IRA MATH­UR

A tru­ly civilised so­ci­ety is not judged by its laws or wealth but by how it treats its women. If women must beg for space, for safe­ty, for the right to live undis­turbed, then that so­ci­ety is bro­ken.

In T&T, as in much of the world, women hold up half the sky with one hand while fend­ing off blows with the oth­er. They stitch the fab­ric of fam­i­lies, run busi­ness­es in the gaps left by ab­sent men, and sus­tain qui­et economies. And still, their progress is spo­ken of as an ex­cep­tion, not an ex­pec­ta­tion.

The strug­gle has al­ways been framed as a bat­tle for in­clu­sion. Give women a place at the ta­ble, a slice of the pie. Yet, they are giv­en just enough progress to be grate­ful. The on­ly re­al pow­er in this world is mon­ey. Women who have it make their own rules.

Stud­ies show that when women earn, they rein­vest 90 per cent of their in­come back in­to their fam­i­lies and com­mu­ni­ties. Yet, Caribbean women are 30 per cent less like­ly to re­ceive fi­nanc­ing than men. It is not about abil­i­ty. It is about ac­cess. Eco­nom­ic in­de­pen­dence is not a lux­u­ry. It is sur­vival.

Then there is the vi­o­lence. Forty-nine women were mur­dered in 2022, most­ly by men they knew. Thir­ty per cent of women who have ever had a part­ner have ex­pe­ri­enced phys­i­cal or sex­u­al vi­o­lence. Six per cent re­port­ed it last year. Re­port­ing means step­ping in­to the light, risk­ing every­thing for a jus­tice sys­tem that of­ten gives noth­ing in re­turn. When women are un­safe, economies fal­ter. When they are lost, the coun­try is di­min­ished.

We stand on the shoul­ders of those who forced change. El­ma Fran­cois or­gan­ised work­ers and de­fied colo­nial rule. Is­abel Teshea en­tered Par­lia­ment, Dana See­ta­hal re­de­fined law, and Oc­c­ah Sea­paul held the Speak­er’s chair. Kam­la Per­sad-Bisses­sar shat­tered po­lit­i­cal ceil­ings, Pat Bish­op shaped the arts, Rho­da Red­dock built a fem­i­nist move­ment, and Clau­dia Jones turned ex­ile in­to rev­o­lu­tion.

Some fought in busi­ness, cul­ture, law, and acad­e­mia—Leono­ra Pu­jadas-Mc­Shine, Sylvia Wyn­ter, Pearl Springer, Ein­tou Pearl Springer. Each widened the road so oth­ers could fol­low.

And then there were the ones who changed lives at the most fun­da­men­tal lev­el. Gema Ram­keesoon ded­i­cat­ed decades to so­cial ser­vice. Au­drey Jef­fers built so­cial wel­fare. Hazel Brown turned pol­i­cy in­to ac­tion. An­na Ma­hase made ed­u­ca­tion cen­tral to girls’ lives.

To­day, we as women re­mind one an­oth­er of those whose shoul­ders we stood on, who forced change, and who re­mind us that equal­i­ty is not giv­en but tak­en.

Di­ana Ma­habir-Wy­att

Di­ana Ma­habir-Wy­att is among them. A for­mer sen­a­tor and so­cial ac­tivist, she spent decades fight­ing to make do­mes­tic vi­o­lence a mat­ter of law, not just tragedy.

In 2017, po­lice record­ed 1,100 cas­es of do­mes­tic vi­o­lence. Forty-three end­ed in mur­der. By 2022, 15 of 57 fe­male homi­cides were linked to do­mes­tic vi­o­lence. Thir­ty per cent of women in T&T who have had a part­ner have ex­pe­ri­enced phys­i­cal or sex­u­al vi­o­lence. The re­al num­bers are like­ly high­er.

Ma­habir-Wy­att re­fused to ac­cept this. She was in­stru­men­tal in shap­ing the Do­mes­tic Vi­o­lence Act, forc­ing the coun­try to put words to what it had long ig­nored. But laws do not shel­ter the bat­tered. She built the first women’s shel­ters in T&T, where sur­vival did not de­pend on luck or kind­ness.

The cri­sis re­mains. The vi­o­lence con­tin­ues. Laws ex­ist but are of­ten weak in prac­tice. Women still flee, know­ing there may be nowhere safe to land. Ma­habir-Wy­att spent her life forc­ing the coun­try to see. Whether it con­tin­ues to look away is no longer her fight—it is ours.

Au­drey Jef­fers

Au­drey Jef­fers (April 12, 1898-June 24, 1968) did not wait for change. Born in­to a wealthy Afro-Trinida­di­an fam­i­ly, she could have lived un­touched by hard­ship. In­stead, Jef­fers made the strug­gles of the work­ing class her own, wit­ness­ing sys­temic in­equal­i­ty in hun­gry chil­dren, in women whose fu­tures had al­ready been de­cid­ed by cir­cum­stance, in fam­i­lies trapped in pover­ty, passed down like a piece of bad land, nev­er in­creas­ing in val­ue, on­ly in bur­den.

Jef­fers left for Eng­land to study so­cial work in a coun­try where war had shat­tered so­cial or­der. She saw first­hand that so­cial change did not hap­pen ac­ci­den­tal­ly—it was forced in­to be­ing by those un­will­ing to ac­cept the sta­tus quo. She car­ried that les­son back to Trinidad.

In 1921, she found­ed the Co­terie of So­cial Work­ers, which fo­cused on ac­tion rather than good in­ten­tions. The first school feed­ing pro­gramme in T&T was a ne­ces­si­ty. A meal meant the dif­fer­ence be­tween learn­ing and hunger, be­tween op­por­tu­ni­ty and res­ig­na­tion. The Co­terie built hos­tels for work­ing-class women and chil­dren, recog­nis­ing shel­ter as the first step to­ward sta­bil­i­ty.

By 1946, Jef­fers be­came the first woman to sit on the Leg­isla­tive Coun­cil, push­ing for poli­cies that pro­tect­ed women and chil­dren, hous­ing re­form, and a sys­tem that treat­ed pover­ty as some­thing to be cor­rect­ed. Yet, decades af­ter her death, the in­equal­i­ties she fought against re­main.

Women still own less, earn less, and are de­nied the cap­i­tal that builds wealth.

In 2020, the Unit­ed Na­tions re­port­ed that on­ly 39.3 per cent of gen­der-spe­cif­ic in­di­ca­tors for track­ing progress on women’s rights in the Caribbean were avail­able. Women are still wait­ing for the full rights de­bat­ed in Jef­fers’ time. And wait­ing, as she knew, was nev­er the an­swer.

Hazel Brown

Hazel Brown (Jan­u­ary 12, 1942-Sep­tem­ber 22, 2022) was the dri­ving force be­hind some of T&T’s most crit­i­cal ad­vances in women’s rights. As a strate­gist, she de­mand­ed equal pay, work­place pro­tec­tions, and poli­cies that recog­nised women as eco­nom­ic and po­lit­i­cal agents.

Women still earn less than men. Glob­al­ly, they make 77 cents for every dol­lar earned by men. T&T’s wages could rise by 26per cent if dis­crim­i­na­tion were re­moved. Women’s labour force par­tic­i­pa­tion lags be­hind men’s by over 20 per­cent­age points. Child­care is in­con­sis­tent. Re­pro­duc­tive health­care re­mains a bat­tle­ground.

Brown made these fail­ures im­pos­si­ble to ig­nore. As head of the Net­work of NGOs for the Ad­vance­ment of Women, she fought for le­gal pro­tec­tion, en­force­ment, and ac­tion. Her work re­shaped laws and ex­pec­ta­tions, but the gaps re­main. Every de­lay keeps women poor­er and more vul­ner­a­ble.

Hazel Brown did not wait, and nei­ther should we. The time for grad­ual steps is over. The pace must ac­cel­er­ate, the fight must in­ten­si­fy, and the fu­ture must be­long to women—ful­ly, equal­ly, now.

Dana See­ta­hal

Dana See­ta­hal was an un­flinch­ing ad­vo­cate for jus­tice—un­afraid, un­com­pro­mis­ing, and ut­ter­ly bril­liant. She shift­ed the ground be­neath her, forc­ing the na­tion to reck­on with dif­fi­cult truths about crime, gov­er­nance, and equal­i­ty.

For the women of T&T, her con­tri­bu­tions were seis­mic. As a crim­i­nal lawyer, she shat­tered glass ceil­ings in a court­room still dom­i­nat­ed by men, prov­ing that in­tel­lect and tenac­i­ty—not gen­der—de­ter­mined one’s place at the bar. She men­tored young women in law, en­sur­ing they en­tered the field not as to­ken fig­ures but as for­mi­da­ble prac­ti­tion­ers.

In Par­lia­ment, she was a voice of rea­son and re­form, ad­vo­cat­ing for a stronger le­gal frame­work to pro­tect the vul­ner­a­ble. Her sharp, clear, and fear­less writ­ing in the press made le­gal is­sues ac­ces­si­ble to the pub­lic, em­pow­er­ing cit­i­zens, par­tic­u­lar­ly women, with knowl­edge of their rights.

Her as­sas­si­na­tion in 2014 was a na­tion­al shock­wave, a re­minder of the dan­gers faced by those who con­front crime and cor­rup­tion head-on in a coun­try where lead­ers speak out of both sides of their mouths—not to serve the greater good but them­selves.

But her lega­cy is in­deli­ble. Every young woman who ar­gues a case with con­vic­tion, every cit­i­zen who un­der­stands their rights a lit­tle bet­ter, and every re­form in the crim­i­nal jus­tice sys­tem that bears her im­print are Dana See­ta­hal’s en­dur­ing con­tri­bu­tions to a na­tion still in need of coura­geous women like her.

She sac­ri­ficed her life for jus­tice. If for noth­ing else, let that be the call for women to ac­cel­er­ate change—not to wait for jus­tice, but to fight for it.

Dr An­na Ma­hase

Dr An­na Ma­hase (Jan­u­ary 12, 1932-May 24, 2024) un­der­stood that ed­u­ca­tion was the sharpest tool a woman could wield. She had seen girls leave school be­cause there was no bus fare. She had watched men walk in­to jobs they did not have to prove them­selves wor­thy of while women sat with de­grees and wait­ed.

Women in T&T are more like­ly to com­plete sec­ondary school, more like­ly to pass ex­ams, more like­ly to at­tend uni­ver­si­ty. Yet they are still paid less and still shut out of lead­er­ship. Bias does not dis­ap­pear—it is dis­man­tled, piece by piece.

Ma­hase built a world where girls were ex­pect­ed to suc­ceed. As prin­ci­pal of St Au­gus­tine Girls’ High School, she de­mand­ed ex­cel­lence. She pushed girls in­to sci­ence and lead­er­ship in places they were not ex­pect­ed to go. Be­yond the school gates, she fought for that struc­ture. She pressed for poli­cies recog­nis­ing a woman’s life, know­ing that no woman could climb if she car­ried the full weight of un­paid labour.

The road­blocks re­main. The ob­sta­cles stand. The time for pa­tience is over. Women must move—fast. The world will not hand them what they de­serve. They must take it. Ac­cel­er­at­ing ac­tion is not a slo­gan. It is not an­oth­er re­port, com­mit­tee, or promise to ex­am­ine the prob­lem. It is the re­fusal to wait.

It means mon­ey—re­al cap­i­tal, not to­ken mi­croloans. It is not char­i­ty dressed as em­pow­er­ment but an in­vest­ment sig­nif­i­cant enough to cre­ate busi­ness­es that com­pete and build last­ing wealth. Men re­ceive it with­out ques­tion, while women are asked to prove them­selves again and again.

It means struc­ture: paid leave, child­care that does not con­sume a salary, and work­places that ac­knowl­edge women’s ex­is­tence. The econ­o­my runs on their un­paid labour—car­ing, man­ag­ing, sus­tain­ing—yet still ex­pects them to car­ry the full weight of work and home. Shift­ing that bur­den is not gen­eros­i­ty; it is long over­due.

It means pro­tec­tion—not laws that ex­ist on pa­per but en­force­ment that does not wait for bruis­es to be­come ev­i­dence. A woman should not have to plan her own es­cape, cal­cu­late her chances, won­der if the sys­tem will turn on her, and ask why she didn’t leave.

It means pow­er. Not the oc­ca­sion­al woman in the of­fice pa­rad­ed as progress, but re­al lead­er­ship, in num­bers too large to be ig­nored. A woman in charge should be un­re­mark­able. She should not have to soft­en her­self, make her­self palat­able, and prove she be­longs.

It means chang­ing how the world speaks. A woman should not have to be ex­cep­tion­al to be treat­ed as wor­thy.

Ac­cel­er­at­ing ac­tion is not about pa­tience. It is not about wait­ing for at­ti­tudes to shift or for the world to be ready. Change is not giv­en. It is tak­en. And those who have been de­nied it must now de­cide that they are done wait­ing.

Ira Math­ur is a Guardian Me­dia jour­nal­ist and the win­ner of the 2023 OCM Bo­cas Prize for Non-Fic­tion for her mem­oir, Love The Dark Days.

Au­thor in­quiries: iras­room@gmail.com