PEACE-MAKER
Jose de Venecia Jr.
Former Speaker of the House
In recent years, many iconic women leaders have emerged. Outstanding women in global politics include Margaret Thatcher in Britain; Hillary Clinton and Kamala Harris, the first Asian-African-American and first woman to be elected vice president, in the United States; and the formidable Angela Merkel in Germany. Before them, we had Eleanor Roosevelt and with the founding of Israel, Premier Golda Meir.
In Asia, we had Indira Gandhi of India’s founding Nehru family; Sirimavo Bandaranaike, thrice prime minister of Sri Lanka and the first woman in the world to hold the office; Benazir Bhutto, the first woman prime minister of Pakistan and in the Muslim world; Megawati Sukarnoputri of Indonesia; Yingluck Shinawatra of Thailand; the indomitable Aung San Suu Kyi of Myanmar; and Sonia Gandhi, the low-profile but tough-minded leader of the Indian National Congress Party.
In the Philippines, we had democracy icons Cory Aquino and Gloria Macapagal-Arroyo, who both were elected president, and Leni Robredo, the current competent and hardworking vice president.
Truly, many women leaders have helped shape the destiny of Asia and the world.
And as the world commemorates Women’s Month, we wish to reiterate our much earlier modest proposals to help advance the causes of women in Asia and the international community.
One is the establishment of an Asian All-Women Anti-Poverty Bank, to help address the clear and present danger to the socio-economic well-being of women.
The Asian All-Women Anti-Poverty Bank may provide small loans for microfinance businesses for as low as $500 to $1,000. This will help reduce poverty in the rural areas and in the urban slums of the Philippines, Asia, and around the world and help empower poor women by giving them jobs and self-employment. We have seen in Bangladesh and almost everywhere that women historically have a very high repayment record of as much as 98 percent.
We proposed the creation of this bank since the World Bank, the International Monetary Fund (IMF), and other global and regional financial institutions lend only to governments for big ticket items, mainly for large infrastructure projects.
Studies indicate that nearly 60 percent of women around the world work in the informal economy. They have lower income and are at greater risk of falling into extreme poverty (living on less than 1.90 dollars per day).
Millions of women have also lost livelihoods since the onslaught of the Covid-19 pandemic.
Reports said that the global plague pushed some 45 million women into extreme poverty, increasing the total number of women living in extreme poverty worldwide to 145 million.
Another proposal is for political parties to consider setting minimum gender ratios for our nominees to public office.
The women organizations which take the lead in promoting gender equality in national and local politics may perhaps ask the political parties to agree that maybe at least a third, or 30-35 percent, of our electoral nominees for national and local posts must be female until at some point our women can achieve parity with our men folks.
We believe women possess a gentler nature and a quantum of compassion greater than we men have, thus our country and the world will significantly benefit from more women politicians directing our campaigns against mass poverty; our efforts to bridge the gap between rich and poor in national society; and the campaigns we must launch against global warming, against climate change and environmental degradation that threaten the human future.
As our humble contribution in advancing the causes of women in Asia and the international community, we in the International Conference of Asian Political Parties (ICAPP) created in 2013 the ICAPP Women’s Wing to help enlarge networks among woman politicians and activists in Asia to address various challenges in advancing gender equality in the region.
In line with the primary objectives of the ICAPP to promote exchanges and cooperation among political parties, we envisioned the ICAPP Women’s Wing to be one of the main fora for women politicians and activists in the region to exchange information and share experiences on the difficulties and obstacles faced by women.
Since its establishment in 2013, the ICAPP Women’s Wing has held seven conferences on various issues and challenges, especially confronting women in Asia and the international community.