By Rashika Fazali

Are we walking the talk? It’s easy to list down goals, action plans, and pretty much everything we want to accomplish, but making strides towards change and acting upon them is naturally more complicated than conjuring a string of words.

The Sustainable Development Goal (SDG) number 5 is about achieving gender equality by 2030. We can say that inevitably we will achieve gender equality just like voting rights were inevitably granted to women in many countries. Change is arduous but is eventual. The real question is not about achieving gender equality, but it’s about the time frame. Can we reach it by 2030?

We are currently in 2021. Nine more years, and we’ll be granted equality according to SDG no.5. However, nine years is not further away anymore. Are we making enough noise to come about this change? Are we moving in the right direction to accomplish equality?

In February of this year, I was asked to judge a school’s debating competition by AIESEC, and the central theme was gender equality. As part of the screening process, schools were asked to either go for or against gender equality. One notable school in Kandy – Dharmaraja College bravely when onto oppose achieving gender equality by 2030. Their arguments were based on the impossibility of achieving equality by 2030, especially when many reports have clearly stated that governments would need more than 100 years to achieve gender equality, especially when you look at the current situation and laws that are yet in the making towards closing the gender gap and achieving stability for women in the family, work and health. And this hit a nerve. We talk about bridging the gender disparity gap without realizing that we have so much work that needs to be done, and we are not even halfway there.

For instance, look at some of the stories that have made headlines in Sri Lanka in the last few months. As much as it was an outstanding achievement for women all around the island when Bimshani Jasin Arachchi became the first female Deputy Inspector General (DIG) in the Sri Lanka Police, she was met with a lot of discrimination because she is a woman. Can you imagine what it’s like to have your promotion petitioned by a bunch of men because they refuse to believe that a woman could be in such a dignified position? The idea that a woman could have so much power over hundreds of men in a national institution and overlook the safety of thousands of citizens didn’t sit well with their patriarchal thinking. There are two ways of looking at this: we can say that Sri Lanka is making an effort to lessen the gender disparity gap by appointing Bimshani, but we are, however, not making any strides in changing this patriarchal thinking and way of life.

The Global Gender Gap Report 2020 shows that globally we have achieved 68.6% in gender parity. With 31.4% to go, the 2020 report didn’t show a tremendous change in achieving gender equality. Instead, 101 out of 149 countries improved their standing with no change or improvement in the remaining 48 countries. Iceland ranked at no.1 with a score of 82%. No country has managed to achieve gender equality as yet. Many countries that have made strides in closing the gender gap, including Sri Lanka, are in health and education attainment with a score of 96 – 97%. We could attribute that to society’s idea of those jobs being female-oriented, hence high participation. But in other areas such as political empowerment (25%) and economic participation and opportunity (58%), many countries struggle to empower women and allow them into these sectors.

What’s happening like how biases make life more difficult for the average woman. Governments around the world are not acting fast enough to change this narrative. These learnings should push governments to change their policies quickly, but procedures take a tremendous amount of time to be enacted. In most cases, policy alone won’t change or do anything much for people. People’s minds and attitudes need to change first for active change. For instance, the Local Government level women quota of 25% is not being enforced entirely in Sri Lanka. How can it be implemented when we are not voting for women? Why are we not voting enough for women? Because we are not addressing the multiple elephants in the room. These elephants are people’s perception of women, intimidation and gender bias, and inequality. If we are not addressing these issues and rectifying them, how can we hope to achieve gender equality by 2030?

Add to that, and I also see another issue contributing to the lack of improvement towards gender equality: most women don’t encourage, support, or empower other women. We talk highly of how important it is to help our kind, but are we applying that in our lives? I’m not saying we should support a woman just because she is a woman, but we should embrace it with open hands when she achieves something. One woman’s achievement is a massive stride for women everywhere. For example, the appointment of Rangana Weerawardane and Pavithra Gunaratne, the first female pilots of the Sri Lankan Air force, was a tremendous achievement for women across the country and coming from a government institution. It sent the right message to young women dreamers in our nation.

What we are seeing is how our women ambush and spew hatred towards other women. Haven’t you come across mothers and mothers-in-law who applaud other women’s daughters for achieving something, be it grades, a great job, or even a milestone, but they don’t allow their daughters and daughters-in-law to go to school or work, nor do they support their dreams and embrace their achievements? Instead, they shame and belittle them and constantly instill and condition them to live and conduct their lives according to society’s rules and regulations. How can we break barriers if we as women don’t encourage our daughters to break the obstacles and strive for more in life? Gender equality has to start with us before we can even reach men.

We need to fully comprehend why it’s essential to pushing for gender equality. Lessening the gap and giving women more access to economic opportunities can result in a significant financial increase for all countries. Opening jobs for women can increase global GDP to $12 trillion by 2025. Why are we not promoting this more and more? Well, Sri Lanka is at least trying – the Parliamentary Select Committee met for the first time recently to discuss matters on furthering gender equality in the country. We hope that something great comes out of that for women across Sri Lanka.

Governments and men need to stop looking at women as children. Instead, we are women who carry children and raise them to be good adults. If we can do that, we can certainly do a lot more in and for the country. We are not cattle that need to be directed and protected. We are humans capable of doing much more for our society and our people, allowing us to rise above. Give us equality for the betterment of the economy. And they say money talks.