursed’ by their gender is as untrue as it is undeserved. Ironically Sirisena then waxed eloquent about the “strong” role played by women in Sri Lanka and their great contribution to make people’s lives better. If Sirisena had any sense at all he would find that taking such a double-standard stance would alienate women support for his party, especially considering the fact that women rights have gone from bad to worse under the Government of which he is a key part. Clearly having ministers who have no understanding about empowerment of women and are blinded by archaic and stereotypical attitudes are a large part of this. Under this Government’s watch, Sri Lanka has spun into a freefall of 16 spots in the Global Gender Gap in 2013. The report released by the World Economic Forum ranks Sri Lanka at the 55th point, showing the deepest worsening of political and economic empowerment for women in the entire region. Economic Participation and Opportunity (from 105th to 109th place) and the Political Empowerment (from 22nd to 30th place) sub-indexes show how poorly women are empowered in Sri Lanka despite forming a massive part of the workforce.
The eighth edition of the report introduced by the Forum in 2006 shows 86 out of 133 countries improved their gender gap since 2012, with the area of political participation seeing the greatest progress. However, this sphere has gone from bad to worse in Sri Lanka where female representation is at a significant low. In fact even the Women’s Affairs portfolio has been handed over to a man who does not value the empowerment of women. A man, moreover, who was slammed in December for telling Parliament that Sri Lanka would not sign globally-accepted treaties on women empowerment because it would be “against our culture”. The high levels of rape and abuse among Sri Lankan women and the inability for Sri Lanka’s judicial system to provide swift justice to them is perhaps the biggest black mark. By some estimates, a woman in Sri Lanka is abused every 30 minutes and the involvement of high-level political figures along with an almost-enshrined environment of impunity makes for poor reading.
Women are trapped in lower paying jobs, incapable of rising in their professions and getting their dues because of legal and attitudinal impediments. Inept Ministers with their backward attitudes should be sent home, especially in a country where 53% of voters are women.
