Distinguished guests, Ms. Ranjana Maitra, Chairperson of the CII Indian Women Network, Consul General of Finland Mr. Erik af Hällström, Prof. Jyoti Atwal of JNU, colleagues, friends.
It is an honour to offer a Sri Lankan perspective at this dialogue organized jointly by the CII Indian Women Network, Consulate General of Finland and Jawaharlal Nehru University. Bringing together insights from Nordic Europe, India’s dynamic socio-economic landscape, and Sri Lanka’s own social development narrative creates a truly unique synthesis.
When we address the core question of today’s session—How to empower women and girls, and what are the biggest challenges—we must look beyond policy intent and confront real-world structural dynamics.
Let me begin with a widely cited proverb in Sri Lanka: ගෙදර බුදුන් අම්මා (Gedara Budun Amma). It translates to "The mother is the Buddha at home." It reflects a deep cultural reverence for women as the moral anchors of our households, symbolically equating motherhood with spiritual veneration. In the local cultural sphere, this is significant public recognition of the value of womanhood.
And in many ways, Sri Lanka lived up to this spirit through sustained state investment. My country presents a unique narrative on the global stage as an emerging South Asian nation that achieved globally significant gender and human development indicators early on.
Sri Lanka introduced universal adult franchise in 1931—making it Asia’s oldest democracy—followed by free education from primary school through university in the mid-1940s, and universal healthcare for life in the early 1950s. Historically recognized for giving the world its first female Prime Minister in 1960, Sri Lanka's social statistics reflect this legacy, consistently surpassing regional averages across key human development benchmarks.
Today, adult female literacy exceeds 92 per cent with youth female literacy reaching over 99 per cent, while school retention through secondary education shows near-perfect gender parity. Women also outshine men in higher education, making up about 60 per cent of all university enrollments and holding strong majorities in fields such as medicine, law, and the humanities. These advances are paired with significant health achievements, as reflected by a female life expectancy of over 80 years and a maternal mortality rate that remains among the lowest in South Asia. If we measure gender empowerment strictly through basic human development indicators - health, education, and literacy - Sri Lanka is a textbook success story.
Yet, when we look beneath the surface at economic participation and political representation, we encounter a policy paradox.
To return for a moment to that local proverb—Gedara Budun Amma—our central challenge today is that high symbolic veneration in the private sphere has not translated into structural power in the public sphere. Respect at home has not yielded equal seats at the corporate table or in the parliamentary chamber.
Sri Lanka's experience proves a critical truth: high educational attainment does not automatically yield economic or political authority without deliberate structural intervention.
Four major structural challenges continue to hinder complete empowerment:
The first critical barrier is the labour force deficit alongside the burden of the unpaid care economy. Despite women making up 60 per cent of university graduates, female labour force participation has stagnated between 30 per cent and 35 per cent. This means two-thirds of our educated women remain outside the formal workforce. This disconnect stems largely from the weight of unpaid domestic labour and eldercare falling disproportionately on women, while a lack of affordable, regulated childcare forces many out of the professional pipeline during their prime working years.
The second obstacle is widespread under-representation in executive leadership. While women dominate entry- and mid-level roles in key sectors like banking and healthcare, they hold less than 10 per cent of board seats in listed companies and about 20 per cent of senior management positions across major private sector firms. The transition from strong academic success to corporate authority remains blocked by invisible barriers and informal institutional networks.
The third issue is the persistent political representation gap, which underscores this broader empowerment paradox within public leadership and governance. Despite Sri Lanka producing female heads of state and government, women’s representation in Parliament has historically hovered between just 5 and 7 per cent until the most recent parlianmentary election in 2024, when this number increased to nearly 10 per cent. Where we did intervene legislatively—introducing a mandatory 25 per cent quota at the local government level—considerable numbers of first-time female leaders entered municipal councils, radically transforming grassroots governance. The hope remains to replicate this success at provincial and national levels in the coming years.
Finally, there is a deep vulnerability surrounding the working-class women who serve as the nation's essential economic drivers. Paradoxically, Sri Lanka’s foreign exchange relies heavily on female labour—women account for over 75 per cent of the apparel workforce, the majority of our foreign remittance earners, and the tea pluckers powering agricultural exports. Yet these women face persistent wage inequality, limited financial access, and fragile social safety nets.
It is precisely in this context that the perspective of our Prime Minister, Dr. Harini Amarasuriya, becomes vital. As an academic, a sociologist, and a long-standing advocate for equity before entering top executive office, she has articulated a distinct and critical perspective on female empowerment and gender equality in Sri Lanka. Crucially, her approach moves away from traditional 'welfare' rhetoric toward recognizing unpaid care work and reforming institutional spaces. This emphasis is also an important aspect of the present government’s focus on development in general.
To address these challenges, my sense is, empowerment strategies must move beyond traditional welfare models toward structural, rights-based economic inclusion. At this stage, I can think of three basic areas where this might be attempted.
First, governments and the private sector must co-invest in care infrastructure by implementing gender-neutral parental leave and employer-supported childcare, shifting the domestic burden away from women as default caretakers.
Second, we know from experience that legislative interventions work. Therefore, building on this proven success, corporate entities and national political parties must institute voluntary or legislated targets for women in executive boards and election candidate lists until a more reasonable degree of parity is achieved.
Finally, unlocking full female entrepreneurship requires tailored financial inclusion through micro-to-medium enterprise credit and digital literacy, moving past traditional collateral requirements so women can convert local skills into scalable micro-enterprises.
Distinguished guests, empowering women is not a soft policy option or an act of kindness. It is an essential economic and social imperative. When we educate a girl, we build human capital; but when we provide her with equal pay, boardroom access, political representation, and systemic care support, we unlock national development potential.
Sri Lanka’s journey demonstrates that education is the indispensable foundation -- but it cannot be the final destination. We must build the bridge that carries a woman from the school and university lecture hall all the way to the corporate boardroom and the parliamentary chambers.
Let this conversation serve as a platform to translate these shared challenges into actionable policy frameworks. Thank you.