Four women given prominence in this week’s Business Guardian, multiplied thousands of times over, are reasons why International Women’s Day 2023 is so special for us here in T&T.
There are many aspects of their stories which make it so. One, Ms Natasha Davis, Dr Priya Marajh, Ms Rhonda Landreth-Smith and Ms Pria Narinesingh, represent, if not completely, a quite wide cross-section of society’s different ethnic and social groups.
Two, that society continues to be one in which male dominance prevails. Moreover, that age-old privilege is aided and abetted by systems, perspectives and day-to-day blockages which retard the advancement and development of women in the world of work and in social and human relationships.
Their experiences, both positive and negative, must provide guidelines for T&T.
The variety of careers of the women range through engineering, business and finance, management and creative endeavours.
That fact shows that women can no longer be pigeon-holed into narrow confines which previously spoke of “women’s work” – the now infamous categorisation by Prime Minister Dr Eric Williams of creating a “Kitchen Cabinet” for female ministers being an example of an age thankfully gone.
Through persistence and far-sightedness, although originating from one of the many stigmatised communities in the country, Laventille, Ms Davis transferred in a very pragmatic and far-sighted manner, dictated by the market, to university pursuit of business and finance to reach the position of T&T Unit Trust Corporation COO.
Ms Narinesingh has been allowed by the policy dictates of international auditing and accounting firm, Ernst and Young, to reach the level of managing partner because of a discrimination-free workplace. It is one, she says, based completely on ability and application to the job. Companies which continue to sustain barriers, should look and learn.
In times past, the rough, tough energy sector denied someone such as Dr Marajh entry. Progressively, her passage through university made provision for her academic and professional success.
Ms Landreth-Smith chose advertising, an area of creative work it may have been thought would be open for female artistic endeavour, which, in fact, posed several challenges. But her refusal to back-off and determination to make her views known ensured survival and ascension.
In all of the instances, the four women featured in the T&T Guardian Business Magazine showed that like so many of their peers, they were fully able to cope with challenges.
In the instance of Ms Davis, she exemplified the fact that although her secondary school education was at a non-prestige institution, it posed no barrier to her ambitions and persistence.
For Ms Narinesingh, her urging to young women of this and any generation is not to expect people to step aside to make way for them; fighting through the difficulties may be required, and she advises those who follow not to be afraid of battle.
But she remains concerned that notwithstanding her successes and that of many others, women continue to face continuing retarding circumstances.
The learning for men, especially those still with distorted notions of the supposed incapacity of women, is to see the advance of their wives/partners and “sisters” as enhancing their own status.
The achievements of these women adorn this year’s International Women’s Day.