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.
