El Salvadorian Representative at the United Nations

El Salvadorian Representative at the United Nations

On Thursday March 3rd I had the fortune of yet again hearing another wonderful woman speak on behalf of her country. Unfortunately I was unable to get her name but I was able to write down some of her key thoughts. Like one of the other women she did not express a lot of views as to what was going on with the women in her country but she gave sound advice as to what needs to be done not only by the women in her country but every woman in any country who is fighting for the equality of women.

Before going into the things that she noted that needs to be done by the people, she said that the living condition in El Salvador for women was much worst than men. This is a sad but true statistic. She also went on to say that 40% of households are owned and maintained by women, however, the sad part is that women have a harder time maintaining their home because of the biases and the prejudices against women. This limits their ability to get jobs that are descent paying to take care of the family. As she said, women don't have the positions that they should have and that they deserve.

One of the main things that she brought up and touched on was the fact that there is a lack of cooperation between the government and non-governmental organizations. It seems to be a wedge that is driving these two entities apart rather than bringing them together for a common good. It seems as if the NGO's and the government are somewhat in a feud. The government is usually the one that does not want anything to do with the NGO's; they may look at the work of the NGO as something that is less important than theirs. This is not so and the government needs to have a broader aspect of what NGO's do and what they really promote. This woman stressed over and over again in her speech the link that needs to be drawn between these two things. The work of an NGO can in fact help and progress the work of the government and that is what people don't seem to understand.

Another important point that I stood up to was when she said that the fact that people did not want to educate him or herself. People do not even have gender issues on their mind. Now how is it that you are all for changing something in society and it turns out that you don't find it necessary to educate yourself about the issue. That seems like a contradiction to me how are you going to fight about something you don't have a clue about.

Another thing that was noted was the fact that women somehow need to get in positions to have a say