BACKGROUND. During the past few years there has been a lot of gender sensitization in schools and the media, both print and audio-visual. In the print media respected ladies like Adelaide Sosseh Gaye, Satang Joberteh, Juka Jabang, sarah Grey-Johnson etc, contribute to the opinion column of the Daily observer, enlightening people about the need to recognize that the development of the country cannot be left in the hands of men only. Like I said earlier, it is just a pity that our online don't put online the opinion columns. Then you would have had a better picture than the one I am painting. Anyway, in addition to this, there is an ongoining programme whereby young school girls are "twinned' with established ladies who achieved something for themselves despite all the odds against them. The idea is for these kids to make supervised visits to the place of work of these people as well as their homes to enable them to see that education is as important to ladies as it is to men. They can also see for themselves that being a professional lady does not in any way affect your role as a wife and a mother. There has also been a lot debates to encourage ladies to go into politics and for the political parties to introduce some form of affirmative action to encourage them. There have even been calls for some sort of quota for women in the national assembly to kickstart the process of women's active participation in politics. THE UDP CALLOUSNESS. When the UDP propaganda secretary was asked about his opinion of these ongoing activities, he replied that WOMEN HAVE NO REASON TO COMPLAIN. When asked about his opinion of gender equality and the participation of women in politics, he said "When we talk about gender equality, this has nothing to do with participation of women as professional politicians. The decision of someone to go into politics as a profession depends on the individual and, there is no gender bias attached to it at all". According to him, there exists no party for males only. He accused our women educatinists of "SCHEMING TO BE NOMINATED INSTEAD OF PUTTING A FIGHT. With elections expected in less than 6 months from now and with more than half our population being women, what sort of stupidity and callousness would you call this? While the APRC is wooing the women voters by establishing a special scholarship fund for girls, special credit schemes for our women farmers, appointment of qualified professional ladies to key possitions in government such as the secretary General of the civil service, Auditor General, Director of SIMA vocational training centre, Director of MDI, the vice president, deputy speaker and other secretaries of state, the UDP propaganda secretary is instead antagonizing them. In his opinion, "there will be absolutely no room in the interest of gender balance to hand pick people and give them cabinet posts when they refuse to join us in the opposition to fight against the current state of affaires in the country". I wonder what people like Jabou Joh would say about such callous remarks by none, other than the UDP propaganda secretary Lamin Waa Juwara, a supposedly educated and experienced political scientist. Hava a good day and bye 4Now, KB Jobe. _________________________________________________________________________ Get Your Private, Free E-mail from MSN Hotmail at http://www.hotmail.com. ---------------------------------------------------------------------------- To unsubscribe/subscribe or view archives of postings, go to the Gambia-L Web interface at: http://maelstrom.stjohns.edu/archives/gambia-l.html You may also send subscription requests to [log in to unmask] if you have problems accessing the web interface and remember to write your full name and e-mail address. ----------------------------------------------------------------------------