Jesse Ramdeo

Women’s rights ac­tivists say while there is a lot to cel­e­brate on In­ter­na­tion­al Women’s Day (IWD), fo­cus must con­tin­ue on the chal­lenges im­ped­ing gen­der equal­i­ty and eq­ui­ty.

The ex­perts, who have been cham­pi­oning var­i­ous caus­es for women across so­ci­ety for years, lament­ed yes­ter­day that old is­sues con­tin­ue to plague the mod­ern woman.

They not­ed that sub­stan­tive ef­forts are need­ed to en­sure pledges made to­day are not over­shad­owed by cel­e­bra­tions.

In­ter­na­tion­al days are crit­i­cal to recog­nis­ing, ad­vo­cat­ing and rais­ing aware­ness of root­ed is­sues. Yes­ter­day, the glob­al com­mu­ni­ty seeks to di­al in and re­alise a gen­der equal world through In­ter­na­tion­al Women’s Day. This year’s theme was Em­brace Eq­ui­ty.

Dur­ing an in­ter­view yes­ter­day, Coali­tion Against Do­mes­tic Vi­o­lence gen­er­al man­ag­er Sab­ri­na Mowlah-Baksh said this year’s theme was par­tic­u­lar­ly poignant.

“Eq­ui­ty re­al­ly is a tool for en­abling gen­der equal­i­ty and so, it’s re­al­ly about en­sur­ing fair­ness and it’s a process of en­sur­ing fair­ness across the board, whether you are male, fe­male or gen­der di­verse, it’s all about the recog­ni­tion that we do not func­tion in a lev­el play­ing field and so that de­lib­er­ate in­ter­ven­tion strate­gies need to be put in place to en­sure that we all have fair ac­cess to every­thing that will en­able us as cit­i­zens, as men, women, chil­dren, how­ev­er we iden­ti­fy our­selves, to en­sure we can take up that role to con­tribute to our com­mu­ni­ty in the way that we want to.”

Mowlah-Baksh main­tained that de­spite thrusts for women’s in­clu­siv­i­ty, there con­tin­ued to be gaps which need­ed to be ur­gent­ly bridged.

“We still live in a so­ci­ety where 1 in every 3 women ex­pe­ri­ence is­sues of do­mes­tic vi­o­lence, in­ti­mate part­ner vi­o­lence and 1 in every 3 women stay silent about it. We have less than 50 per cent of women rep­re­sent­ing us in par­lia­ment, less than 50 per cent rep­re­sent­ed at the de­ci­sion lev­els. If we were to use these sta­tis­tics, we will clear­ly see we have a long way to go.”

In­ter­na­tion­al Women’s Re­source Net­work pres­i­dent Adri­ana San­drine Isaac-Rat­tan mean­while said steer­ing the eq­ui­ty com­pass in the right di­rec­tion re­mained par­tic­u­lar­ly dif­fi­cult for women in work.

Speak­ing via a Zoom in­ter­view, she said, “In the work space, par­tic­u­lar­ly when it comes to pro­mo­tion at the high­est lev­el, we still have some work to do there in terms of plac­ing women where they right­ful­ly be­long, as far as di­rec­tors, as far as CEO po­si­tions, yes we have made some head­ways but we still have some lit­tle flags there in terms of the gen­der gap­ping that you ref­er­enced Jesse, and I’m glad you raised it be­cause that is some­thing we see in North Amer­i­ca as well, change is hap­pen­ing in­cre­men­tal­ly.”

Shar­ing a sim­i­lar con­cern was Jacque­line Burgess, co­or­di­na­tor of the Net­work for NGOs of T&T for the Ad­vance­ment of Women.

Burgess said, “You would have women and men do­ing the same job ti­tle and the woman asked to do more than the man. You may find that in that same po­si­tion, they would find ways of pay­ing the man more than the women, they might send men on train­ing, they might say be­cause the woman has to see about a house­hold, she may not be able to trav­el and they would not give her the op­por­tu­ni­ty, so lit­tle things they use to keep that dif­fer­ence go­ing.”

Head of UWI’s In­sti­tute for Gen­der De­vel­op­ment Stud­ies, Dr Sue Ann Bar­ratt, not­ed that as so­ci­ety con­tin­ues to grap­ple with gen­der-based vi­o­lence and dis­crim­i­na­tion, it was im­per­a­tive to con­tin­ue the con­ver­sa­tion be­yond the in­ter­na­tion­al day alone.

“In terms of more long-term and sus­tain­able im­pacts, poli­cies that are de­vel­oped im­ple­ment­ed, leg­isla­tive frame­works, struc­tur­al frame­works that are im­ple­ment­ed main­tained, be­cause when it drops, peo­ple say that was just talk and not politi­cise our shared in­ter­ests, see be­yond. Un­til we de­cide to do that and recog­nise gen­der jus­tice is a shared con­cern, we then have to say what can I do.”

The ac­tivists and lead­ers all con­tend­ed that there were still steps to be tak­en to achieve a so­ci­ety free of bias, stereo­types and dis­crim­i­na­tion, but not­ed the path was im­ped­ed by few­er ob­sta­cles.