The document discusses promoting gender equality and shared responsibility between women and men. It explores how perceptions of women's empowerment as disempowering men can be addressed and how women and men can work together to achieve equality. Specific countries and their progress in electing women to government positions are examined as well as perspectives on overcoming challenges to gender equality.

1. “Valuing Ourselves: Promoting
Shard Responsibility.”
Do men feel that women’s empowerment is
disempowering men?
How can women and men work together to achieve
gender equality?

3. Mercury Venus Earth Mars

4. “This country is way down the list of countries
electing women and, according to one study, it
polarizes gender roles more than the average
democracy.”
GLORIA STEINEM, nytimes.com, January 2008

6. Bridging the gender gap in politics
• Lesotho - 20% of government ministers
are women
• Rwanda – almost 55% representatives are
women
• Belize

7. "It's not just the men that are holding
women back, it is also the mothers," she
says. She explains that they worry that
men will be displaced by "over-ambitious"
women.
Lash Mokhati, BBC.com, March 2011

8. "Achieving equality and opportunity for
women isn't just important to me as
president," Obama said. "It's something I
care about deeply as the father of two
daughters who wants to see his girls grow
up in a world where there are no limits to
what they can achieve."

9. • Fair wages, escape poverty and compete
in academic areas with higher earning
potential like math and engineering.
• Efforts In the US are still continuing to
address problems highlighted by a
commission led by former first lady
Eleanor Roosevelt almost 50 years ago
that looked at the status of women and the
unfairness they face.

10. • Data suggest that Belize has a very high
exclusion rate.
• 16% for primary school
• 60% for secondary school (56% female;
63% male)
Sources: Planning & Projects Unit, MOE, 2009;
Male Social Participation and Violence in Urban Belize

11. UB Graduates
2000
1800
1600
1400
No. Students
1200 Total
1000 Females
800 Males
600
400
200
0
2000 01 02 03 04 05 06 07 08 09 2010
Year

12. Social Equity
• Education systems needs immediate
innovative overhaul
- universal ‘high school’ education
- exclusion rate must be reduced
significantly and must be balanced
- emphasis on work ethic & responsibility

13. Home and Equity
• National definition of man, woman and
child.
- varies per couple; balance
- communicate our values, roles and
responsibilities as partners
- leveraging the values that we each bring
to the relationship

14. • Family Spirituality and Solidarity
- Family that prays together; stays together
- Maintain bond (esp. father/child)
regardless of physical presence.
- Power and status is not dependent on
gender.

15. Corporate and Economic Equity
• Targeted support systems and institutions
• Trend should accelerate as more women
become qualified
• Influential in decision process; not
necessarily seeking position or notoriety

16. • Do men feel that women’s empowerment
is disempowering men?
Answer: Depends on your definition of a
man!
• How can women and men work together
to achieve gender equality?
Answer: Depends on your definition of
equality!