Latin America and The Caribbean
Jamaica
Strides of Women
Cassida Jones is Vice President and head of human resources at the Jamaican firm of Grace Kennedy Limited – one of a new generation of women changing the face of the Jamaican corporate world. Working women first became accepted in the aftermath of the second World War in which thousands of Jamaican servicemen were killed. Today there are Jamaican women lawyers, doctors, construction workers, eachers, pilots, security officers, journalists and football players. “When you look at the universities, the majority of people graduating are female,” says Cassida. “So it’s showing the paradigm shift of thinking amongst women.”
Production company links/email: CVM Television Limited
Trinidad & Tobago
Breakfast Shed Femmes du Chalet
Omega Rosales, Stephanie Gill and Charmaine Best are three generations of women from one family involved in Trinidad & Tobago’s formidable ‘Femmes du Chalet’ cooperative at the Breakfast Shed - formerly the Working Men's Shed, founded in 1933 to provide cheap, freshly prepared food for Trinidad’s dockworkers. The women who ran it were mostly single heads of households who began the tradition of passing on their franchises to their daughters. When the government threatened to redevelop the area and close the Shed, there was a public outcry.” I think that people have come to hold this as a vulnerable and revered institution,” says UNDP representative Inyan Ebong–Harstrup,. “We must stand and say this is the sort of empowerment we have been talking about for decades now.”
Production company links/email: Gayelle The Channel or email Producer/Director Judith Laird
Mexico
Lydia Cacho
In December 2005 Mexican journalist Lydia Cacho was arrested by four armed police-men for ‘investigation’ into the allegations of child exploitation she had made against high profile individuals in Mexico’s political establishment. Lydia’s book ‘The Demons of Eden’ was an unflinching expose of a crime ring involved, she alleged, in the sexual abuse of children in Mexico. And it wasn’t the first time that Lydia had taken on Mexico’s labyrinthine, male-dominated legal system to seek justice for female victims of violence and abuse. “There’s a glass ceiling where empowerment hasn’t got to yet,” says Mexican Special Prosecutor Alicia Pérez Duarte. “There are areas where we have been able to establish ourselves, to make decisions, to exercise our rights and to demand them… but we still have a long way to go.”
Production company links/email: Once TV (Spanish only) or email Lydia Cacho
Cuba
Volunteers of Hope
Rafaela Audiva is a paediatrician who’s worked with orphaned and starving children in post-conflict Ethiopia and Namibia; dermatologist Omara Lemus went to help rebuild lives in Pakistan after the devastating 2005 earthquake; GP Ileana Cuba lived and worked with the Maya-Quecha villagers in rural Guatemala. They’re just three of the 30,000 doctors and health professionals from Cuba – over half of them women - who volunteer their time to improve healthcare in 68 countries. They acknowledge the sacrifices, but claim it’s worth it. “You do feel homesick for your children,” says Rafaela, “but when you see how much you are needed, you feel very proud.”
Related links: Centre for Development and Cultural Communication
Brazil
House of Dreams
Dagmar Garroux runs the ‘Casa do Zezinho’ educational centre for poor children in the south of Brazil’s biggest city, Sao Paulo - an area the UN once categorized as the most dangerous place on earth. Generations of children born in Sao Paolo’s slums have grown up with no expectations, while the dominant ‘machismo’ culture often leads to girls become mothers in their teens. Dagmar, known as ‘Auntie Dag’, wanted Zezinho’s to be an oasis of hope – a place that could give both girls and boys equal opportunities to create a better life. ‘When these girls arrive the first thing we do,” she says, ‘is get them to find their identity by asking them to think about questions like “Who am I?” “What could I be?” “What’s my dream?”’
Production company links/email: TV Cultura (Portuguese only) or email Producer/Director Claudia Ortiz
Related links: Casa do Zezinho (Portuguese only)
Bolivia
Protagonists of the New History
Casimira Rodriguez is an indigenous Quechua woman, a human rights activist – and now the Minister of Justice in the new government headed by President Evo Morales, Bolivia’s first indigenous president. And she’s not alone: Bolivia has three women ministers, while Silvia Lazarte, also Quechua, is Chair of Bolivia’s Constitutional Assembly. Quechua people make up 60 cent of Bolivia’s nine million population, but were always denied power until 2003 when they protested at the sale of Bolivia’s gas reserves. Now, says Casimira, ‘we want better healthcare, a dignified job and we want justice to be accessible to all, without any type of discrimination.’
Related links: Bolivian Women Working in the New Constitution (Spanish only) or email Bolivian Women Working in the new Constitution
