FIFTH ANNUAL WOMEN’S SUMMIT HELD TODAY IN BELIZE CITY

March 17, 2010

Belizean women have been slowly breaking the societal stigmas and barriers surrounding their growth and development in the workforce, political arena, and even at home. Despite the struggles, presently many Belizean women have succeeded significantly, and as part of Women’s Month this March, several of these women were highlighted today at the Fifth Annual Women’s Summit. Women from across the country gathered at the Radisson Fort George Hotel for the summit which is being held under the theme “Celebrating Achievements, Overcoming Challenges, Breaking Barriers”. Icilda Humes is the Director of the Women’s Department.

Icilda Humes; Director, Women’s Department

“The theme for Women’s Month ‘Celebrating Achievements, Overcoming Challenges, Breaking Barriers’ was really in commemoration of the  Beijing+15 review. It was in 1995 that the Beijing platform for action women was crafted and this has actually become a global agenda for the women’s movement. We felt that because it has been fifteen years since the Beijing platform for action was introduced that perhaps we need to step back and take stock of how far we have come and what the challenges and barriers still are. Hence the reason for us coming up with the theme for this year’s Women’s Month and so the summit topics were based on the theme.”

The summit was divided into three panels of highly accomplished and influential Belizean women. The first panel featured successful businesswoman Marie Sharp who spoke on her life as a Belizean businesswoman, her struggles and achievements.

Marie Sharp; Owner, Marie Sharp Fine Foods

“It has taken me a number of years to get where I am. I started up my factory since 1981. That was 29 years ago so it did take me a long time to get where I am but as far as building up the business in Belize I found that Belize was one of my most difficult markets in my young start up times. Belizeans doubt that anything made in Belize can be any good so was until I had access to the American market and them put that in the news papers and let the media know about Marie Sharp in the US that we really made a big breakthrough on the Belizean market.”

Dalila Ical, Reporter

Based on your experience as a business woman what is your message to the ladies here today?

Marie Sharp

“That whatever business you are in you have to bear certain things in mind. One of the things you have to bear in mind is that it takes hard work and dedication, whatever you make has to be of high quality, consistent and very well presented for it to have a market to access.”

Dalila Ical, Reporter

What would you say are some of your concerns as an individual for other women here in Belize?

Marie Sharp

“Some of the concerns or some of the barriers that other in Belize, and as I said it here today, there might be many more women that have projects in mind that they would really like to work at but one of the prohibitive things here in Belize is the financing. I do not think there is anybody who can really work and achieve anything by borrowing from our banks because of the high interest rates.”

The second speaker was Sarah Hobbs of Scotiabank who spoke on transformational leadership in local banking.

Sarah Hobb; Director of Retail Banking, Scotiabank

“I was very happy today to share about Scotiabank of women and diversity program and to talk about the transformational role of women in local banking. It is definitely something that is very important in terms of creating an image of being an employer of choice having a even playing for everybody not just men and women but people of all different backgrounds. I was really happy to realize after gathering some statistics that in Belize I believe that women in banking are fairly well represented.”

Other panellists spoke on topics including the effect of partisan politics on the advancement of women.

Icilda Humes

“What are some of the effects on the advancement of women in the political arena and more specifically what have been some of the effects of bipartisan politics? When we look at the future we look at the Women in Politics Project which we have a lot of high hopes for in terms of its success, in terms of getting more women involved and standing for elections.”

Humes added that Horizon 2030 is also an important issue as it pertains to women.

Icilda Humes

“We’ll also be looking at the Horizon 2030 project. We have heard about it, we have seen some commercials but what really is it and what implications does it have for women? What is it that we as women want to achieve by the year 2030? What are the challenges that we have to freak in order to make those achievements?”

Today’s panel featured eight highly accomplished women and while it may be some time before women are involved in decision making at the highest governmental level, Humes says that Belizean women have moved forward significantly.

Icilda Humes

“We’ve seen a lot more women embracing leadership; mind you when we talk about political leadership we think mainly of parliament. We have seen a lot of women involved in politics just not standing for elections because women are usually in charge of all the fund raising. Women have been in the forefront of politics for many years but in a different capacity. We have seen more women venturing into what were traditionally male dominated fields. We are seeing more women getting involved in vocational, technical areas such as engineering and architectural science and things like that. But there are still a lot of gaps and deficiencies that exist. We are still seeing difficulties in terms of women accessing credit and it continues to be an area of concern. We continue to see rural women not accessing care and service; that also continues to be something we are concerned about.”

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