The Tribune

By ALESHA CADET

Tribune Features Reporter

acadet@tribunemedia.net

WITH 2014 just a week away, many people are jotting down their New Year’s resolutions.

The most common resolutions fall under reoccurring categories: weight loss, eating healthy or becoming better at savings. However, four strong women activists spoke with The Tribune sharing their views about the New Year and what they would like to see achieved in the women’s movement.

“I would like to see zero tolerance of violence against women and children in the homes and in public places, and literacy skills for women who were not able to achieve their high school diplomas and equal pay for equal work in the civil service and the private sector,” said Marion Bethel, Bahamian poet, filmmaker, writer and attorney.

Ms Bethel said it would also be great to see easier access to financial loans for women to enter into entrepreneurship.

For Ms Bethel, mentorship opportunities for women to pursue leadership in the public and private spheres of endeavour are also important. Another point on Ms Bethel’s list is to one day see at least 33 per cent of Parliament and Cabinet represented by women.

“The list goes on: more women on public and private boards, mentorship of young women by older women in careers and business, regularisation of the issue of citizenship for children born of Bahamian women outside of the Bahamas whose fathers are not Bahamian, regularisation of the issue of citizenship of foreign husbands of Bahamian women, and effective dealing with the issue of statelessness of children of undocumented women and immigrants to the Bahamas,” said Ms Bethel.

According to Youth Consultant, Public Speaker and Writer Anastarcia Huyler, in 2014 the Bahamas will host the Commonwealth Women’s Parliamentary Association Caribbean Conference. The goal of that body is to encourage women and girls to get involved with politics and the passing of legislation in their various countries. The conference is tentatively set for March in coordination with the UN’s International Day of Women and Girls.

“Having that conference held in the first quarter of the year is symbolic for me because it emphasises a critical step necessary to bringing gender equality to the forefront. It is my hope that next year a referendum will be passed in this country that allows women the same constitutional rights as men, including the ability to pass on citizenship even if the child’s father is foreign born,” said Ms Huyler.

Ms Huyler said she would also like to see the story of the country’s great female leaders shared in schools through history, family life and literature courses.

“I hope that in this coming year, the various service organisations will continue to assist their high school female student groups in promoting positive self and body images. I hope that we see an increase in females graduating high school and a decrease in students pregnant in high school. I hope to see more women getting into and graduating from the College of the Bahamas, but also more pictures of women in the paper, being promoted in their various fields,” said Ms Huyler.
She is hoping that the statistics on crimes against women decrease, not as a result of less reports being made, but because every civic organisation has dedicated its time to assisting in conflict resolution, mentorship and leading by example.

“I hope this year that women continue to support other women, seeing themselves as comrades rather than as competitors. I believe that female empowerment comes when both women and men believe that both can do anything, and they both assist in supporting each other until they do,” said Ms Huyler.

Donna Nicolls, volunteer counsellor at the Bahamas Crisis Centre said her hope is for Bahamian women to become more concerned about the issues that really affect them.

“We also need to be more aware of how we enable abusers and rapists by the comments we make about women. We want people to be more conversant to the international laws that affect women such as the Committee on the Elimination of Discrimination against Women (CEDAW) and the Bel�m do Par�. I also would like women to really focus on the enormous responsibility of being a mother and to understand that children don’t listen, but they imitate so we have to start behaving in a way that is really modeling the behaviour we want to see in our children, and that we all commit to this New Year to have healthy relationships,” said Ms Nicolls.

Iris Adderley, who serves as a consultant at the Disability Affairs Division of the Ministry of Social Services and Community Development, said she would like to see an inclusive health care system especially for women with disabilities.

“Also, accessible transportation and employment opportunities. This is for women in particular because you know we make less anyway. I would also like to see women with disabilities in decision making positions,” said Ms Adderley.