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Wednesday, July 9, 2025

New book highlights women in local government

by

20141130

Mar­tine Pow­ers

Hazel Brown isn't sur­prised when she meets peo­ple who have nev­er heard of Elaine Man­ning.The few who recog­nise the name know her as the moth­er of for­mer T&T prime min­is­ter Patrick Man­ning. But hard­ly any­one re­mem­bers that she was an es­teemed politi­cian in her own right, vot­ed in­to lo­cal of­fice in 1968, then re­elect­ed in 1971."Peo­ple were vot­ing for Elaine, not for him," Brown said, of Patrick Man­ning's ear­ly ca­reer. "It must have been the in­flu­ence of his moth­er who got him where he is."

The his­to­ries of women like Elaine Man­ning are high­light­ed in a new book, made pub­lic last week, that gives a year-by-year re­count­ing of all the women who have run for lo­cal po­lit­i­cal of­fices for the last sev­en decades. Women in Lo­cal Gov­ern­ment Elec­tions in Trinidad and To­ba­go 1946-2013 was penned by Brown, the out­go­ing co-or­di­na­tor of the Net­work of NGOs of T&T for the Ad­vance­ment of Women, and edit­ed by Dr Sheila Ram­per­sad.

Brown and Ram­per­sad dis­cussed the high­lights of the book at a pre­sen­ta­tion Wednes­day at the Ari­ma branch of East­ern Cred­it Union. They said their aim was to gath­er a com­pre­hen­sive ros­ter of the women who have played a role in pol­i­tics since be­fore the na­tion's in­cep­tion–long be­fore T&T elect­ed its first fe­male prime min­is­ter in 2010.

"No longer can any­one claim that they didn't know where to find in­for­ma­tion on women in the elec­toral process, or that the in­for­ma­tion was not avail­able," Ram­per­sad said. "All writ­ers, com­men­ta­tors, and ra­dio talk show hosts should have this."

The project has been in the works since 2006, when Brown tried to hunt down records of women in­volved in lo­cal elec­tions and re­alised such archives did not ex­ist. So she de­cid­ed to cre­ate her own. But as­sem­bling a com­plete list was no small task, and re­quired hunt­ing down records from li­braries, news­pa­per clips, po­lit­i­cal par­ty archives, and per­son­al in­ter­views.

Brown re­fused to al­low oth­ers to bor­row her col­lec­tion of notes from her desk, for fear that the archives would get lost or scat­tered and the lit­tle-known his­to­ry would re­main ob­scured for­ev­er. Some days, she won­dered if the her­culean ef­fort would ever be com­plet­ed."To­day is like one of those days when you see your grand­chil­dren born," Brown said.

At the out­set of the project, Brown–her­self men­tioned in the book as an un­suc­cess­ful can­di­date in the 1987 elec­tion–es­ti­mat­ed that there were prob­a­bly about 100 women who had run for lo­cal of­fice over the years. In­stead, she tracked down about 500 names of women can­di­dates–as­ton­ish­ing, she said, since so few of those names are wide­ly known now.

In the process of hunt­ing down the names of some of these women, Brown and her re­search as­sis­tants took out a full-page ad­ver­tise­ment in a news­pa­per call­ing for those who knew of fe­male can­di­dates from pre­vi­ous decades to come for­ward.Al­most im­me­di­ate­ly, the phone calls came flood­ing in. Brown was shocked.

"Some peo­ple called al­most in tears," Brown said. "One man said, 'My moth­er was a lo­cal gov­ern­ment coun­cil­lor and she worked her [tail] off, and no­body ever re­mem­bered her af­ter she left.'"The 2,000 print­ed copies of the book, paid for by the UN Women's Fund for Gen­der Equal­i­ty, will be pro­vid­ed to lo­cal li­braries, po­lit­i­cal par­ty archives, schools, and uni­ver­si­ties.

A slim tome at 82 pages, the book of­fers a ros­ter of names, da­ta, and sta­tis­tics from each elec­tion but lit­tle by the way of per­son­al anec­dotes or pri­vate mem­o­ries. Still, Brown said, through her re­search she learned about some of the be­hind-the-scenes chal­lenges that faced women who dared to throw their hats in the ring: Many did not re­ceive the kind of fi­nan­cial back­ing from po­lit­i­cal par­ties that was en­joyed by their male col­leagues.

Some found that their can­di­da­cy ap­pli­ca­tions were "mis­placed" by lo­cal clerks again and again. And many women were dis­cour­aged from run­ning for of­fice in con­tentious dis­tricts and in­stead pres­sured to file their can­di­da­cy for elec­toral races where they had no chance of win­ning.

Ram­per­sad ex­pects that the re­search laid out in the book will prove use­ful to po­lit­i­cal sci­en­tists, poll­sters, his­to­ri­ans, and women's stud­ies re­searchers. Even more, she said, she hopes that it in­spires oth­er women to con­sid­er en­ter­ing pol­i­tics."For women–those in­clined to in­volve them­selves in the elec­toral po­lit­i­cal process, and for those wish­ing to un­der­stand their own his­to­ries–this book is an ab­solute­ly nec­es­sary com­pan­ion," Ram­per­sad said.

BOX

Facts about women in T&T lo­cal elec­tions

* First woman elect­ed to lo­cal gov­ern­ment: Au­drey Jef­fers, elect­ed to Port-of-Spain Coun­cil in 1936

* To­tal num­ber of fe­male can­di­dates in 1946: 1 (of 156 to­tal can­di­dates)

* To­tal num­ber of fe­male can­di­dates in 1999: 85 (of 275 to­tal can­di­dates)

* The first year that all 14 re­gions fea­tured fe­male can­di­dates: 1992

* First woman may­or of T&T: Brit­o­marte Beryl Ho­choy, elect­ed to rep­re­sent Ari­ma

* Suc­cess rate of fe­male can­di­dates in 2003: 53 per cent

Source: "Women in Lo­cal Gov­ern­ment Elec­tions in Trinidad and To­ba­go 1946-2013"


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