ST. LUCIA – Saint Lucia will on March 8 join the rest of the world in the observance of International Women’s Day. Against this backdrop, the National Television Network – NTN – in collaboration with the Department of Gender Affairs will be exploring the issues of Women, Political Power & Leadership in a special edition of Issues and Answers on NTN.
The panel discussion, featuring an in-studio audience, will be aired at 8:00 pm.
The main contributors to the discussion include Mary Skelly, former Saint Lucia Labour Party candidate for Dennery South, Leone Theodore, Vice President – Women’s Arm of the United Workers Party otherwise known as Women in Action (WIA) and Maundy Lewis, student of the Sir Arthur Lewis Community College. The high energy discussion is moderated by Lisa Dublin, lecturer at the Sir Arthur Lewis Community College.
One of the questions put forward was why are there so few women in elective politics?
“Women have been in politics for a very long time,” Lisa Dublin noted. “In fact from my research, I’ve found out that there are only two countries which have not had women in politics, Monaco and Saudi Arabia.
We find ourselves within the countries which have had women in politics. However, unfortunately we are still in the category of a country or countries that have had few women in politics – we’ve had but not many, in proportion to the number of people in the society.”
The theme for International Women’s Day 2007 is “Ending Impunity for Violence Against Women and Girls”.
