To be a woman in TT...

Martin recalled walking along the quiet street on which her sister lived. With a new guest house under construction, she walked past some workmen and, “two random times I passed there the men were the worst I have ever experienced in terms of catcalling Martin said the catcalling was so bad she decided never to go back to her sister’s house on foot again.

For some women safety and security is a big issue. While some, via a small Facebook sample, indicated they do feel safe, that safety went along with having to restrict movement and even becoming hyper vigilant of one’s surroundings. As Phoebe Ann Edwards said, “Yes I feel largely safe because of my lifestyle. I do not take many kinds of risks, I do not lime, I do not have a large number of friends and I am always aware of my surroundings...” This feeling of a lack of safety and security could stem from some of the reported gruesome murders of women and children in TT. Major headlines reported the body of a 20-year-old being found in a store’s warehouse, the throat of a 15-year-old being slit, the body of a 16-year-old San Raphael student murdered with her hands bound behind her back. In 2016 the murder of Japanese Asami Nagakiya rumbled throughout TT and the globe. But what causes this, is it history, is it the socialisation of men? For Folade Mutota, the executive director of Women Institute for Alternative Development (WINAD), the first step to addressing the root of violence against women and girls in TT starts with understanding the complexity of the matter. She said: “Collectively as a society, we need to acknowledge that violence against women is a very complex manifestation of the actual status of women in the society.” Mutota said often when comments or reports were made by TT’s leaders on the matter, a very simple approach was taken to a complex dilemma.

“You can’t talk about violence against women or gender-based violence without taking into account the violent evolution of our society.” She said a legislative framework influenced by the principle of gender equality was the next pillar upon which addressing gender-based violence should be placed. “If you don’t do that what you will be doing is trying to develop legislation in a void.” The third area has to be the area of policy development and implementation, she said. “If you don’t understand the complexity of the situation then you are not going to prioritise something like a gender policy for example,” she said.

While there is legislative framework to address the problem it was largely insufficient, she said.

“If you understood the complexities you would be reviewing your legislative framework on an on-going basis to make sure that you’re relevant, to make sure that it is timely in addressing women’s needs and to make sure that, really, you are doing cutting edge work.” Life, she added, is a dynamic thing as much as is the violence perpetrated against women and girls.

“A lot of what we are seeing and hearing about is because a lot of people are now more open to discussing violence but also people have social media that they can use. They put things up, a video and so on, you also have more media to cover these things.

“We have to remember what we see in the public domain is just a part, a potentially small part of what happens in women’s lives, in their homes, when they go out on dates, when they travel in taxis, at the workplace.” Governance was the last pillar stating that it was important for leaders to have a continuing, on-going, mutually respectful conversation with women’s organisations and women who are working in communities about their lived experiences.

For a future one must make peace with the past For Sunity Maharaj, managing director of the Lloyd Best Institute and facilitator of Side by Side, a civil society organisation, there are several societal measures which need to be implemented for women’s and girls’ safety in TT . In emailed responses, she highlighted measures such as, amendments to the Domestic Violence Act; implementation of electronic monitoring for breeches of protection orders; strengthening of the administration and enforcement of protection orders; establishment of the national DNA database; promotion of sexual harassment policies in the workplace and enactment of legislation to provide protection against cyber crimes including bullying, stalking, revenge porn among others.

But at the root of all violence, be it sexual or otherwise, lies TT ’s history.

Maharaj said the “unjust system of European appropriation of the islands of the Caribbean” gave birth to the violence experienced in TT and the wider Caribbean today.

“We have come a long way in claiming our rights and freedoms but there remain large issues of justice still to be settled. Until that is done, it will be difficult to negotiate the peace that would allow us to settle down and start the job of building a nation on terms of mutual respect...

To achieve peace in the present, we have to find a way to make peace with the past,” she said.

While everyone bore some responsibility for their personal safety, the extent to which one could do so was limited by conditions beyond one’s control, she said.

This is where, she added, “the responsibility falls to Parliament, the Executive and the Judiciary to create and uphold a safe and secure society in accordance with four (a) of the Constitution, that is “the right of the individual to life, liberty, security of the person and enjoyment of property and the right not to be deprived thereof except by due process of law.” While for some, any conversation around violence against women and girls comes with negative talk of men, Maharaj reminded that while all ethnic groups have come out of patriarchal cultures, in the Caribbean, one needed to remember the complete dehumanisation of Caribbean men which occurred. She said: “In the aftermath of colonial repression, we have been trying to figure out who we are and how we should relate to each other.” Womantra: TT is both progressive and regressive on gender equity and equality When the name Womantra is mentioned there are several takes one might have on it, but the force with which the group rounded-up hundreds of women in the aftermath of Nagakiya’s murder cannot be denied. The group is famously and to some, infamously, known for having led to the removal of former Port-of-Spain mayor Raymond Tim Kee and is often chided for its perceived selective treatment of key women’s issues.

But for its founder and co-director Stephanie Leitch violence against women in TT is a matter of culture and socialisation.

Leitch, too, said history plays an integral role in what happens today. She said in emailed responses: “Violence against women is rooted in our very history and colonial socialisation.

When we tell our boys and men that to ‘be a man’ and to be ‘masculine’ they must be aggressive, we socialise them to understand that violence and aggression are necessary parts of their identity.

We also insist that masculinity is powerful, and thereby train them to use violence as a tool for maintaining power.

This works in tandem with the disempowerment of women and girls through the insistence that femininity is equated with weakness and is subordinate to masculinity, as well as with the disenfranchisement of women in economic and political spheres.” She agrees the Caribbean needed to revisit its gender constructs.

“The TT and Caribbean have very rigid and toxic views around gender that contribute to the culture of violence, and specifically gender-based violence and work to marginalise groups of people who do not conform to what is considered ‘normal’.” While the country’s establishment of a gender unit and while its makes provisions for education on gender, the country does not have functioning systems in place to monitor, “[the] situation of gender-related issues nor implemented policy to help inform the responses to gender-related issues, which made it an “anomalous country that is both progressive and regressive simultaneously” in comparison to global standards.

No where to be safe But for women like Helen Kennedy there is quite no where in TT to be safe. “I feel unsafe almost everywhere in Trinidad. I never know when someone who was socialised to think that he/she should make no effort but should live high on the hog, would attack me to relieve me of my hard-earned possession, my dignity and possibly my life. The problem is exacerbated by those who believe that once they invest in advanced security strategies, they’re good to go and should therefore be unconcerned about those who are unable to protect themselves.

In other words we have evolved into a very selfish society...”