RAISING THE PROFILE OF BLACK WOMEN LEADERS IN COMMUNITY

Abstract

REPORT OF AN ACTION-ORIENTED WORKSHOP LED BY ROSEMARIE-RITA CHUKURAH-ODIACHI* In her seminar presentation, RoseMarie-Rita Chukurah-Odiachi focused on the immediate and practical strategies that should be adopted to bring about an increase in the number of black/ethnic minority women who participate in decision-making. Chukurah-Odiachi's paper considered the need to identify and determine measures for the continued empowerment of these women in key leadership roles in community. Main points The main points of the seminar presentation included: * It is only through the participation of women in greater numbers in positions of power in society and by providing them with adequate skills, which empower them, that they can be realistically involved in all processes of political and socio-economic activities, and that their role in the community can be effectively appreciated. * Instruments should be put in place to ensure that people, women in particular, have recourse to enforce their rights at a multiplicity of levels (e.g. human rights commissions, industrial courts, social welfare review tribunals, family courts, constitutional courts). Such forums for complaints provide mechanisms in civil society for enforcing the rights of individuals and for the redress of wrongful or discriminatory treatment. * Affirmative action and networking is another tool for achieving redress both in terms of race and gender. * Twenty years down the road, Europe and America, alarmingly, still have disproportionately fewer women in leadership and decision-making positions. This imbalance needs to be redressed. * Factors such as socio-cultural, political and economic barriers can hinder women's opportunities to participate, no matter how much they have leadership ambitions. For example, the gender division of labour hardly gives women any spare time to be involved in decision-making positions. * Women from black/ethnic minority groups have been part of the British population for centuries, although, all too often, their presence and their importance has been written out of history or simply overlooked. Social integration is desired. * Reorganization within the British civil service or government has led to the creation of new management-graded jobs, which women predominantly occupy but which are often not comparable to the jobs occupied by men. The pay, conditions and status that men have achieved in management jobs have often been eroded in the new management jobs. Job degradation and feminization have contributed to new forms of segmentation. * The number of black and ethnic minority women in Britain employed in even junior supervisory and management positions is disproportionately small. Black women's high level of educational attainment and qualifications are in no way being realized within organizational structures. The removal of layers of management has pushed management responsibility down to lower grades, which are often occupied by women. …