Could it be that it’s a man’s world?

The British ambassador’s approach to his concern about how our women are viewed or how they view themselves on a Women’s Forum is instructive. He was discreet enough not to make any direct pronouncements, merely to ask questions, but the perceptive among us would have guessed the answers to his questions right away.

First he raises the issue of a local brew being a Man’s, leaving one to wonder at this whole sale acceptance of this discrimination against women by women’s activists and the public at large, and then about the image women present of themselves on Carnival day, again leaving one to ponder on this glamourization of semi-nudity and obscenity by all and sundry without question.

The question to ask is whether this is indifference to the ambassador’s standards or is this a reflection of the ones we have come to adopt, that women’s rights is only a word, that it is no big deal to slight women as the ad does, and secondly, how dare we look at our women in any other way except the “beauty” of their semi-nudity and their ability to wine.

The latter is being Trini to the bone some may say, and the fact of a beer being a man’s is equally so for Trinidadian male chauvinism is a fact of life, but must we be so myopic and provincial in our outlook or should we setting more universal standards of conduct for ourselves, especially with respect to our women?

Dr Errol Benjamin
Via e-mail