Ryan Ba­choo

Lead Ed­i­tor-News­gath­er­ing

ryan.ba­choo@cnc3.co.tt

Dr Mar­lene Attzs has emerged as one of the most es­teemed and trust­ed faces of econ­o­mists in the coun­try. She is on the most-want­ed list of me­dia hous­es when bud­get sea­son beck­ons and is a use­ful re­source for elec­tion cy­cles.

The econ­o­my is cen­tral to every­one, from the busi­ness­man to the lay­man, and for the lat­ter, Dr Attzs has emerged as a voice that speaks a lan­guage they un­der­stand. That was in­stilled in her by the late Prof Den­nis Pan­tin who lec­tured Dr Attzs at uni­ver­si­ty and still serves as an in­spi­ra­tion. “He was a bril­liant aca­d­e­m­ic who be­lieved that eco­nom­ics was about peo­ple. His life’s work was about peo­ple in the econ­o­my, and that is a max­im that I try to live by. How do you sup­port process­es, what­ev­er they may be, that try to im­prove the lives and liveli­hoods of the peo­ple of T&T?”

A San Fer­nan­di­an by birth, Dr Attzs has be­come a fre­quent on tele­vi­sion news, ra­dio pro­grammes and in the news­pa­pers. How­ev­er, on In­ter­na­tion­al Women’s Day, we want­ed to go be­hind the num­bers and ex­plore the life of a woman who has risen to promi­nence in her field of eco­nom­ics.

Men­tor­ship is im­por­tant

Dr Attzs stud­ied for a PhD in Eco­nom­ics with a fo­cus on cli­mate change, per­haps the first at­ten­tion to be paid to the so­cio-eco­nom­ic cli­mate change is­sues in this part of the world. This year marks 20 years since she at­tained her PhD and be­came Dr Attzs. Over the last two decades, her voice has be­come in­creas­ing­ly sought af­ter to analyse the coun­try’s eco­nom­ic po­si­tion and out­look.

As a change, we asked her to analyse the life of women in T&T.

Dr Attzs replied, “If you re­flect on our his­to­ry, we have made sig­nif­i­cant strides. Think about things like how women have high­er life ex­pectan­cies than men (men 73 and women 80), which means that things are im­prov­ing for women. Our mor­tal­i­ty rate has sig­nif­i­cant­ly im­proved com­pared to decades ago, so life has im­proved, but of course, there are im­prove­ments we would like to see hap­pen in T&T.”

The ele­phant in the room is do­mes­tic vi­o­lence. Be­tween March 2020 and March 2022, there were 6,250 do­mes­tic vi­o­lence cas­es. Do­mes­tic vi­o­lence re­ports have sky­rock­et­ed by 42 per cent since 2021. “It is the fly in the oint­ment,” Dr Attzs said. The econ­o­mist went fur­ther in ex­plain­ing that some women, be­cause of their do­mes­tic cir­cum­stances, may not want to ad­vance their ca­reers for fear that their part­ner may not take kind­ly to that, or may have in­se­cu­ri­ties.

Men, she said, play a cen­tral role in elim­i­nat­ing such bar­ri­ers for women. “These are the kinds of is­sues that we need to look at. It’s re­al­ly a so­cial­i­sa­tion. We need to look at how we so­cialise our boys and our young men so that they recog­nise women need to be af­ford­ed cer­tain op­por­tu­ni­ties, and ca­reer ad­vance­ment for a woman does not in any way negate her de­sire to be a home­mak­er, a wife or a moth­er but things have changed. Do­mes­tic vi­o­lence must not be some­thing that stymies ca­reer ad­vance­ment, growth or recog­ni­tion of women in T&T.”

De­spite the set­backs, Dr Attzs is en­cour­aged by the lev­el of am­bi­tion she sees em­a­nat­ing from women in this coun­try. “At our Of­fice of Uni­ver­si­ty Plan­ning at the Uni­ver­si­ty of the West In­dies, you look at the sta­tis­tics of en­rol­ment, there are far more fe­males en­rolling across the fac­ul­ties ex­cept for en­gi­neer­ing and sport, which means they want to as­pire to hold high of­fice. They want to as­pire to be lead­ers and game chang­ers in their re­spec­tive pro­fes­sions. They want to take their place in so­ci­ety.”

How­ev­er, Dr Attzs warns our young women are par­tic­u­lar­ly vul­ner­a­ble to the ef­fects of so­cial me­dia in the dig­i­tal age. She said it was easy to get caught up in the re­al­i­ty TV shows. “I think our ac­cess to so­cial me­dia re­al­ly has cre­at­ed a false sense of re­al­i­ty for our young women and this is why I say I think the men­tor­ship is im­por­tant. It be­gins at home. Their so­cial­i­sa­tion in the home needs to recog­nise that their core val­ues need to be re­in­forced at the school lev­el in terms of how you dress and what you post on so­cial me­dia. We have to es­tab­lish some bound­aries.”

Dr Attzs hopes young women in T&T use the oc­ca­sion of In­ter­na­tion­al Women’s Day to un­der­stand the strides that have been made, the recog­ni­tion that comes with be­ing a woman as well as the chal­lenges and em­brace them as op­posed to look­ing for short­cuts. “Liv­ing life out on so­cial me­dia is not re­al­ly what it is about,” she added.

Ground­ed in faith, dri­ven by coun­try

Buoyed by what she sees, Dr Attzs ad­mits she’s a na­tion­al­ist. “I love my coun­try,” she said with a smile. She goes fur­ther in adding there is no short­age of tal­ent and we have the right peo­ple, the right minds, the right lev­el of com­mit­ment “but there is some­thing in be­tween the com­mit­ment and ac­tu­al­ly ex­e­cut­ing and im­ple­ment­ing that is pre­vent­ing us from be­ing bet­ter than we al­ready are.” She would like us to fo­cus on some­thing–whether it is crime and se­cu­ri­ty or ed­u­ca­tion which ul­ti­mate­ly re­dounds to the ben­e­fit of the peo­ple of the coun­try.

For some­one who has found her­self in the spot­light of na­tion­al at­ten­tion, when asked if she would con­sid­er a life in pol­i­tics giv­en the 2025 gen­er­al elec­tion is on the hori­zon, she said, “They say nev­er say nev­er. It de­pends on what the di­vine plan is and what plan the uni­verse has for me. They say nev­er say nev­er. If that is God’s plan, he will send me a very clear mes­sage be­cause I will need a very clear mes­sage about en­ter­ing pol­i­tics.”

That di­vine plan stems from a life deep-root­ed in her faith. Dr Attzs is Ro­man Catholic. “My re­li­gion is my core. My re­li­gion is my cen­tre,” she said. It is based on her re­li­gion she goes about life each day. She added, “It is my guid­ing light and guid­ing prin­ci­ples. It is what keeps me go­ing on a week­ly ba­sis and on a dai­ly ba­sis be­cause I be­lieve in the di­vine. I be­lieve there is a di­vine plan. I be­lieve in God’s plan for my life.”

Dr Attzs would like to see more young peo­ple in­volved in re­li­gion as an an­swer to the many so­ci­etal ills the coun­try faces. She went fur­ther in say­ing, “At the heart of what is hap­pen­ing, and the dis­ar­ray and de­cay that we are see­ing with our young peo­ple is the fact that they are not ground­ed and I think re­li­gion had pro­vid­ed me and oth­ers with a ground­ing and a per­spec­tive in life.”

One of her long­time in­spi­ra­tions was the late Sis­ter Phyl­lis Wharfe, whom Dr Attzs met dur­ing her sec­ondary school days at St Joseph’s Con­vent, San Fer­nan­do. “She rep­re­sent­ed for me, even then, all that I would want to be; nev­er a nun, mind you, but a good leader, a woman of prop­er sub­stance and ex­treme­ly ar­tic­u­late. She was an out­stand­ing fe­male.”

From hob­bies to high­lights

When Dr Attzs is not crunch­ing the num­bers as an econ­o­mist, she finds plea­sure in cook­ing and is an avid mu­sic fan with no par­tic­u­lar favourite genre. She jokes, “From Bil­ly Paul, George Ben­son to Mi­cal Te­ja to gospel to Bu­ju Ban­ton if you were to turn on my playlist now, any num­ber of things would pop out. You’d ask, ‘How is she mov­ing from Don­nie Mc­Clurkin to Machel Mon­tano to Ben­derel­la?’”

Be­yond all of the aca­d­e­m­ic ac­co­lades Dr Attzs has racked up over the years, she said it was ful­fill­ing to see some of her stu­dents be­come pol­i­cy­mak­ers and lead­ers in their own right. One of the high­lights of her pro­fes­sion­al life hap­pened dur­ing the height of the COVID-19 pan­dem­ic. She was asked to lead a small team that took re­spon­si­bil­i­ty for the Pe­nal/Debe cam­pus which was used as part of the par­al­lel health­care sys­tem. She worked with pub­lic ser­vants from the Min­istry of Health, T&T De­fence Force, T&T Po­lice Ser­vice and sev­er­al oth­er state agen­cies. “The pop­u­la­tion didn’t know what was hap­pen­ing, and that ex­pe­ri­ence re­in­forced and heart­ened me that we have tal­ent in T&T and we are com­mit­ted to our coun­try. Here we were in the mid­dle of a cri­sis and all of these un­known en­ti­ties that had not pre­vi­ous­ly worked to­geth­er sim­ply came to­geth­er and worked tire­less­ly be­hind the scenes,” she re­called.

Women must lift women up

As the world con­tin­ues to recog­nise the con­tri­bu­tion of women post In­ter­na­tion­al Women’s Day, Dr Attzs wants women to lift women. “We have to re­mem­ber that no one must be left be­hind,” she said. “While we are ad­vanc­ing and some women are at a more ad­vanced lev­el than oth­ers, we need to en­sure we can help our sis­ters by their shoe­strings. That in­cludes the sin­gle moth­ers who are try­ing to get their chil­dren to school and the sin­gle moth­ers who have to leave home in the dark and re­turn in the dark, and they have safe­ty and se­cu­ri­ty con­cerns, we have to en­sure all of our women have the op­por­tu­ni­ty to self-ac­tu­alise so at the end of the day we can say we the women of T&T have ad­vanced.”