Last Tuesday was Human Rights Day. It marked the end of 16 days of global activism against domestic violence against women.
Last week, I signalled the growing trend of girls and young women wanting to return to the days when women were kept by men.
In Sweden, 14 per cent of seven-14-year olds want to join older Gen Zs in being 'soft girls," ie dependent on their male partners. They blithely eschew all the gains women have made to escape being chattels of men.
The British Crime Survey shows women who rely on men financially are more likely to experience domestic abuse, although most women globally are subject to some form of gender-based violence (GBV), regardless of status, culture, religion or race, whether in an intimate relationship or not. Men also suffer domestic violence, but the vast majority of victims are women.
The Caribbean is a hotspot. Surveys done by UN Women suggest that compared to roughly one in three women elsewhere, 46 per cent of women in our region experience at least one form of violence in their lifetime, 55 per cent in Guyana, while Jamaica has the second highest femicide rate in the world. And those are just reported cases, many more are unrecorded.
In TT, Roberta Clarke of the Coalition Against Domestic Violence (CADV), quoted the TT police in her opening address at an inaugural solidarity fundraising dinner: Four reports of domestic violence are made daily to the police, and in the last five years they received 14,296 reports of domestic violence; 97 of the fatalities were women and girls.
This statistic alone jolts us into understanding the extent of the crisis - every 11 days a woman in TT is killed in a domestic violence incident.
The Mighty Sparrow lyrically advocated beating women as the way of living with them happily and having them love you eternally. We laughed, because culturally we accepted men displaying their patriarchal attitudes in our male-dominated society. Domestic violence persists, but we no longer tolerate it, because women have gained more autonomy and financial security, and also because of the work of civil-society organisations (CSOs) like CADV.
CADV has created awareness campaigns, raised money to support victims, built shelters and engaged in high-level advocacy for greater protection for women. CSOs recognise that continuing to address the crisis requires empowering women and widely involving communities, government officials, the private sector and the active participation of the legal fraternity.
At the dinner, Justice Frank Seepersad, guest speaker, reminded us that cultural change is essential and can be achieved through legislation that governs the workplace and the home. He pointed to possible provisions in existing statutes that will protect women and ease their safe exit from violent relationships, including the Matrimonial Proceedings and Property Act and our firearms and housing legislation. He recommended a new act to enable state funding for approved CSOs and government agencies to aid recovery for victims and help achieve finan
