Towards gender equality

In Trinidad and Tobago many events are planned, including a march to be held on the weekend.

The Caribbean Alliance Against Gender-based Violence will be hosting a solidarity rally on Saturday at the Hollows, Queen’s Park Savannah, from 3 to 7 pm, not far from the site of the discovery of the body of murdered Japanese steel pan player Asami Nagakiya.

But whatever activities take place this week, this issue is one that requires sustained, long-term action.

The unacceptably high levels of violence directed at women is the first place we need to start. The nation has been rocked by a series of murders and attacks on women.

These incidents are not new. Sadly, they reflect a penchant on the part of society to dehumanise and objectify women. On Sunday, Chief Magistrate Marcia Ayers-Caesar diagnosed, correctly in our view, part of the problem.

“Our brothers have to understand we are not property and I think that’s the thinking, even in 2017, from a lot of men,” Ayers-Caesar said. “Women are not property and if you’re in a relationship and that relationship for whatever reason is not going the way you would like it to be, then we need to be mature and step away from that relationship.” The Chief Magistrate also noted the intergenerational nature of this problem.

“We need to come together as adults to do what is best in the interest of our children, because at the end of the day it makes no sense, a mother or father who cannot get along and then one kills the other and inevitably commits suicide,” Ayers-Caesar said. “This is trend we have been seeing and we leave these children as orphans. A lot of parents do not realise how they interfere with the psyche of their children.” But it is not just parents who play a role in this but responsible adults as a whole in all sectors of life including the arts, the media and the Police Service. The recently concluded Carnival season was a case in point.

One groovy soca, by Orlando Octave, observed, “Plenty gyal have man acting like they single.” Octave himself has been at pains to send a message of positivity at several Carnival events and he has even urged audiences to remember to fight the problem of violence against women.

That notwithstanding, his soca, in singling out the female sex, contributes to our social malaise. It should not be news that women, just like men, are sexual and can have multiple partners. If this is news, it is because society has refused to face up to the truth: women are entitled to the same status as men.

But the arts can be used to positively address these issues, and a good example of this is the ongoing installation by the artist Richards Rawlins at Alice Yard, Woodbrook, which takes a simple object, the dress, and turns it into a haunting symbol of what has gone wrong in Trinidad and Tobago.

The Chief Magistrate also commented on another aspect of the problem, which is the failure of the State to adequately resource the agencies that must act as first responders to violence against women.

Specifically, she noted room for improvement in the Police Service when it comes to the enforcement of domestic orders.

“More can be done and I think there must be some sort of sensitisation of police officers,” she said.

“It comes down to a matter of life and death in most.” The Chief Magistrate’s public comments, which came at a service at the Holy Trinity Cathedral to commemorate International Women’s Day, are a shining example of a senior public official taking the requisite moral stance. It’s time for our politicians, too, including Prime Minister Dr Keith Rowley, to follow suit.