A commitment in the Belfast Agreement to promote social inclusion, community development and the advancement of women in public life must be properly resourced, the deputy chief commissioner of the Equality Commission for Northern Ireland, Ms Bronagh Hinds, said.
Ms Hinds, who was involved in negotiating the Belfast Agreement as a member of the Northern Ireland Women's Coalition, was speaking on Monday at the 20th annual Patrick MacGill Summer School. "Women in Ireland" is the theme of this year's school, in Glenties, Co Donegal.
The 20-member Equality Commission was set up last October to amalgamate the functions of four formerly separate bodies dealing with discrimination on the grounds of religion, gender, race and disability.
Ms Hinds said she was very conscious of the place given to equality and human rights in the Belfast Agreement which was endorsed emphatically by people in both the North and the South in referendums in 1998.
"Equality has now come centre stage and the Equality Commission is working to ensure the concept of equality, in all its dimensions, is placed firmly at the heart of our society," she said.
Ms Hinds said she hoped the NI Assembly would carry forward the British government's undertaking in the agreement to "pursue broad policies for sustained economic growth and stability in Northern Ireland and for promoting social inclusion, including in particular community development and the advancement of women in public life."
Under-resourcing signified undervaluing and raised queries about whether the agreement's commitment to promoting social inclusion, community development and the advancement of women in public life were truly meant, she said.
"It is now up to the Assembly, the Executive and those who hold the purse strings to demonstrate that we are moving to a fully and equally shared future. We await the results," she added.
The director of the Rape Crisis Centre, Ms Olive Braiden, told participants that violence against women was served by silence, and people would have to speak out. She said increased public awareness was essential to eliminating such violence. Boys and girls should be educated in infant class on how to express feelings of anger and frustration in non-violent ways, and people should practise it themselves.
"The die is cast at a very early stage. Our aim must be preventing children from growing up to be rapists and abusers. Babies are not born violent," she added.
Ms Braiden said the Rape Crisis Centre continued to campaign for better services, separate legal representation for victims of sexual violence, mandatory reporting of child abuse, treatment programmes and monitoring of convicted sex offenders and appropriate training for everybody who came into contact with victims of sexual violence.
Senator Joe O'Toole, general secretary of INTO, said women primary teachers had been a driving force for economic, social and political development for more than 100 years, but both they and their male colleagues had been underestimated, undervalued and underpaid.
"It may well be an anachronistic misunderstanding of government that a profession which is predominantly female can in some way be fobbed off with lesser rewards," he told participants on Monday. "The coming year will set the tone for industrial relations in the education sector for many years to come."
Teachers and other public servants were owed a debt of honour by the Government, he said. Teachers voted in good faith in favour of a new national pay agreement this year, in an effort to continue with the development of social partnership. The terms of the deal were predicated on the Government maintaining low inflation, but this had not happened and inflation would have considerably eroded the value of the pay increase guaranteed under the partnership even before it was paid, he said.
Mr O'Toole said teachers would be at a financial loss this year and the Government would have to make up the difference. He suggested this could be done through tax relief and income compensation through a pre-tax payment, or a combination of both.
The school runs until Friday.