Caribbean Women Transform Leadership

Bridgetown- On 28-29 July the United Nations Development Fund for Women (UNIFEM) Caribbean Office and the Commonwealth Secretariat will sponsor the launch of the Caribbean Institute for Women in Leadership (CIWiL) at the Barbados Hilton Hotel. More than sixty politicians, businesswomen and women leaders from across the Caribbean and the diaspora will gather to celebrate the Launch of CIWiL and the importance of the value of Transformational Leadership in the Caribbean.

Although women’s participation in the political process as voters and campaigners is high throughout the Caribbean, women’s leadership is centralized only in the private sphere. Eighty percent of single-headed households in the Caribbean are run by women yet women's participation as elected parliamentarians in the Caribbean ranges from 0% in Belize to 29% in Guyana and only 35% of businesses across the Caribbean are women-owned.

“This is a matter of urgency for the Caribbean. Our development depends on harnessing the potential of women who constitute more than 50% of the population,” says Sheila Roseau of Antigua’s Directorate of Gender Affairs, a CIWiL Founding Member. “Women represent more than half of the Caribbean’s population yet women’s leadership potential has yet to be truly tapped. CIWiL will work to change this and to contribute to the transformation of the way we perceive leadership in the region.”

CIWiL is a non-political, non-partisan independent flagship networking Institute. CIWiL will offer high quality research and trainings to advance women’s transformational leadership and increase the number of women in politics, leadership and decision-making at all levels in the Caribbean.

UNIFEM defines Transformational Leadership as a visionary process that starts at the level of individual transformation and transcends the personal to express itself at the group and institutional levels. Transformational Leadership is grounded in the principles and values of equity, equality, democracy, justice, caring, non-violence and cooperation. CIWiL’s programming will be based on these tenets.

One of CIWiL’s main objectives is  to encourage women, especially younger women, to recognize their ‘place in the House …of Representatives” (a slogan of the Trinidad and Tobago NGO Network, a Founding Member of CIWiL).

Members of the public are invited to join the celebration on 28 July at 7 p.m. at the University of the West Indies for a public discussion. For more information please contact UNIFEM at (246) 467-6000.