Jew­el Greene

Eman­ci­pa­tion in the Caribbean, re­ferred to as the abo­li­tion of slav­ery in the British West In­dies colonies, for­mal­ly took ef­fect on Au­gust 1, 1834, with the Slav­ery Abo­li­tion Act of 1833, which was pre­cip­i­tat­ed by the Hait­ian Slave Re­bel­lion of the late 1790s. It was orig­i­nal­ly led by an en­slaved Dut­ty Book­man of Ja­maica and then led by a Hait­ian black slave own­er, Tou­s­saint Lou­ver­ture.

Eman­ci­pa­tion, how­ev­er, was fol­lowed by a sub­se­quent pe­ri­od of ap­pren­tice­ship which came to an end in 1838. How­ev­er, al­though eman­ci­pat­ed, the women in Trinidad and To­ba­go, like else­where glob­al­ly, faced sig­nif­i­cant civ­il rights lim­i­ta­tions and in­jus­tices af­fect­ing their self-worth and dig­ni­ty.

So, on a sum­mer day in New York, when a young house­wife and moth­er, Eliz­a­beth Cady Stan­ton, was in­vit­ed to tea with four women friends, there is small won­der why the con­ver­sa­tion turned to the sit­u­a­tion of women. Stan­ton poured out her dis­con­tent, to which her small group of friends pas­sion­ate­ly agreed. You see the women in Amer­i­ca had not gained any more free­doms in their new Re­pub­lic, than the eman­ci­pat­ed women of the Caribbean. They were not the first women to have such a con­ver­sa­tion but his­to­ry records them as the first to plan and car­ry out a spe­cif­ic, large-scale pro­gramme.

In 1848, women were not al­lowed to vote, hold elec­tive of­fice, at­tend col­lege (since no col­lege or uni­ver­si­ty would ac­cept women stu­dents), own prop­er­ty, earn a liv­ing, and if mar­ried, they could not make le­gal con­tracts, di­vorce an abu­sive hus­band, or gain cus­tody of their chil­dren. They were is­sued an in­fe­ri­or role in the church. Most oc­cu­pa­tions were closed to women and if per­mit­ted by their hus­bands to work, they were not al­lowed to en­ter the pro­fes­sion of med­i­cine or law and the wages they earned (which would be a frac­tion of what men earned for the same job) tech­ni­cal­ly be­longed to their hus­bands.

Eliz­a­beth Sta­ton and long-time friend Lu­cre­tia Mott placed a small an­nounce­ment in the Seneca Coun­ty Couri­er, call­ing for “A con­ven­tion to dis­cuss the so­cial, civ­il, and re­li­gious con­di­tion and rights of woman.” The gath­er­ing took take place at the Wes­leyan Chapel in Seneca Falls on Ju­ly 19 and 20, 1848. It was called the Seneca Falls Con­ven­tion and there, 68 women and 32 men signed a De­c­la­ra­tion of Sen­ti­ments out­lin­ing griev­ances that set the agen­da for the women’s rights move­ment. A set of 12 res­o­lu­tions was adopt­ed, call­ing for equal treat­ment of women and men un­der the law and vot­ing rights (suf­frage) for women.

In 1865, Eliz­a­beth Cady Stan­ton and Su­san B. An­tho­ny formed the Amer­i­can Equal Rights As­so­ci­a­tion, for white women, black women and men, to­wards the goal of uni­ver­sal suf­frage.

One hun­dred and sev­en­ty-sev­en (177) years lat­er, In­ter­na­tion­al Women’s Day (IWD) and Women’s His­to­ry Month 2025, pre­sent­ed an op­por­tu­ni­ty to re­flect on the achieve­ments and on­go­ing chal­lenges in the strug­gle for women’s rights across the Caribbean and specif­i­cal­ly in Trinidad and To­ba­go. As the world com­mem­o­rat­ed this sig­nif­i­cant progress and chal­lenges of the women’s rights move­ment at the 69th Com­mis­sion on the Sta­tus of Women (CSW69) from March 10-21, 2025, it was im­por­tant that we did so as well, but on a lo­cal lev­el.

When in­vit­ed to par­tic­i­pate in the third an­nu­al To­ba­go House of As­sem­bly (THA) Leg­is­la­ture In­ter­na­tion­al Women’s Day De­bate, I saw it as an op­por­tu­ni­ty to con­tribute in some small way. To join the ranks of the coura­geous women who had fought for Eman­ci­pa­tion in the Hait­ian Slave Re­bel­lion, who start­ed the Women’s Rights Move­ment in 1848, and who fought for the con­tin­ued ad­vance­ment of the civ­il rights of women in the Caribbean, such as Queen Nan­ny of the Ja­maican Ma­roons, born in 1680 in Ghana, a fierce de­fend­er of a com­mu­ni­ty of es­caped en­slaved peo­ple, or Au­drey Jef­fers, born in 1898 in Trinidad and To­ba­go, who paved the way for many Caribbean women to be­come lead­ers in so­ci­ety, or El­ma Fran­cois, born in 1897 in St Vin­cent and the Grenadines, who moved to T&T and be­came a labour ac­tivist, or Dame Geor­gian­na Robin­son, born in 1880 in An­tigua and Bar­bu­da, who opened their first sec­ondary school. Or St Lu­cian, gen­der-based vi­o­lence (GBV) ac­tivist Ione Er­linger-Forde and count­less oth­er women, all found in the ebook “I Lead, Sto­ries of Caribbean Women Lead­ers.”

By par­tic­i­pat­ing in the de­bate, I was do­ing my very small part. The de­bate this year sought to bring aware­ness to the top­ic of pe­ri­od pover­ty.

“Pe­ri­od pover­ty is a very re­al is­sue that af­fects mil­lions, lim­it­ing ac­cess to men­stru­al prod­ucts, ed­u­ca­tion, and ba­sic hy­giene. It is not just a women’s is­sue (a per­son who men­stru­ates) but a hu­man is­sue with wide­spread so­cial and eco­nom­ic im­pacts. En­sur­ing ac­cess to men­stru­al prod­ucts for per­sons who men­stru­ate equals the play­ing field in the ar­eas of health and dig­ni­ty. But be­yond just ac­cess, we must al­so break the stig­ma sur­round­ing men­stru­a­tion. The word ‘pe­ri­od’ has been shroud­ed in un­nec­es­sary taboo and neg­a­tive lan­guage for far too long. Open­ing con­ver­sa­tions and ed­u­ca­tion for all re­gard­less of gen­der care es­sen­tial to dis­man­tling mis­in­for­ma­tion and shame. Pe­ri­od pover­ty must be ad­dressed, and men­stru­a­tion must be nor­malised. By speak­ing up and tak­ing ac­tion, we can cre­ate a world where no one is held back be­cause of a God-giv­en nat­ur­al bi­o­log­i­cal process” —Tian­nah Win­ches­ter, Sig­nal Hill Sec­ondary School stu­dent and 2025 de­bate par­tic­i­pant.

“Women and girls lack aware­ness and are un­pre­pared for their pe­ri­ods. Al­so pol­i­cy­mak­ers and adults with de­ci­sion-mak­ing pow­er in schools and work­places al­so lack com­pre­hen­sive men­stru­al ed­u­ca­tion” —Em­manuel­la Trim, Sig­nal Hill Sec­ondary School (class of 2018) Ac­count­ing and Busi­ness Man­age­ment fo­cus and 2025 de­bate par­tic­i­pant.

How­ev­er, I was as­signed to de­bate the top­ic of pe­ri­od pover­ty in the against po­si­tion of the ar­gu­ment. This de­bate was not sim­ply an ex­er­cise—it test­ed me and pre­sent­ed a rare op­por­tu­ni­ty for iron to sharp­en iron against re­al-world op­po­si­tion. While many take com­fort in stand­ing on the af­fir­ma­tive side of the top­ic, I firm­ly be­lieve that we must ful­ly em­brace the op­pos­ing stance (ar­gu­ments against progress) to strength­en our abil­i­ty to dis­man­tle them, no mat­ter the dis­com­fort. Know­ing your op­po­nent’s play­book is how you win the fight for women’s rights.

While I had this epiphany, I re­alised that as a woman, what I re­al­ly want­ed was fi­nan­cial in­clu­sion, em­pow­er­ment and free­dom. Fi­nan­cial free­dom through my abil­i­ty to build wealth and sys­tems that while in­di­vid­u­al­ly tai­lor-made to suit the life I cre­at­ed, it would en­able me to al­so elim­i­nate pe­ri­od pover­ty from my life in ways that worked for me. That al­so led me to an­oth­er epiphany; while fi­nan­cial free­dom should be at­tained to free me to pur­chase any fem­i­nine prod­ucts of my choos­ing and to pur­sue health­care modal­i­ties that I pre­ferred, a com­mu­ni­ty that was sen­si­tised and sen­si­tive to the myr­i­ad of pos­i­tives and neg­a­tives that ac­com­pa­ny men­stru­a­tion would al­so help to soothe any men­stru­a­tion as­so­ci­at­ed angst. A world where if I ran in­to dif­fi­cul­ty … a man could come to my aid with­out the dis­com­fort that gen­der norms and roles usu­al­ly bring to bear on such a sit­u­a­tion. A world where a sin­gle fa­ther does not have to ask a fe­male rel­a­tive to dis­cuss women is­sues with his chil­dren (fe­male or male). A world where the men­tion of sex­u­al re­pro­duc­tive health and ed­u­ca­tion is as nor­mal as a par­ent do­ing pot­ty train­ing.

As we con­tin­ue to In­ter­na­tion­al Women’s Day 2025, the Caribbean must cel­e­brate the achieve­ments made in ad­vanc­ing women’s rights while recog­nis­ing the work that re­mains. From po­lit­i­cal em­pow­er­ment to eco­nom­ic in­de­pen­dence and safe­ty from vi­o­lence, the fight for gen­der equal­i­ty is on­go­ing. Gov­ern­ments, busi­ness­es, and in­di­vid­u­als must con­tin­ue to push for mean­ing­ful change to en­sure that Caribbean women have equal op­por­tu­ni­ties to thrive. By fos­ter­ing in­clu­sion, ad­dress­ing sys­temic bar­ri­ers, and en­forc­ing stronger poli­cies, the re­gion can take sig­nif­i­cant strides to­ward gen­der eq­ui­ty in the years ahead.

Jew­el Greene is the pres­i­dent of To­ba­go Writer’s Guild which can be con­tact­ed via phone at +1 (868) 620-5799 or via email at to­bagowrit­ers­guild123@gmail.com