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Wednesday, July 23, 2025

Ministry: Murder is biggest threat to T&T’s women

by

Akash Samaroo
868 days ago
20230307
Anne-Marie Quammie-Alleyne, Coordinator, National Policy on Gender and Development, left, Dr Ayanna Sebro, Technical Director, National AIDS Coordinating Committee Secretariat, and Amilcar Sanatan, Deputy Director of the Gender and Child Affairs Division in the Office of the Prime Minister, during yesterday’s interview with GML.

Anne-Marie Quammie-Alleyne, Coordinator, National Policy on Gender and Development, left, Dr Ayanna Sebro, Technical Director, National AIDS Coordinating Committee Secretariat, and Amilcar Sanatan, Deputy Director of the Gender and Child Affairs Division in the Office of the Prime Minister, during yesterday’s interview with GML.

MICHAEL RAMSINGH

Akash Sama­roo

As the In­ter­na­tion­al Labour Or­gan­i­sa­tion (ILO) con­tin­ues to high­light the pay gap be­tween men and women, this coun­try’s Gen­der and Child Af­fairs Di­vi­sion says fi­nan­cial im­bal­ance is con­tribut­ing sig­nif­i­cant­ly to the mur­der of women and girls.

Ahead of to­day’s ob­ser­vance of In­ter­na­tion­al Women’s Day (IWD), of­fi­cials were asked about the biggest threat fac­ing T&T women. The short an­swer, mur­ders. Da­ta shows that 137 women and girls were killed in the last three years, many as a re­sult of in­ti­mate part­ner vi­o­lence (IPV).

Anne-Marie Quam­mie-Al­leyne, co­or­di­na­tor of the Na­tion­al Pol­i­cy on Gen­der and De­vel­op­ment, said the re­al dan­ger starts af­ter the po­lice are in­formed of a pos­si­ble threat to a woman’s life.

“If the sur­vivor does not file charges be­cause of rea­sons and she goes back home that is a threat, be­cause some women can’t make it on their own be­cause of their fi­nan­cial short­ages be­cause they may have chil­dren and are un­em­ployed so she has to de­pend on the per­pe­tra­tor, so where does she go?”

A 2021 World Bank study showed that as of 2019, 58 per cent of women be­tween the ages of 15 to 64 are ac­tive­ly em­ployed.

Quam­mie-Al­leyne ex­plained that the ser­vices such as a 24-hour do­mes­tic vi­o­lence hot­line (800-SAVE), coun­selling from NGOs, and even a Gen­der Based Vi­o­lence Unit with­in the T&T Po­lice Ser­vice (TTPS), can­not guar­an­tee the safe­ty of women and girls.

“A woman, a sur­vivor, has to make that first move to get out of the sit­u­a­tion. When she does, the ser­vices are there to catch her. How­ev­er, we have to al­so un­der­stand the em­pow­er­ment strug­gle of a woman af­ter she’s been down to be able to fight back.

“It’s dif­fi­cult. You may want to but what about the chil­dren? You may want to but all your mon­ey is tied up in the house, so there are a lot of fac­tors in­volved and what­ev­er we put in place, that fi­nal piece is the pow­er and con­trol, the fi­nan­cial im­bal­ance is what dri­ves that hes­i­tance.”

Deputy Di­rec­tor of the Gen­der and Child Af­fairs Di­vi­sion Amil­car Sanatan said fi­nan­cial em­pow­er­ment is high on their agen­da through the in­tro­duc­tion of a gen­der trans­for­ma­tive frame­work.

“A thrust of our di­vi­sion right now is to look at so­cial and eco­nom­ic au­ton­o­my in the fight of gen­der in­equal­i­ties. Yes, she is a sur­vivor but if she does not have the eco­nom­ic con­di­tions then what is she sur­viv­ing? An econ­o­my too? We need to pro­vide op­tions for sur­vivors to have fu­ture op­por­tu­ni­ties for ed­u­ca­tion that is avail­able to them and we be­lieve in en­tre­pre­neur­ship too.”

Sanatan said the di­vi­sion will be par­tic­i­pat­ing in a train­ing pro­gramme with the Unit­ed Na­tions on gen­der sen­si­tive bud­get­ing.

ILO re­port­ed re­cent­ly that “gen­der im­bal­ances in ac­cess to em­ploy­ment and work­ing con­di­tions are greater than pre­vi­ous­ly thought and progress in re­duc­ing them has been dis­ap­point­ing­ly slow in the last two decades.”

Ac­cord­ing to the ILO, “the jobs gap is par­tic­u­lar­ly se­vere in de­vel­op­ing coun­tries where the pro­por­tion of women un­able to find a job reach­es 24.9 per cent in low-in­come coun­tries.”

But the gap in pay be­tween men and women con­tin­ues to be an is­sue as well. Quam­mie-Al­leyne said even with equal aca­d­e­m­ic qual­i­fi­ca­tions, men still earn more.

“Where there is some equal­i­ty is in the pub­lic ser­vice where there is less ten­sion, so it’s a work in progress and maybe with­in the next decade we will have some im­prove­ment.”


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