Mark Wignall
Thursday, February 02, 2006

Hounded into submission, browbeaten by spineless but brutish men and for too long slotted into the convenience of a second place far down on the ladder's rung, the Jamaican woman has seen it all, felt it all and has borne the pain of this nation as our foolish, fumbling men continue to stoke their egos and take us down the path of social and economic ruin.

Contrary to the typical Jamaican male who believes that there are seven women to every Jamaican man, the reality is one woman to every man in Jamaica. That "seven to one" fallacy was, in the first instance, a sexist concoction "imagined up" by dunce men who had an urgent need to explain their numerous sexual trips around the block.
Women gave us males birth, nurtured us, protected us, made us into men and though they showered us with love and gave us the strength to go forth into the world, that also provided us with the potential to denigrate them, harm them.

Internationally, women have won the Nobel Prize 34 times since its inception at the beginning of the 20th century. In poverty-stricken villages throughout this world, it has been proved that the surest route to empowering these communities and leading them towards the path of economic salvation is by empowering the woman.

To provide a woman with a small business development loan of J$50,000 is to make an investment in a community and its future. Far too often, doing the same thing with a man only provides him and his friends with one big booze-up and a few sexual trips around the block. In the end, he returns home meekly and has the nerve to ask, "What's for dinner?"

In the PNP race, an opportunity is being presented to this nation to put a woman where she has always belonged - but never quite wanted to say so - at the top. One of my readers summed up a sentiment of mine in the following way: "Any other day and there would be no contest for the post of PNP presidency and prime minister. It would have automatically gone to Minister Portia Simpson Miller, who commands the overwhelming majority of public support; the one candidate who has the ability to beat JLP leader Bruce Golding in the general election due in 2007. On any other day, the other PNP MPs would have galvanised their support around her in the interest of the party and Jamaica.

"This is, however, not 'any other day'. This is the day when the popular Minister Simpson Miller has emerged from among the majority of the people. She has not been embraced by and given membership in the clubs of the intellectual elite, in the clubs of the moneyed lot or in those of the petty aristocracy. She has been castigated for being from the side of the tracks that most of us are from, the wrong side. They have heaped up propaganda and outright lies about her ability to lead this fair isle of ours.

"If the delegates are not yet insulted by the attacks coming from some of the other camps on her person - an attack also on them - they should be. More important though, have the delegates contemplated that the PNP will certainly lose the next general election if either Dr Omar Davies, Dr Karl Blythe, or Dr Peter Phillips leads the party against the JLP?" The pollsters have said this; the political pundits have said this; and the general mood and sentiments of the people have clearly said this.

"Why then is the party not lined up solidly behind Portia Simpson Miller? Chalk it up to runaway egos, greed for power and a crippling desire to subvert the will of the people to keep the majority continually subservient to the minority. Portia represents the hope of the people, and the only choice that will guarantee the upward mobility of the masses. She is not only the hope of the party, but also the hope of the nation.

"Jamaica - through the delegates - has a quality decision to make on behalf of themselves, their children and grandchildren, not to mention the nation. They must not shy away from it, neither must they allow themselves to betray the will of the majority by selling out. Not to make this quality decision of electing Portia Simpson Miller would be to guarantee the continuation of the "business as usual" mode that is rapidly trending down to the depths of the 'dog-eat-dog' kind of environment that threatens to swallow us up."

We are aware that in our highest institutions of learning such as the UWI Mona Campus, in the last 10 years at least, women have led the graduating class by a ratio of 7:3 (seven women, three men). What is not so well known is that women are in the vast majority in all areas of staffing at that institution: academic, administrative, technical and services.

At the other end of the social spectrum, tough inner-city areas, women are the ones taking the children to school, providing them with uniforms and lunch money, supervising homework while too high a percentage of the young men there have given new meaning to sloth and criminality. When the criticism is made that it is the women who protect the gunmen, we seem to forget that those women are clinging to the very last vestige of what they see as an attempt to keep body and soul together and the children close to the nest. It is all they know in that circumstance.

Men have retreated in this country because of no parenting, a response to broad signals from a highly materialistic society and poor community support. It is this retreat which has forced the women to step up to the crease, to face hostile bowling and to hold the wicket while men shout from the stands and still attempt to claim the accolades. We have allowed women to march into corporate offices and give intelligent men directives and direction. In the rural areas and in urban inner-city areas, it is still the grandmother who lovingly attends to the children while her daughter tries to earn, while the "baby father" is out making others fit only for a police bullet.

Unlike the PNP minister hailing from a mid-island constituency who in responding to the very real likelihood of Portia Simpson Miller becoming his boss said, "No woman can't rule me!" I have no problems with a woman leading this nation, leading me.

First there was my mother, then my older sisters. If hindsight is 20:20 vision then there are many bits of advice given to me by the women in my life that, had I followed them, I would have been a much better person today. All I have to do now is follow the Jamaican woman, ape her productive ways and I know, if she is headed for the top, so too will I reach there. No rocket science there.

- observemark@yahoo.com