A report on women's issues shows women have made great strides in the community but still have a long way to go, a Government Senator said yesterday.

But an Opposition Senator lambasted the Final Report of the Task Force on Women's Issues for lacking substance and pertinent local information.

Community and Cultural Affairs Minister Yvette Swan and PLP Senator Neletha Butterfield kicked off the Upper House debate on a motion to take note of the report for their respective parties.

The report, said Sen. Swan, was proposed in 1995 because it was deemed "important to find where we were as far as women's issues are concerned''.

The task force included members of a variety of organisations who came up with 190 recommendations to deal with problems in the eight different areas of women's concerns that they looked at.

However, Sen. Butterfield noted that the task force received no funding with which to do their work and this severely limited their assessment of the problems women face.

This was shown in the distinct lack of statistics relating to women's issues in Bermuda, she said, and that there were no surveys conducted locally.

Instead there was a lot of overseas information in the report and statistics which had already come through the Senate making them "repetitious'', said Sen. Butterfield.

It was a shame, she continued, because "women's issues are human issues and they affect everybody''.

Sen. Swan said a particular concern of women was the fact that many of them were earning 70 cents to the dollar that men were earning.

This practice affected the families headed by single women, she warned, as it put their children at a disadvantage.

The practice of "equal pay for equal work'' had to be enforced, she demanded.

Sixty-seven percent of all women work outside the home, continued Sen. Swan, and this raised the importance of child care and after-school care.

Women had to be made comfortable in the workplace with the knowledge that their children were being cared for properly.

Looking at health issues, Sen. Swan said mammography equipment had to be brought up to accredited standards to ensure the safety of women.

And she said the public had to know of the importance of early detection when it came to HIV and AIDS.

In 1997, she noted, 22 people tested HIV positive and ten of them were women.

Meanwhile, 21 people were diagnosed with AIDS, seven of whom were women, and 14 people died from the disease. Six of the people who died were women, said Sen. Swan. They died shortly after being diagnosed, she continued, and this indicated that they were diagnosed while in the late stages of the disease.

"These are very serious statistics. AIDS education needs to be implemented.

Due to the lack of resources, many women are not coming forward early enough.'' Statistics on teen pregnancy also raised grave concerns, she continued.

"In 1996 there were a total of 71 teenage pregnancies of which 32 were terminated. In 1997, there were a total of 50 of which 20 were terminated.'' This indicated teenagers were putting themselves at risk of contracting HIV and AIDS also, warned Sen. Swan.

Sen. Butterfield asked for a time frame to be established within which the report's recommendations would be acted upon.

And the report lacked substance, she said, with a dearth of local statistics and information.

"We need to get the statistical data to seriously address women's issues.'' Progressive Labour Party Senator Milton Scott said Middle School childen needed to be taught about contraception and family planning.

He said: "A lot of basic foundations are already there in our school system.

"We need to go on offering family life education on a formalised basis, right down there in our Middle Schools.'' Sen. Scott called for more specialised health services for Government employees, claiming corporate services were already "very forward thinking''.

And he said it was time to start Island-wide childcare programmes for all school-age children.

"This needs to go right down to the age of about three-and-a-half,'' said Sen. Scott.

"Childcare needs to be regulated and, as far as possible, all children need to enter P1 with an equal state of readiness to begin their family education programme.

"I would hope that careful consideration is given to the 190 recommendations in this report, especially those that apply to children and minors.'' Government Senate leader E.T. (Bob) Richards supported the report's calls for "equal pay for equal work'', claiming that women were falling behind men and blacks were behind whites in pay scales.

He also urged a "return to family values'' to give youngsters new hope and the ability to use Bermuda's "full speed economy''.

"When you split the nuclear family, a tremendous amount of social destruction is released,'' he said.

"I know it's a cliche but we have to start reverting back to family values.

"We have an economy running at full speed but we have people who just cannot get on board.'' Sen. Allan Marshall said more women needed to be encouraged into politics and sex education needed to be a central part of school syllabuses.

And Sen. Larry Scott hailed "an excellent report'' but said it still had faults -- including a middle-class bias.