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Thursday, July 24, 2025

Gender Policy not just for women only

by

20120519

A na­tion­al gen­der pol­i­cy does not fo­cus on women on­ly but in­cludes every­one in so­ci­ety, and if T&T had a pol­i­cy in place, then male gen­der gaps would re­ceive greater at­ten­tion. Dr Rawwi­da Baksh, who is at­tached to the Min­istry of Gen­der, Youth and Child De­vel­op­ment as a con­sul­tant, says it is a sad state of af­fairs.

The pol­i­cy is a frame­work put in place by the gov­ern­ment to pro­mote fair­ness and equal­i­ty be­tween men and women and to en­sure the de­vel­op­ment of the full po­ten­tial of all-men, boys, women and girls. T&T, un­like some of its Caribbean coun­ter­parts, does not have a pol­i­cy.

Baksh said, "Based on my ex­pe­ri­ence of work­ing on gen­der and de­vel­op­ment across the world while at the Com­mon­wealth Sec­re­tari­at and the Cana­di­an In­ter­na­tion­al De­vel­op­ment Re­search Cen­tre, I have to say that it's a na­tion­al pol­i­cy dis­as­ter."

A draft pol­i­cy was done by the Cen­tre for Gen­der and De­vel­op­ment Stud­ies at the Uni­ver­si­ty of the West In­dies (UWI) in 2004, but when it was pub­lished a short time af­ter, Baksh said sev­er­al faith-based or­gan­i­sa­tions ar­gued that it would lead to the le­gal­i­sa­tion of abor­tion and same sex re­la­tion­ships. She said the gov­ern­ment in of­fice at that time with­drew the pol­i­cy.

Baksh com­mu­ni­cat­ed with the Sun­day Guardian via e-mail last week, af­ter a stake­hold­ers' con­sul­ta­tion on the draft Na­tion­al Gen­der Pol­i­cy at the Cas­ca­dia Ho­tel, St Ann's on Wednes­day. Min­is­ter of Gen­der, Youth and Child De­vel­op­ment Ver­na St Rose-Greaves de­liv­ered the fea­ture ad­dress at the event.

She said the mak­ing of the pol­i­cy was per­haps one of the longest in the his­to­ry of pol­i­cy­mak­ing in the coun­try. "I be­lieve that a na­tion­al gen­der pol­i­cy is crit­i­cal in or­der to set out the gov­ern­ment's gen­der equal­i­ty pri­or­i­ties across the so­cial, eco­nom­ic and po­lit­i­cal spheres; build co­her­ence among stake­hold­ers in­clud­ing gov­ern­ment, the pri­vate sec­tor, labour and civ­il so­ci­ety; and se­cure the nec­es­sary re­sources to ad­dress the crit­i­cal gen­der is­sues fac­ing the na­tion," the min­is­ter said.

Men, boys ex­pe­ri­enc­ing do­mes­tic vi­o­lence

Baksh was head of the Gen­der Sec­tion at the Com­mon­wealth Sec­re­tari­at, where she de­vel­oped the gen­der man­age­ment sys­tem as the Com­mon­wealth's ap­proach to main­stream­ing gen­der equal­i­ty in gov­ern­ment, civ­il so­ci­ety and oth­er sec­tors. She was al­so co-or­di­na­tor of the Caribbean As­so­ci­a­tion for Fem­i­nist Re­search and Ac­tion, and a lec­tur­er in lin­guis­tics at the UWI.

She said the term "gen­der" has been mis­un­der­stood all over the world and is of­ten con­fused with "sex." "Sex refers to our bi­o­log­i­cal re­pro­duc­tive sys­tem. Sim­ply put, sex refers to whether we are bi­o­log­i­cal­ly male or fe­male. "Gen­der is more com­plex. "It refers to the at­ti­tudes, be­hav­iours, ex­pec­ta­tions, roles and re­spon­si­bil­i­ties as­so­ci­at­ed with be­ing a boy, man, girl or woman dur­ing the so­cial­i­sa­tion process," Baksh said.

Asked how the pol­i­cy will make a dif­fer­ence, she said it will af­fect how the State treats peo­ple, re­gard­less of their gen­der dif­fer­ences. She said women and girls alone will not ben­e­fit from the pol­i­cy but al­so males. She said the pol­i­cy will al­low the gov­ern­ment and so­ci­ety to im­ple­ment more re­sources and pro­grammes to ad­dress male gen­der gaps, which were now seen in so­ci­ety.

She said sev­er­al of the so­cial ills in­volv­ing men and boys, such as gang vi­o­lence, rape, kid­nap­ping, drug use and oth­er crim­i­nal ac­tiv­i­ties, were re­lat­ed to how so­ci­ety de­fined man­hood. Baksh said, "The na­tion­al gen­der pol­i­cy would pro­mote pos­i­tive im­ages and val­ues of men and mas­culin­i­ty and take ac­tive mea­sures to ad­dress men's spe­cif­ic gen­der con­cerns on ar­eas in­clud­ing fam­i­ly life, health, ed­u­ca­tion and em­ploy­ment."

She said it was al­so im­por­tant to note that a grow­ing num­ber of men and boys were ex­pe­ri­enc­ing do­mes­tic and oth­er forms of gen­der-based vi­o­lence and that the pol­i­cy would al­low the gov­ern­ment to im­prove leg­is­la­tion and im­ple­ment mea­sures to pre­vent such vi­o­lence.

Baksh said a Cab­i­net-ap­point­ed com­mit­tee, which was set up in De­cem­ber last year, has been re­view­ing, dis­cussing and up­dat­ing the draft pol­i­cy on the ba­sis of new re­search and in­for­ma­tion now avail­able. A con­tro­ver­sial top­ic now is that of gay rights. Baksh did not give a yes or no an­swer when asked whether the pol­i­cy will in­clude gays and les­bians.

Her re­sponse was, "Min­is­ter St Rose-Greaves has gone on the record on the news at (Wednes­day's) stake­hold­ers' con­sul­ta­tion in sup­port of the need for a dis­cus­sion in the so­ci­ety on the right of con­sent­ing adults to choose their sex­u­al part­ner. "The Cab­i­net-ap­point­ed com­mit­tee has been hav­ing very in­ter­est­ing dis­cus­sions on the is­sue with a wide range of stake­hold­ers in the coun­try in the pub­lic aware­ness round ta­bles."

She said there had been some move­ment on the is­sue among var­i­ous faiths and while there was sup­port for sex­u­al choice, there was none for same-sex mar­riages. How­ev­er, she said the gov­ern­ment should be cog­nisant of this dif­fer­ence and agree to free choice be­tween con­sent­ing adults, while not sanc­tion­ing same-sex mar­riage.

"This would al­low in­di­vid­u­als the right to choose, and go a long way to pre­vent­ing gen­der-based vi­o­lence and dis­crim­i­na­tion against peo­ple on the ba­sis of their sex­u­al iden­ti­ty or ori­en­ta­tion," she added. Cab­i­net gave a dead­line of ear­ly June to the com­mit­tee to sub­mit its re­port and a fi­nalised ver­sion of the pol­i­cy, Baksh said.


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