In­nis Fran­cis

"Women, con­tin­ue to let your daugh­ters en­ter fields they want to en­ter," were the words of ad­vice giv­en by Am­bas­sador Joan Yuille-Williams to women who formed part of a Women's Day Walk in San Fer­nan­do, on Mon­day–In­ter­na­tion­al Women's Day. "Three decades ago, women did not have the pow­er to make de­ci­sions. To­day that has changed," said the for­mer Gov­ern­ment min­is­ter. Yuille-Williams was speak­ing to a large gath­er­ing of women who braved the blis­ter­ing mid­day sun and walked from the OW­TU build­ing at Cir­cu­lar Road, to Har­ris Prom­e­nade in San Fer­nan­do.

In keep­ing with the theme recog­nised by Unit­ed Na­tions–Equal Rights, Equal Op­por­tu­ni­ty, Progress for All–the women con­verged at the band stand on the Prom­e­nade in full sup­port of the Min­istry of Fi­nance and the Un­em­ploy­ment Re­lief Women's Pro­gramme's first In­ter­na­tion­al Women's Day Walk. Yuille-Williams, in her ef­forts to en­cour­age con­ti­nu­ity of "women's strug­gle," urged them to do more writ­ing, which would al­so af­ford them mar­ketabil­i­ty in so­ci­ety. She said: "Women, you need to do more in your writ­ing. We must ap­plaud the Gov­ern­ment for the op­por­tu­ni­ties they have giv­en to us. We have en­tered pro­grammes that are no longer male dom­i­nat­ed; ar­eas we were first not ac­cept­ed in, now we can walk and hold our heads up high. We have skills, and we need to con­tribute to Trinidad and To­ba­go.

"Women, we need to hear your voic­es! If all the de­ci­sions are made by men, it is be­cause you did not come for­ward in the de­ci­sion-mak­ing process. "We don't want to seem as if we are bash­ing the men, be­cause we have sons; en­cour­age both your sons and daugh­ters to be well round­ed." Yuille-Williams al­so said, women have as­cend­ed and have served in high port­fo­lios in Par­lia­ment. "The Min­istry of Fi­nance is led by a women and that is said to be the hard­est Min­istry in Gov­ern­ment," she added. Man­ag­er of In­ter­na­tion­al Women's Day ac­tiv­i­ties, He­len Whar­ton, al­so told the women not to lim­it them­selves and that they could do any­thing they put their minds too.

A strong con­tin­gent of women in the Po­lice, Fire and Air Guard ser­vices was al­so vis­i­ble per­form­ing du­ties con­sis­tent with their port­fo­lios. Some al­so per­formed out­side their as­signed du­ties to ren­der songs–Fire of­fi­cer Remis Mod­este sang Hero and her col­league, Car­la Gar­cia, per­formed an ex­hil­a­rat­ing ver­sion of I Don't Know About To­mor­row. Oth­er en­ter­tain­ment saw URP mem­ber Pa­tri­cia Ford singing her own ca­lyp­so–(Aids) Ah Fraid–and Teni­cia Babb singing Mer­cy.