WRC Puts Greater Emphasis On Gender Equality
The Women’s Resource Centre [WRC] is headed in a new direction with its “greater emphasis on gender equality and empowering women in Bermuda.”
A spokesperson said, “The organization has a solid reputation with its past work to support women who have been victims of sexual assault and domestic violence. However, last year it completed its final phase of transferring these services to the Centre Against Abuse.
“One of the main reasons for this transfer was to reduce duplication of services in the third sector community. Now, WRC is continuing its mission to enhance the lives of women and being the leading voice for gender equality and the advancement of women, as it embarks on re-branding the charity.”
Carol-Ann Simmons, the charity’s new Executive Director, said, “Stepping up the conversation and making meaningful progress on gender equality and key issues relating to the well-being and advancement of women is important to the success of every community. At WRC, a key priority is ensuring we see fair treatment and equal numbers of women working together with men in leadership roles.
“While we are seeing some change, we are far from where we should be. It only makes sense to have equal representation of women in lead decision-making roles, working in partnership with men, especially given that the decisions being made greatly affect the lives of women, as well. Far too often we find women are missing from these critical roles.
“A prime example is what we witnessed during the recent protests concerning the immigration bill, where we saw no women present in the lead roles for either side in the negotiations. This omission was glaring and we found a number of people expressing concern about it.”
“Ms. Simmons, who has previously worked in the corporate sector in senior and managerial roles in finance and compliance, holds a Bachelor of Science in Psychology with Business from University of Buckingham and an MBA from University of Exeter.
“She also serves as a panel member at Bermuda’s Family Court and is currently completing training and accreditation in Family Mediation.
“She has previous experience serving on boards and committees including as Vice-Chairperson of human rights group Amnesty International Bermuda, serving on Amnesty’s Caribbean Regional Office Executive Committee, along with the National Association for Reconciliation, and as a former member of Berkeley Institute’s Board of Governors.
“WRC has been reviewing and updating their programmes and services to ensure they support the advocacy work they are moving forward with to influence policy on issues affecting women.”
Ms. Simmons said, “It is really an exciting time for the Women’s Resource Centre. I feel privileged to be leading the organization in its new direction and I have been enjoying the challenge that running it presents, especially amid transition and re-branding.”
“However, one challenge that she is already faced with is the cutting of the WRC’s grant by government that WRC learned of over the past week. Grants were either reduced or not approved this year for a number of charities and Women’s Resource Centre and Centre Against Abuse were two that had their funding cut completely.”
Ms. Simmons said, “Charities must do more to generate revenue themselves and we certainly understand the need for government to trim its expenses, however, learning in the press that they are, instead, increasing the funding of Financial Assistance does concern us. There is no doubt that many in our community – often women – are understandably in need of financial assistance, but we must be careful about creating a ‘dependency culture’.
“Rather than increase the financial assistance budget, it might be more useful to look at how to help people to get off financial assistance or reduce the amount of time they are on assistance. It is also important to do more to create conditions conducive to increasing employment for Bermudians.
“Cutting the funding of charities that play a vital role in helping to address escalating social issues, only serves to add to the distress amongst the most vulnerable in the community, as some charities will not be able to continue with much needed services.
“We must consider that sometimes people who happen to be on financial assistance are also still in need of support from the very charities that are no longer being funded.”
With gender equality comes the good and the bad. I’m Just Saying.