For the entire month of March, women have been celebrated, honored, awarded, and praised. But for the other 11 months, these women are also your doctors, engineers, teachers, police officers and social workers. And many times, they do all this while raising their children, sometimes by themselves.
And in an unequal world where women have had to fight for a seat at the table, the trailblazers should be acknowledged - and that's exactly what the National Women's Commission did today.
Courtney Menzies was at their Outstanding Women's Awards Ceremony and has this story.
With a little over a week left in their month, women young and old, alive and even those who have passed on, were honored today by the National Women's Commission. These ladies have dedicated their lives to serving others, leaving behind a legacy, and creating a path for the women behind them to reach even greater heights in society.
The Minister of Human Development and Families and the president of the commission, explained the importance of "bigging up" the women who helped to build Belize.
Dolores Balderamos Garcia, Minister of Human Dev, Families
"I think that so many women are unsung heroes and as I said in my remarks in the National Assembly yesterday, you can't have to word hero, H-E-R-O, without her, H-E-R, so, so many of our women are heroes and heroines if you want to use the feminine version of it, so many of our women quiet ways have has contributed so much to the development of our Belizean society."
Thea Garcia, President, Women's Commission
"Sustainable development goals tell us that women and gender issues are really important to the development of the nation as a whole so these women really are nation builders, as the father of the nation said, nation building is for giants and we have a lot of giants in the country and a lot of them are women."
"The important thing is that we had trailblazers, we have Madam Liz, we have Mrs Cassasola, we have Cleopatra White, we have Mrs Jane Usher, we have all these women that came before us, have left an important legacy behind and actually blazed the way for the women that are here. And these women as well are here to show and inspire the next generation of women leaders, the next generation of Belizeans to show what women are doing and what women can do and all their accomplishments."
And one woman who has inspired young girls is Ramy Chia, the president of the Association of Professional Engineers of Belize. While her field of choice is male-dominated, she took up the challenge and though it was worth it, she said it was - and is still not - easy.
Courtney Menzies:
"Did you ever get discouraged when you saw maybe your male colleagues getting opportunities that weren't afforded to you?"
Ramy Chia, President, APEB
"Did I get or do I get, cause I still do get. Like I tell a lot of the young girls that want to be engineers, many days, even up to as late as yesterday, you would just have to go into the restroom, take a good cry, drink a cup of water, wash your face and back to it and dust it off and let nobody know that you had a bad day or a bad moment."
Reporter:
"What initially made you want to venture into the field of engineering?"
Ramy Chia, President, APEB
"I had met this lady when I was in high school who was a contractor and I on one of her job sites with her and she was so powerful, well, she was tall too and she was so powerful and she had long nails and she bossed those men around and that made me say, I want to be like that, I want to be the boss."
"At the beginning I was very timid, I was afraid to feel like a woman, I used to be more of at tomboy or try to wear the baggy pants and baggy shirts and then I said you know what, let's intimidate them the way they intimidate us so I started with, first I had purple hair at one point, but that didn't really work out so then I went to this red hair and I said this is the one."
"So one way to get the attention when you walk into the room is to stand out, the red hair, the red lipstick, it kind of does that for me. So that's the first step of getting into the door, getting a seat at the table, and then when I'm there I make sure I'm the person, like I said earlier today, the one that knows the most about the topic when I'm there."
And another awardee, Dr Eve Aird, the provost of Galen University, explained that when it was her turn to study abroad, it came with a lot of family uncertainty:
Dr Eve Aird, Provost, Galen University
"I remember when I wanted to go to study and I dared to want to go to study in the United States, my dad- this was an unknown world, I went to study in 1998, it was unknown almost that a young women would leave home, leave the shelter of her home to go to the United States to live in a college dormitory, a space that was unfamiliar to us in Belize and certainly was unfamiliar to my father and my mother. But my mom stood up for me and she said, no, you have to go. [00:03:46.24] when you get your education, that is something that nobody will ever be able to take away from you."
"I think we've come a long way but as the closing speaker said, we will have a lot further to go, we need to have more people in leadership, we have more women graduating from high school and university in Belize but as the CEO in the Ministry of Education recently remarked we have less women in positions of authority, the unemployment rate is still greater for women, so we need to close that gap."
And though they have passed away, both cultural icon Myrna Manzanres and sports legend Pat Bennet were also honored today.
