Women in Anguilla are taking every step to ensure that their rights, freedoms and privileges are respected and protected and they are shielded from exploitation and abuse in all of its forms. There was no better opportunity for them to re-emphasise this commitment to themselves than the observance of International Women’s Day on March 9.

National Council of Women on the March

That was when members of the National Council of Women, led by President Ernie Hodge-Carty, paraded from the old administration building to the courtyard of the Atlin Harrigan Parliamentary Building, accompanied by the East End Scouts drum band. They then entered the House of Assembly Chambers where they occupied the middle section of the hall and were welcomed by Mrs. Hodge-Carty.

Cross section of women at meeting

One of the matters on which the chairperson of the meeting, Lana Hoyoung, placed great emphasis was the exploitation of women and girls by some of the men folk. She was particularly concerned that a number of men were being brought to Anguilla without their spouses to join the labour force. “I say on this International Women’s Day that we said to Government from 1985, when they were bringing in the men, that they must allow them to bring their ladies with them or else we, the Anguillian women, will pay.”

Presentation to Mrs. Rowena Carty

She called on women to face the challenges of HIV/AIDS with the Caribbean ranking second in the world-wide disease and women were fast becoming more victims of the disease. “This is because of our inability to say no because of economic reasons, when we continue to work for basic wages and to depend on men for our livelihood,” she stated. “We need to go forward in 2007 to educate our women to economic independence…We need to ensure, if we are going to have justice and economic freedom, that our situation is addressed. We call on the Chief Minister’s Office to establish in 2007 a minimum wage for the people of Anguilla.”

Mrs Hoyoung also addressed family problems on the island, calling on women “to stand up as parents” to protect and lead their children.

Mrs. Turner (left) with Margaret Connor

Local HIV/AIDS Committee Coordinator, Patricia Beard, spoke extensively on the disease and of the need for women to protect themselves by ensuring that their men use condoms and other forms of protection against passing on HIV/AIDS to them. She observed that the disease was having an increasing disproportionate effect on women and girls world-wide adding to violations of women’s rights and the incidence of domestic violence. She also spoke on violence against women and the need for them to speak out to halt the abuse.

Education Welfare Officer, Ursil Webster-Brooks, spoke on human rights abuses affecting women in relation to poverty, discrimination based on gender, corruption, labour disputes and worker exploitation. She called on women to be vigilant to ensure that their rights were protected.

A main speaker was Barrister-at-Law Joyce Kentish who looked at some of the challenges facing women in their home and community. She focussed her attention on the subject – achieving gender equality through shared responsibility – which she said was a challenge for women in Anguilla.

“We find that while we are successful in so many ways, our success is qualified in a lot of ways because our shoulders are called upon to be very broad,” she went on. “We must pay many burdens and downplay too many roles; and what we want is a shared responsibility for our women partners in those goals that they are called upon to share. Until we recognise that the responsibilities must be shared, then, unfortunately we are not living in relationships of quality…”

Miss Kentish made several points in relation to this. Among them were that women must be the ones to determine how money is to be made available to provide food in the home; they must show their appreciation to their male partners for such provision; women must carry the burden of domestic responsibility but with the shared assistance of the men in their lives. She noted that women carried the pain in dealing with children and other problems in the home and in many cases the men were not stepping up with them to share that pain and responsibility. “Until we can get our men to understand that we need some emotional response from them to the things that affect us deeply in our lives, we are not achieving the equality we should have,” Miss Kentish stated. She however paid tribute to some admirable men but noted that they were too few.

She called for the adoption of awareness programmes “that would meet the men in our lives whether they are husbands, partners or the absent fathers and bring them back into a concept and a vision and the practice of shared responsibility.” Miss Kentish stressed that when women were successfully able to rally in that regard, she believed that they would have made significant strides in getting our women on the platform of equality where burdens are shared and personality, identity and accomplishment can be truly be achieved.

During the meeting, two women were recognised for their work in the community. One was Rowena Carty who was given recognition for having served as the first President of the National Council of Women. She was presented with a bouquet of flowers by her daughter-in-law Alison Carty. Replying, she said she was surprised by the kind gesture and congratulated the Council for its work through the years for the improvement of women and Anguilla in general.

Another woman recognised for her work in the community was Margaret Hughes of Blowing Point. The recognition was accorded to her by the National Aids Foundation, which Mrs. Beard said had been working with a family for years and that Mrs Hughes had taken care of someone of no blood relation to her. She did not elaborate but stated that it was time that Mrs. Hughes should be awarded for her service. She was presented with flowers by Althea Turner, a noted community worker residing in the Cul de Sac area.

Mrs. Turner, who spoke about some of the abuse facing women, took the opportunity to relate a recent incident now being investigated by the police. It is a case in which two armed young men entered her family’s home, demanded and was given money and one of them proceeded to molest her. He stopped after she rebuked him saying she was a 60-year-old woman. The act outraged the assembled women who are demanding that the attackers be pursued and punished.

Various prayers were also said during the meeting and a number of decisions were taken about women’s rights for submission to the Chief Minister’s Office and Ministry of Gender Affairs.

Earlier in the meeting Press Officer, Wycliffe Richardson, addressed the women on behalf of the Chief Minister’s Office. He said the Anguilla Government was committed to ensuring the preservation of women’s dignity and freedom from ignorance and fear associated with violence.

He went on: “The Government is also committed to the strengthening of the legal framework for the protection of equal pay for equal work, freedom from sexual harassment, protection from spousal battering through restraining orders, improvements to health care, greater awareness of HIV/AIDS, social justice and unsolved crimes, all of which the women gathering is seeking to address.” Mr. Richardson added: “Women and girls should always be respected and gender equality and equity continuously practiced, not only on International Women’s Day, but every day of our lives.”

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