As people across the world today (March 8) observe International Women’s Day, Patricia Duncan Sutherland, president of the People’s National Party Women’s Movement, is calling on Jamaicans to ‘Break The Bias’ as women in Jamaica continue to struggle for equality.

Addressing a PNP International Women’s Day press conference held this morning, Duncan Sutherland articulated that while it is International Women’s Day and the Women’s Movement is all about ‘breaking the bias’, it is necessary to understand the struggle Jamaican women face with regard to equality.

She noted: “As women in Jamaica we continue to struggle for equality, because of those intrinsic biases…there is an unequalness that exists in our society. We have access to law and social-cultural norms but we still see that the biases and the unequalness occur in our country.”

Among the urgent issues surrounding gender inequality that need to be addressed according to Duncan Sutherland is the gender pay gap.

“Right now in Jamaica women earn 37 per cent less than men who do the same work,” stated the PNP Women’s Movement president.

“Most of us don’t realise that as women.. and despite the fact that we have equal pay for equal work, because there is no wage transparency in Jamaica, women and even younger people don’t know that they are being paid less.”

Given this, Duncan Sutherland argued: “One of the things that we can do to begin to break the bias is to advocate for wage transparency.”

In addition to breaking the bias surrounding the gender pay gap, the women’s movement president shared: “We also have to break the bias in leadership.”

While highlighting that strides to break the leadership bias in Jamaica have been made as evidenced by the growing number of women in parliament, Duncan Sutherland informed: “We only have 16 per cent of our councillors are female.”

In light of this, she noted: “One of the things that we are doing as an actionable item as the PNP Women’s Movement is that we are putting our money where our mouth is. We are supporting our female candidates this year who are going up for the local government elections.”

In addition to supporting the candidates with monetary funding, the movement is also endeavouring to provide mentorship to the upcoming women leaders.

Aside from putting plans in place to break the bias in leadership, Duncan Sutherland asked that with the opening of the Budget Debate set to begin today, that there be a gender lens on the country’s budget.

She stated: “Our budgeting (must) understand that we have to be deliberate around doing things to break the bias.”