Geisha Kow­lessar

Sev­er­al women's groups and ac­tivists have ex­pressed out­rage at Prime Min­is­ter Dr Kei­th Row­ley for say­ing that women should choose their male com­pan­ions more wise­ly.

Among them was Di­ana Ma­habir-Wy­att, who said when she en­tered her of­fice yes­ter­day, all her fe­male em­ploy­ees were talk­ing about Row­ley's state­ments.

"They all felt very be­trayed that the Prime Min­is­ter was blam­ing women be­cause of the choic­es they made," she said

On Mon­day night at Mal­oney in the first in a se­ries of 14 Na­tion­al Con­ver­sa­tions, Row­ley made the com­ment in ref­er­ence to the spate of do­mes­tic-re­lat­ed killings of women in re­cent times.

"You called on the Prime Min­is­ter to do some­thing about crime. I am not in your bed­room, I am not in your choice of men," Row­ley said.

Sta­tis­tics from Vic­tim and Wit­ness Sup­port Unit of the T&T Po­lice Ser­vice show that be­tween 2005 and 2015, al­most 300 women were killed as a re­sult of do­mes­tic abuse, while there were some 7,000 re­port­ed cas­es of do­mes­tic abuse be­tween 2008 and 2015.

Yes­ter­day, Ma­habir-Wy­att said it was un­for­tu­nate that once again women are be­ing blamed.

"Women were be­ing blamed for not choos­ing prop­er­ly rather than the per­pe­tra­tor be­ing blamed for their ac­tion and vi­o­lence, and that is what one of the prob­lems is," she said, adding that in the last 12 months 40 women were killed as a re­sult of do­mes­tic vi­o­lence.

Not­ing that the Of­fice of the Prime Min­is­ter in­clud­ed a min­istry deal­ing with women's af­fairs, Ma­habir-Wy­att said Row­ley ought to be a role mod­el to men and ex­em­pli­fy what men should not be do­ing rather than blam­ing women's choic­es. She said this would make a dif­fer­ence in do­mes­tic vi­o­lence.

On whether Row­ley was be­ing crass and in­sen­si­tive, she said his com­ments re­flect­ed a "gen­er­al cul­tur­al at­ti­tude" that women are re­spon­si­ble when they are mo­lest­ed or killed.

"The state­ment is that women should chose bet­ter, not that men should cease vi­o­lence," she added.

Fem­i­nist ad­vo­ca­cy group Wom­antra ac­cused Row­ley of vic­tim blam­ing and said that type of be­hav­iour must stop.

The group's co-di­rec­tor, Khadi­ja Sinanan, said: "The Prime Min­is­ter's com­ments are dis­ap­point­ing to say the least, es­pe­cial­ly giv­en the un­prece­dent­ed acts of vi­o­lence against women, both in­side and out­side the bed­room."

She said the state­ments al­so showed a lack of sen­si­tiv­i­ty to­wards do­mes­tic vi­o­lence vic­tims.

"Too many men and women have fought hard against this back­ward idea that do­mes­tic vi­o­lence is peo­ple's pri­vate busi­ness and is a per­son­al is­sue.

"In­stead of blam­ing women for choos­ing the wrong men, per­haps Dr Row­ley's time would be bet­ter spent on pon­tif­i­cat­ing on his re­spon­si­bil­i­ty to the women and girls of this coun­try who are maimed, raped, de­filed and dis­ap­pear on a now dai­ly ba­sis. Stop blam­ing vic­tims and start pro­tect­ing them," Sinanan said.

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in­ter­est groups

Lec­tur­er and head of the In­sti­tute for Gen­der and De­vel­op­ment Stud­ies, Dr Gabrielle Ho­sein, said Row­ley's state­ments were "very dis­ap­point­ing," as they failed to recog­nise that vi­o­lence against women is not sim­ply about women's choic­es in re­la­tion­ships.

"This in fact takes place in a con­text where there is no gen­der based vi­o­lence sen­si­tiv­i­ty train­ing in schools. There is in­suf­fi­cient train­ing around gen­der based vi­o­lence pro­to­cols and re­spons­es among the po­lice and so­cial ser­vices, as well as the court sys­tem," Ho­sein, a colum­nist with the T&T Guardian, said.

She said the fun­da­men­tal mes­sage the Prime Min­is­ter should be send­ing is that women are not re­spon­si­ble for male vi­o­lence. Ho­sein rec­om­mend­ed that the PM con­vene an emer­gency meet­ing with women's or­gan­i­sa­tions to come up with strate­gies to deal with do­mes­tic vi­o­lence.

Al­so weigh­ing in on the is­sue was the Na­tion­al Trade Union Cen­tre (Natuc). In a re­lease, the union said for the past three weeks it had been high­light­ing the is­sue of sex­u­al ha­rass­ment in the work­place and call­ing for the re­moval of Dr Rolph Bal­go­b­in as chair­man of An­gos­tu­ra Hold­ings Lim­it­ed.

Natuc said women are not pow­er­less and urged them to raise their voic­es for the right to work in a safe en­vi­ron­ment, for the right to trav­el from place to place and feel safe, for the right to send their daugh­ters to school and wel­come them home at the end of the day.