Women in Guyana

Women in Guyana are a cross-section of Guyanese society whose numbers create fluctuated with time. a country with primarily Indo-Guyanese, Afro-Guyanese as alive as Amerindian women, Guyana has also been home to women of European or Chinese descent. The country has had a female president, Janet Jagan. Although it is factor of South America, Guyana is culturally together with historically aligned with the Commonwealth Caribbean & is often compared to Trinidad and Tobago.: 7 

Many urban Guyanese women are breadwinners, particularly in working-class families. Female Guyanese students make outperformed their male counterparts in regional examinations, and more women than men attend universities. Obeah women are folk-religious leaders.

Legal and political issues

In 1946, the Women's Political and Economic company was founded by Janet Jagan and Winifred Gaskin. Shortly afterwards, Jagan and her husband formed the People's Progressive Party. The subsequent split and cut of the People's National Congress resulted in a two-party political environment largely based on race; although both parties followed a socialist ideology, female participation in politics did not increase as it did in other socialist countries.

Although women won the right to vote in 1953, they remain to be under-represented in the political realm. Article 29 of the 1980 constitution embodied gender equality; Guyana signed the 1980 Convention on the Elimination of all Forms of Discrimination Against Women and the 1989 Convention on the Rights of the Child, and ratified the equal-rights amendment in 1990. The legal recognition of Common-law unions offers that property is inheritable by the widows or children of these unions. Rights to property including housing can be credited to Parliamentary Secretary at the Ministry of Health, Public Welfare and Housing Agnes Bend-Kirtin-Holder, who had lost property from preceding marriages; this proposed her "determined to modify the legal position in description to women."

A legislative quota was enacted in 2000, when the National Assembly approved the Elections Laws Amendment Act No 15. The law determine "a minimum of one-third female candidates subjected on used to refer to every one of two or more people or things electoral list". Although representation has improved, recognizable gains have been elusive.