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Saturday, February 22, 2025

Nicole Dyer- Griffith Forged in Fire

by

20110709

"Fem­i­nism means do­ing ex­act­ly what you want to do. If you de­cide to get mar­ried, have chil­dren, and man­age your house­hold, pow­er to you. If you want to go out, have a ca­reer, not have any chil­dren, pow­er to you. It boils down to what makes you hap­py."Nicole Dy­er-Grif­fith, re­cent­ly ap­point­ed Sen­a­tor and Par­lia­men­tary Sec­re­tary in the Min­istry of For­eign Af­fairs and Com­mu­ni­ca­tions, has tra­versed the ul­ti­mate fem­i­nist con­tin­u­um, from T&T's rep­re­sen­ta­tive in the Miss Uni­verse Pageant in 1999, to com­mu­ni­ca­tions ex­ec­u­tive, to en­tre­pre­neur, and now takes her place in Par­lia­ment.Each step of the way, she has learned some­thing new, honed her phi­los­o­phy on life, and re­fined her vi­sion for her­self as work­er, wife, moth­er and na­tion-builder.She doesn't see her Miss Uni­verse ex­pe­ri­ence as an­ti-fem­i­nist in the least. As far back as her pageant days in 1999, the con­cept of a woman's role in beau­ty pageants had be­gun to evolve.

"It's not so much about who looks bet­ter than whom. Pageant or­gan­is­ers are de­vot­ing more time and en­er­gy to the de­vel­op­ment of the per­son, so young women who have gone through the process will gain so much more."Per­son­al and pro­fes­sion­al de­vel­op­ment, es­pe­cial­ly for women, is high on Sen­a­tor Dy­er-Grif­fith's agen­da."Many peo­ple look at women's de­vel­op­men­tal pro­grammes with some triv­i­al­i­ty. It's un­for­tu­nate, be­cause the on­ly time you re­al­ly get an ap­pre­ci­a­tion of these women's pro­grammes is when you at­tend one."Fresh from the Re­gion­al Women's Col­lo­qui­um held in Trinidad in June, she's burn­ing with ideas about how she can play a role in trans­form­ing the lot of women in T&T, and is more sen­si­tised to the uni­ver­sal­i­ty of the fe­male ex­pe­ri­ence."The one thing that con­nect­ed most of the women there is that we have to fig­ure how we're go­ing to man­age our fam­i­ly life and our pro­fes­sion­al life. We have to fig­ure out how to break the glass ceil­ing and de­mand the same wages as our male coun­ter­parts. It was a good ex­pe­ri­ence to share strate­gies and so­lu­tions, and come up with a con­ven­tion that would recog­nise the role of women across bor­ders."

When it comes to man­ag­ing her own fam­i­ly life, Sen­a­tor Dy­er-Grif­fith faces the ad­di­tion­al chal­lenge of her hus­band, Cap­tain Gary Grif­fith, al­so be­ing ac­tive in pol­i­tics.But she's de­ter­mined not to let her 8-year-old son be sucked in by the un­der­tow. She in­volves him in her work where ap­pro­pri­ate, to make sure he gains an un­der­stand­ing of her role in the com­plex gov­ern­men­tal ma­chin­ery. Oth­er­wise, he's hap­py to be cared for by her net­work of fam­i­ly sup­port, and she's hap­py to let him.Just about two weeks in­to her sen­a­to­r­i­al port­fo­lio, she's busy meet­ing the peo­ple she'll be work­ing with, and gain­ing an un­der­stand­ing of her new re­spon­si­bil­i­ties, but in­sists that she's not 'set­tling in'. "When you set­tle, dust gath­ers on you," she says with alaugh.Sen­a­tor Dy­er-Grif­fith takes the time to com­mend women's rights ad­vo­cate, Hazel Brown, for help­ing to steer her along the rough and thorny path of pol­i­tics."I at­tend­ed Put a Woman, a spe­cial train­ing pro­gramme she has for women in pol­i­tics, across the par­ties."She even goes as far as to sug­gest that Ms. Brown ex­pand her pro­gramme to in­clude fe­male ex­ec­u­tives, rather than just politi­cians."She's tire­less. She's de­serv­ing of every award she gets."She doesn't think the hul­la­baloo sur­round­ing her and the un­pop­u­lar host­ing of the Miss Uni­verse Pageant in Trinidad has done any harm, ei­ther to her ego or to her pub­lic im­age.

"If it didn't make me stronger, I wouldn't be here. It was like walk­ing through a fire. Now, it's not that fire can't burn me, but I'm pre­pared for it. "Af­ter hav­ing tried her hand at nurs­ing, beau­ty con­tests, com­mu­ni­ca­tions and busi­ness man­age­ment, why choose pol­i­tics as the next world to con­quer?"Pol­i­tics chose me," she clar­i­fies. "It has to, or you're not go­ing to stay in the game long." Like many moth­ers, her de­ci­sion to be­come ac­tive was born out of a need to make this a bet­ter place for her young son. "I felt stirred; I want­ed not just to com­plain from an arm­chair.I de­cid­ed to be a part of it and see if I could do it my­self." Af­ter COP's de­feat in 2007, she al­most had sec­ond thoughts. She re­turned to the cor­po­rate world, but the lure of the snap elec­tion was too much to re­sist.Ul­ti­mate­ly, she doesn't see the shift from busi­ness to pol­i­tics as a dras­tic change. As a com­mu­ni­ca­tions ex­ec­u­tive, she re­lied on the phi­los­o­phy of trans­for­ma­tion­al lead­er­ship, and in her new po­si­tion, it's no dif­fer­ent."You must be the change you want," she says. "I am sur­round­ed by trans­for­ma­tion­al lead­ers, par­tic­u­lar­ly women lead­ers, from my Prime Min­is­ter to my moth­er. Women who have blazed the trail and chart­ed their des­tinies, and in whom we can say we are well pleased."


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