YESTERDAY the world celebrated the International Women's Day. In Sri Lanka among the popular marking of the day was women protest¬ing demanding better recognition and granting of, their rightful place in society and economy. The Standard Chartered Bans together with CIMA Sri Lanka also presented a high value programme for women in business — "Power Women" focusing on women's role in today's economy and challenges faced by Sri Lankan women. Several other events were held last week as well whilst more will follow during the course of this week too.

The Daily FT also highlighted the disappointingly low numbers when it comes to female directors in Boards of companies in Sri Lanka. The male-dominated board rooms however had mixed reac¬tions to this news. One was that some corporate women don't aspire or aren't competent enough whilst others acknowledged that there is less encouragement or recognition.

Nevertheless the corporate world does have some highly successful and role models in the form of female heads of companies or institu¬tions as well as directors. There is also consensus that there should be more room created for women on Boards as well as senior manage¬ment.

In this page today we have also highlighted key insights from the influential Davos-based World Economic Forum's Corporate Gender Gap Report 2010 which confirmed that businesses globally are failing to close the corporate gender gap thereby losing out on female talent. WEF said the survey dimensions are a tool for business to assess per¬formance and implement gender equality policies.

Yesterday in our special coverage on the International Women's Day, several more important issues were shed drawn from insights from the International Labour Organisation. It stressed that more women were choosing to work, but gender equality remains a long way off. It noted that the rate of female labour force participation has increased from 50.2 to 51.7% between 1980 and 2008.

A more disturbing fact however was nearly half (48.4 %) of the female population above the age of 15 remain economically inactive, compared to 22.3% for men. Two more facets were women who do want to work have a harder time than men in fording work and when women do find work, they receive less pay and benefits than the male workers in similar positions.

As part of the Gender Equality at the Heart of Decent Work, adopt¬ed by the 2009 International Labour Conference, the ILO will guide constituents' efforts towards a labour market in which all women and men can participate freely and actively, including efforts to facilitate women's economic empowerment through entrepreneurship devel¬opment, address unequal remuneration between women and men, enhance social protection for all and strengthen women’s participation in social dialogue.

This is commendable but the challenge lies in sensitising political leaders and policy makers to be constantly mindful of the importance of reducing the gender gap. Leaders and civil society alike shouldn't confine very laudable statements on the importance of women in shaping a country's prosperity and their due recognition only on the International Women's Day but daily or at least when new policy or programmes are being conceptualised.

A means to achieving desired levels of women participation in poli¬cy and development could be more females entering politics.

Milinda Moragoda elsewhere in this page shares some of his own insights to the status of women in Sri Lanka. Among issues he raised were that whilst Sri Lanka had an excellent record on women's health, education and life expectancy, it was worst in the region when it comes to participation of women in politics.

This is quite saddening in a country which produced the world's first female prime minister in addition to having had a female President.

Milinda is urging all political parties, civil society leaders and opin¬ion-makers to unite and support legislation to ensure a 25% reserva¬tion for women in Parliament. provincial councils and local councils. India's forward march in terms bringing in an amendment to its Constitution to provide a reservation of 33% for women representa¬tives in the Lok Sabha and State Assemblies was also highlighted.

The credit card giant MasterCard as featured in yesterday's edition also had some interesting observations via its Worldwide Index of Women Advancements. Based on its findings, it said women across Asia Pacific are feeling slightly more empowered. This could be true largely to women from the Southeast Asia as they tend to be more per¬severing and progressive.

It said women continue to make strides in labour force participa¬tion and tertiary education enrollment and we are glad to see this translating into a greater sense of self worth in terms of their earn¬ing capabilities. This may explain the increased number of women who are viewing themselves as the major financial decision maker in their households. It is heartening to note that women are feeling more empowered, MasterCard Vice President Communications Asia Pacific, Middle East and Africa Georgette Tan said.

Sri Lanka wasn't captured in the index but despite our own limita¬tions, women in Sri Lanka too have progressed. Nevertheless no one can be happy with the degree or the rapidity.

It has been often said that Sri Lankan economy survives on women power- since three key export sectors have majority participation from females — inward remittances, garments and tea. This fact alone warrants due recognition, better respect and support for women and their advancement. We as a nation, especially men, need to start from a mindset change, to unleash a new paradigm to make women as undisputed equal partners of progress for a better Sri Lanka.