Women are not weaker sex

I am very heartened by the current movement by principally young women to change the mores of our society with regard to the treatment of women. Every generation has to contribute to the long march that is needed to undo the manipulation of the human heart and mind that goes back millennia and forced women to live with disadvantage, even in the most advanced societies.

As a young woman, I joined other women who fought internationally for what was top of the agenda then: the right to work in any industry and for equal pay; the right of women to have abortions if it saved their own lives, and to practise family planning.

In the generation before mine, women burnt their bras and dared to bare their bodies in daring clothes that conformed to no existing fashion laws. Long before them, women fought for the right to vote and own property. Women continued to build on the now solid body of academic, critical and social writing on feminism that has influenced much of today’s younger feminists. In literature that toil goes back centuries. Jane Austen was no shy feminist although other women writers hid behind male personas, such as George Eliot.

Virginia Woolf commented that much of poetry penned by Anon was by women, unable to enter the world of letters. Rebecca West wrote, exactly a century ago, “I myself have never been able to find out precisely what feminism is: I only know that people call me a feminist whenever I express sentiments that differentiate me from a doormat, or a prostitute.” We may have advanced in many ways but that sentiment is still pertinent today. Women are still deemed as “asking for it,” whatever “it” might be, if we do not conform to received ideas of what constitutes desirable female behaviour, either in the workplace, home, or bedroom.

Laws change culture, eventually, so that is where efforts must be focused. It is why certain religious elements are keen to block and discredit the proposed legislation that is now before the lower House on the outlawing of child marriage, which makes young girls the property of older men. They know that legislation underpins cultural norms, regardless of religious teaching.

When piloting the Bill on child marriage in the Senate, back in January, our Attorney General reminded us that the matter has been debated for 26 years in this country, and it still has not been finally resolved, so nobody underestimates the size of the challenge.

I should point out though that the progress made by women has been aided by men who saw the light and allied themselves with us; by men who acknowledge their responsibility for their own actions and who use their power to bring about change in the minds of other men.

In all the feminist actions that engaged me, men have been pivotal in effecting change as legislators, professionals and thinkers. I feel encouraged that men here are joining in the struggle via Men Against Violence.

The figure of one woman in every three being the victim of male violence in TT is alarming but not out of kilter with the unacceptably high incidence of violent crime.

Women can try to reform men but men must determine what is “real man” behaviour and what is not, and contest the stereotype of the strong man.

The biggest role however is that of the State in determining and enforcing the ways we are allowed to behave