When Guyana joined the rest of the world in commemorating International Women’s Day (IWD) yesterday, there was cause for celebration, but also cause for mourning. Among the festive activities was a dinner at State House last evening hosted by the President and First Lady Irfaan and Arya Ali, under the IWD theme ‘DigitALL: Innovation and Technology for Gender Equality’. One hopes that the conversations and ideas that might have been discussed there and any commitments made are not placed in a box to be pulled out again next March. They should be allowed to blossom into fruition in the interest of equality.
More compelling, however, was the news published earlier this week that four young women from Region One had been trained to operate aerial drones with the aim of having them monitor the mangrove ecosystem and wildlife biodiversity in the Barima-Mora area. According to the report in this newspaper, they are also being trained in the use of underwater drones.
This initiative is a four-year project, ‘Securing the Future of the The Barima-Mora Passage Mangrove Ecosystem and its People’, Guyana Marine Conservation Society technical officer Sarah Singh told this newspaper. Among other things, she said, “The intention is to have 12 young indigenous girls in the Barima-Mora passage communities, who are armed with technologies and the skills to enable their robust monitoring of these precious areas, not only the mangrove ecosystem, but also to do some marine research near shore.” The fact that this ties in with this year’s IWD theme, whether intentional or not, can only be a good thing.
That being said, there is no forgetting that unequal access to technology is far from the worst or only disadvantage our women face. In fact there was brutal evidence of how little their lives are valued on Monday morning – two days before IWD – when a 26-year-old woman was stabbed to death by her reputed husband who then attempted to take his own life.
Aneeza Ishmael of Hope Estate, East Coast Demerara was pursued and killed as she attempted to exit a dysfunctional relationship. Her younger sister, who had gone with her to retrieve her belongings, was an unwilling witness to her murder. She was also attacked by her sister’s killer and sustained an injury, but managed to fight him off.
The scourge of domestic violence and femicide is in itself a global pandemic that continues to maim and take lives at will. There is no vaccine for this disease and it is often untreatable so that women’s best recourse is to avoid it at all costs. This means that as a society, there must be far more proactivity than is currently employed.
Therefore, the practice of holding workshops specifically aimed at women with ‘awareness’ and ‘empowerment’ on the agenda should be a thing of the past. Women, but more so girls, have to be reached and warned in every space possible. If ‘how to spot gender abuse’, and ‘signs your boyfriend/ partner might be abusive’ for example, are not being taught or discussed in schools already, then it should start. Now.
Time should also be set aside on STEM programmes, or the training of girls in drone technology to bring awareness about domestic violence. It should also be talked about at presidential dinners and awards ceremonies, including by and among men. The reason being that gender abuse only discriminates with regard to gender; it is no respecter of class, race, religion, or education. It is also one of those plagues that thrive on secrecy and embarrassment, so it is time to normalise airing it out. While this is certainly not the panacea for domestic violence it helps to publicly condemn perpetrators, along with prosecuting them of course, where necessary.
International Women’s Day is set aside to celebrate women’s achievements and what obtains today is a far cry from where the world was at the time of its first observance in the early 1900s. A lot of progress has been made with regard to shifting the patriarchal thinking that women are property, or less than. Battles have been won, but the war is far from over. The ongoing, almost mindless violence against women is one of the stark reminders that much more needs to change. Perhaps the practice of setting aside a particular day to celebrate women’s achievements and another to highlight curbing violence against them is counterintuitive.
If we’ve never asked the question how many women have been lauded on International Women’s Day and then gone home to be belittled or battered then it’s time we did. Having done so and arrived at the obvious answer, surely the only way forward is a redoubling of efforts.