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No more empty words, government – we need action on equality

In two days, it will be Women’s History Month, also known as International Women’s Month due to International Women’s Day being on the eighth. It is a time to not only acknowledge the work and achievements of women in the past, but to face the issues of the present in a way that can contribute to an equitable future.

We are still living in an inequitable, violent world that privileges men, boys, and the masculine and discriminates against women, girls, and the feminine. Misogyny and gender inequality are entrenched in the constitution, permeate our laws, and influence behaviour that is often conflated with culture and deemed unchangeable. Many people continue to ignore the existence of gender inequality and to insist that gender equality does not exist, while looking at and being a part of the evidence that it does, indeed, exist and is affecting all of us every day.

This week, I am participating in the World Conference on Stateless where people from all over the world are talking about stateless, the laws and conditions that lead to it, and the affect that it has on stateless people and broader society. In some of the sessions, the focus is on gender inequality in nationality rights, making it difficult or impossible for women to confer citizenship on their children and spouses.

Several people have made it a point to tell me that they did not know The Bahamas had this issue. They did not know that things were so bad in The Bahamas. I know that there are many Bahamians who would take great exception to this, feeling the need to defend The Bahamas and insist that it is not a bad place, or that its problems are not so terrible. This is easy to do when people do not face these problems themselves, and even moreso when they could not care less about the trials and tribulations of others —particularly those they already consider to be “other.” This, in fact, is evidence of the terrible state affairs. People do not even have the capacity to care about what is happening around them, to people around them, many of whom they depend on for various forms of labour.

Women’s History Month begins in two days, and I take this opportunity to share that my colleagues at Equality Bahamas and I have been requesting a meeting with the Minister of Social Services for months. In fact, we had been requesting a meeting with his predecessor for months as well.

It is unclear whether we have ministers who are incapable of meeting with feminist civil society organisations or ministries and departments that are staffed with people who are unwilling to do their jobs or see it as their duty to be the bottlenecks that frustrate so many into non-participation. Perhaps it is a combination of the two.

This is not only unfortunate, but to the detriment of the country which is struggling to present itself as doing all right, and a government desperate to hide its failures and sugarcoat its complete disinterest in meeting international human rights standards. Civil society organisations such as Equality Bahamas are advocating for women to have full access to our human rights by participating in and invoking international mechanisms, demanding legal reform, providing public education material, and engaging with community members. This often means its representatives provide written and oral accounts of what is taking place in The Bahamas, how the government is responding to issues, and how government officials engage with advocates and affected people. These reports, generally speaking, are not good. The failure of successive government administrations is colossal, embarrassing, and wholly unnecessary.

In 1993, the Government of The Bahamas ratified the Convention on the Elimination of All Forms of Discrimination against Women (CEDAW) and reserved on Articles 2(a) and 9(2) which obligate States to “embody the principle of the equality of men and women in their national constitutions or other appropriate legislation if not yet incorporated therein[…]” and to “grant women equal citizenship rights with men with respect to the nationality of their children”. The CEDAW Committee has, on more than one occasion, recommended that the Government of The Bahamas withdraw its reservations, stating that these Articles are integral to the intended effect of the Convention itself. In particular, to reserve on Article 2 is antithetical to CEDAW and the ratification of it. How can a government commit to eliminating discrimination against women, yet refuse to make the necessary changes in the law?

Does a government committed to gender equality have ministers with responsibility for the gender department who refuse to meet with women’s rights advocates? Does it employ people who refuse to coordinate meetings at the request of civil society organisations? Civil society in some countries, with much smaller civic space, often complain of being unable to engage with government except for when they meet in international spaces, particularly where reporting is done. This should not be the case in The Bahamas, especially when the government has told the Human Rights Council that it is unaware of hostility toward human rights defenders.

We have to demand more of the government. We barely get promises, much less action that moves us toward gender equality. Even ending gender-based violence is not a priority for this administration which has failed to pass the Gender-Based Violence bill and is pretending as though the marital rape bill has vanished into thin air.

It is not enough to make speeches in other parts of the world about its “commitment” to human rights, and it is unacceptable for it to overstate its plans and actions. Equality Bahamas invites members of the public — women and girls in particular — to join us in taking our feminist demands to the streets. Our International Women’s Day March and Expo is on Saturday, March 9. Meet us at the Eastern Parade at 8:45am for the march to The Dundas Centre for the Performing Arts on Mackey Street, then spend the day with us at the Expo with several none-governmental organisations and practitioners who will facilitate great sessions from Zumba and yoga to letterpress printing and an introduction to bush medicine. Learn more about the event at tiny.cc/iwd242nassau.

Published in The Tribune on February 28, 2024.

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GBV Talk at Rotary Club of South East Nassau

March is always packed with speaking engagements due to International Women’s Day. I’m always happy to see the conversations continue well past March 8, so I’m looking forward to attending this week’s Rotary Club of South East Nassau meeting to talk about gender-based violence. Last week was full of terrible news, so there are many examples to use in this sessions and, more importantly, put in the context of structural gender-based violence and the reform we need.

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Gender-based Violence Training for University of The Bahamas Greek Life and Student Leadership

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As a part of the activities planned by Equality Bahamas, I’m looking forward to facilitating gender-based violence training for student at University of The Bahamas over the next few days. These sessions will cover the basics of gender, sex, and sexuality, look at domestic violence, intimate partner violence, and structural violence, review a selection international mechanisms and laws of The Bahamas, and guide participants through development of responses and interventions.

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A Little Disappointment Shouldn’t Kill the Dream

Last week was quite busy as I worked with the all-volunteer team of Equality Bahamas to plan and execute our annual International Women’s Day events. Every year, this process leads me to think about a range of issues, circumstances, gaps and solutions. From people – primarily young women – adding to their regular workloads as volunteers with non-governmental organisations to the response of the public to initiatives designed for and by women, there is no shortage of necessary discussions.

After the march and expo, I came across a Facebook post by someone I’ve known since elementary school. This is not a person I spend time with nor have intimate knowledge of, but I know basic facts such as her name, profession, close friends and other bits and pieces anyone can glean from shares on social media. I did not know anything about her position on political or social issues. Then I saw a days-old post about the (then) upcoming march I organised with a team of dedicated, enthusiastic young women. The post basically said she would definitely not be marching after being duped by We March which proved to be something other than the organiser had suggested.

There were three main commenters, two of whom completely agreed with the post. One person noted it was an unreasonable position to take, unfair to paint women organisers with the brush of a reckless person, and important to properly use non-violent forms of protest.

I struggle to find a word for the way I felt when I read this thread. “Disappointed” is not quite it. I know better than to expect everyone – or even most people – to get on board. I have come to expect naysayers and finger-pointers. I know people find it easy to call other people’s work garbage – and this is a euphemism for the word used – than to do the work themselves. Still, it is almost as though I expected more from this particular person. Why? Because I “know” her? Because she has never shown any signs of being against the expansion of women’s rights? Because she is a young woman and business owner who has surely experienced misogyny and sexism, and has definitely been disadvantaged by the systemic issues we have yet to properly address? Because I think she should care?

In reflecting on this experience, I have been reminded of two important lessons I have learned over the past few years. The first is that it is important to take conversations about rights, justice and feminism outside of the comfortable spaces. The Equality Bahamas team can talk about national issues and what needs to be done to tackle them all day, every day, but it would not change anything. We have to take our critique, our ideas and our plans of action outside of our own space, engage others in the conversation and convince them to take action with us.

To be clear, we do this regularly, but the reminder helps push us to think more about where we have not gone yet and what we need to do to get there. The second is that our greatest opponents in the fight for equality are systems and social constructs – not people. People – including some we know – embody those systems and constructs and they act in the ways that are dictated by those systems and constructs. For many, those systems and constructs are all there is. They have not had the chance to think about a world without them.

The day-to-day hustle to get to and from work, figure out how to pay the bills and keep groceries in the house and take care of the unexpected does not leave us much room for imagination. All some of us have is the memory of what has already taken place and the heaviness of the current situation. Reality does not encourage us to dream. If we never take the time to think beyond what we have, to envision what we do not yet see, we are doomed to a future that looks exactly like the present. To get beyond this point, we have to identify and deconstruct the systems that find homes within people and we have to create opportunities for people to imagine, create and realise more.

Leaders of organisations, movements and people have a responsibility to the people under the sound of their voices. They have to be more than charismatic. They have to be honest. Loyal. Communicative. Accessible. They have to be able to answer questions about where they want us to go, why and how we will get there. They have to be willing to go the distance, to train, mentor and elevate others to take the position they must eventually vacate. They have to do what they said they would do. They have to prove themselves worthy of the trust and support they receive. When they fail to be and do all of this, and without apology, we end up where we are now. We find ourselves surrounded by people who are disappointed, hurt and unwilling to act.

No one fighting for a cause can hope for another’s downfall. The failures, missteps, compromises and disappointments of one can negatively impact others, even when they seem completely unrelated. How can we reactivate imaginations that have been dormant for so long? This may be the challenge of this generation of changemakers – to reactive imaginations so we can see something better, then believe we can make it happen.

Why whistles don’t get to the root of the issue

When Philip “Brave” Davis suggested the government provide women and children with whistles, there was no way to keep it out of the headlines. Yes, he made other recommendations, but this one deserved a response. The knee-jerk reaction grazed the surface, but did not quite go deep enough to explain what is really wrong with the suggestion.

The whistle is not a new idea. Many of us are familiar with the “rape whistle”. We are expected to be equipped with these whistles and, should we feel unsafe, we are to blow the whistle.

The first issue is that the answer to an issue is not in the response of the person on the receiving end. Gender-based violence is a systemic issue. Gender is a social construct that prescribes ways of being for people based on the social and cultural expectations of each gender. Gender-based violence is the name for harm caused that is directly related to understandings of gender and how it controls us.

The man who attempts to harm a woman because she is seen as weaker and meant to be submissive is not likely to be scared off by the sound of whistle for various reasons. The whistle has to be accessible enough for the woman to blow it. If is it around her neck, it can become a weapon for strangulation. If it is loose, held in her hand, it can be knocked out. If she gets it to her mouth, she risks more physical injury because she could be caused to choke, or she may be struck. If she manages to use the whistle to make noise, this could aggravate the man and lead to further harm.

The second issue is the uncertainty about its effectiveness. Do we know what to do when we hear a whistle being blown in a parking lot? Is a Junkanoo group on the way? Is someone practising for sports day? Did a child get a new toy? What are we, as citizens, supposed to do when we hear a whistle. Do we know when it is a distress signal as opposed to something else, and do we know how to intervene if we determine it is a distress signal? On Saturday, we distributed whistles and one of the women decided to blow it in a public space when approached by a man she knew. Luckily, she was in no danger, but she noted no one paid any attention at all.

Women and girls are always told what to do and what not to do in order to prevent acts of violence against us, especially rape. Nowhere near as much effort is put into teaching consent, making a distinction between sex and rape and engaging men and boys in conversations about gender-based violence prevention. We need to get to the root of the issue. The problem is not that women and girls are not scared enough, vigilant enough, or bombarded with enough products – like mobile apps to indicate to friends that we’re in distress, pepper spray, and date rape drug-detecting nail polish – to prevent violence against us. The problem is that all the focus is on us and ways we can make sure the less prepared women or girl is the victim instead of us. We do not want to make someone else the statistic. We want to change the statistics. To do that, we need to start at the root, and not create another path to stress and further harm.

Published by The Tribune on March 11, 2020.

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