Open letter on theTrinidad and Tobago National Gender Policy on behalf of the Consultants

Dear Sir/Madam,

The Centre for Gender and Development Studies, University of the West Indies St Augustine Campus was contracted by the Government of Trinidad & Tobago through, the Gender Affairs Division, Ministry of Community Development, Culture and Gender Affairs to develop a National Gender Policy and Action Plan. The Gender Affairs Division is the national machinery responsible for the advancement of gender equity and equality. The policy was written on the basis of strong popular and interest group consultations through out the country. Every effort was made in the collaboration between the Consultants and the National Machinery to ensure that the process was inclusive and transparent, reflecting the expressed issues and concerns as they were raised at national consultations, regional consultations, interest group consultations and in other face to face interviews carried out by the consultants. The policy was intensively research driven and was also written on the strength of sector studies commissioned from experts in the areas selected for policy attention. As a document, it seeks to harness the concerns, beliefs, convictions and sentiments of the wider population in terms of the path the country should take in ensuring its male and female population participates in its development equitably.

Participants at the Disabled Consultation

Some issues in gender are undoubtedly controversial. Sexual and reproductive rights are not a euphemism for anything – it is exactly what it says, our human rights as they pertain to areas of our sexuality and reproduction. This is an area that has always concerned those who work in the area of gender. The unfairly maligned activism and scholarship in feminism and gender studies, which have worked steadfastly to move both sexes to greater and greater equality and equity, have been forced to deal with the areas of human sexuality and reproduction. These were and are fundamentally important components, if private ones, in human life, as protesters against the policy agree. What is not honestly confronted is that issues around sexuality and reproductive health have for too long been shrouded in a collusive silence and an unwillingness, if not irrational fear, to address the concerns which they raise for us in this society. For this reason discrimination or abuses in such areas will continue to exist where they need not do so. Contemporary society did not invent homosexuality or abortion – these are practices which long predate us and will continue to do so. They are issues which will not be resolved in the near future by a show of hands about whether they are good or bad, and morally right or wrong. They may be seriously debated in terms of their biological imperatives and their social consequences, far healthier ways to treat with the issues, much the same way we attempt to confront the many other issues that people in society face. To say something exists, to comprehend its complexity, is not to condone it, or to embrace it. What Consultants in a gender policy are asked to do is to bring to the attention of the society at large, all the issues it must consider to ensure that the rights and freedoms of all of its citizens, in the areas of work and employment,

health and education, law and polity, and freedoms as ethnic groups, adherents to different faiths, or different sexes, as enshrined in the constitution of the land, are brought to the table for attention. If it does not do this, then we are remiss as experts in a field and in our mandate to act for and on behalf of the entire nation. It is no surprise then that a gender policy addresses such concerns. This is an area of human life that will continue to be controversial. Presented as we are with all the choices that people in modern societies are now faced with, we will one day also enter the new debates, the currency of the day elsewhere, such as whether we may be allowed to choose the sex of an infant, or whether we tamper with our DNA to remove hereditary diseases. All science and progress has come with its challenges, questions and contradictions and created more complex choices in life.

Participants of the Consultation at the Toco Regional Complex

A gender policy is, nonetheless, premised on relatively straightforward principles. It envisages a society which recognizes the similarities and differences existing between men and women and which provides for their full participation in services and resources required for the realization of their full potential in national development. It assumes that strategies to achieve gender equity and equality will be effective in so far that institutions, groups and individuals in a society are prepared to accept social change in areas that have been traditionally resistant to change. The policy employs a precise definition of gender used in such documents and should be read in this context, and not an imagined one. Gender is used to refer to the social roles, responsibilities, behaviours, attitudes and identities as men and women which are the result of social, cultural and historical factors as opposed to our biological differences.

The Consultants and the policy process invite discussion and debate on the legitimacy or relevance of the draft and in relation to what it embodies as a whole, not on what is irrationally feared, either now or in the future.

Recent protests by groups who appear to have a very powerful lobby in the society have begun to drown out the voices of reason, logic and experience, to silence those who came to many consultations and supported in principle the choices identified in the text and those who the policy empowers to take charge of their lives or to improve the conditions under which they live and work.

It is fair and just that the policy should be debated. It is right that the controversial issues should be aired for public discussion. In doing so such groups have essentially begun to do exactly what the policy intended, that is to provide the society with a framework in which discussions may take place. It is right to feel strongly about ones moral position or religious faith and to argue on that ground. But therein also lies the difficulty. There is no argument with faith, no weapon wielded more powerful than that of the self-righteous.

The policy was written with knowledge of real life situations and challenges that are faced by a population, with an appreciation of the concerns that people deal with in their everyday lives, with issues such as the stark reality of teenage pregnancies fathered predominantly by older men, of an rapidly increasing spread of HIV/AIDS among the heterosexual population, of an burgeoning male criminality, the effects of which are plain to see around us and which present additional costs to the nation in our individual and collective pursuits for a creative and productive life, for liberty and the pursuit of happiness. How could it be framed otherwise? It is hoped that those who will continue to debate the issues, including other groups and individuals who have thus far remained silent, do so in an informed manner, providing as this policy does, empirical support for their arguments. While it is difficult to separate the secular and the religious, there are historically very valid reasons why issues such as human rights must be treated from secular viewpoints to ensure the rights of all citizens. It would do us good as a people to remind ourselves that the justification for the African slave trade was that blacks were not humans, because they were not Christians, and therefore could have no souls.

Patricia Mohammed
Acting Head, CGDS