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.