Yvonne Ba­boolal

Dressed like a ba­by doll, Hazel Brown, co-or­di­na­tor of the Net­work of Non-gov­ern­men­tal Or­gan­i­sa­tions of T&T for the Ad­vance­ment of Women, stood be­fore a mi­cro­phone and sum­moned the "sis­ters" on the Bri­an Lara Prom­e­nade yes­ter­day to a march through Port-of-Spain to com­mem­o­rate In­ter­na­tion­al Women's Day. In her glit­ter­ing yel­low ba­by doll dress and hat and hold­ing a doll on a brown pil­low, Brown led the women marchers through the city. "I'm us­ing this as an ad­vo­ca­cy tool to get out the mes­sage of em­pow­er­ing women," she said, ex­plain­ing the ba­by doll look.

In her hand, Brown held up a plac­ard which told her mes­sage: "Where is the na­tion­al com­mis­sion on women?" She said: "Two years ago the Prime Min­is­ter said she would cre­ate an in­de­pen­dent com­mis­sion to deal with is­sues re­lat­ing to women. "I spoke to her and she said she had writ­ten a note or some­thing about it." Be­fore her walk, in­side her booth, she asked: "Where is the na­tion­al gen­der pol­i­cy? She fur­ther ex­plained, "A Cab­i­net com­mit­tee was ap­point­ed to re­vise the gen­der pol­i­cy which has been in the mak­ing for 25 years."

The Net­work of NGOs al­so was wait­ing on word about the re­vi­sion of the pol­i­cy, she said. The or­gan­i­sa­tion set up sev­er­al booths re­lat­ing to women's is­sues along the prom­e­nade through which women, and a scat­ter­ing of men, passed, most­ly watch­ing. A woman, dressed like a pier­rot grenade Car­ni­val char­ac­ter, stood in a cor­ner of the breast-feed­ing booth feed­ing a fake ba­by with an ar­ti­fi­cial breast. "I want­ed a cos­tume very quick­ly," Mau­reen Ho­sein-Ali ex­plained from be­neath a large colour­ful hat. "The pier­rot grenade is al­so fe­male, too," she not­ed.