The Tribune

By Dr Ian Bethell-Bennett

The violence of the last few days has really made a statement about where the country is. It has also shown the intention of many to continue down this road of serious crime and wanton violence and killing.

What is interesting about violence is that it often stems from huge inequalities and the perception of one person having more than another. What is also surprising in all of this is the social perception that women cannot be violent.

Why does a society assume that women are immune to the same triggers as men? Are women not human beings? Do all human beings not have triggers that cause them to act in particular ways?

We assume that women are weaker, docile, less intelligent beings who are governed by emotion and are subject to swings in moods and feelings. This is a very limited understanding of women forwarded by particular thinkers in the 19th century and reinforced by a serious lack of understanding of women’s biological or physiological makeup.

The simple conclusion was that women were inferior and their brains were smaller than men’s, which made them inferior and less capable of reason. Today, this philosophy of difference has been disproved. However, some hold onto their outdated beliefs because they serve them well or they find change scary.

Bahamian society in general seems to understand that inequality is a good thing. Women should be treated differently than men. Women should not enjoy the same rights as men. Women, for example, should not be able to open a bank account without the consent of their husbands. They see nothing wrong with a bank officer telling a woman who has been employed in a top law or accounting firm to please bring in her husband when she comes so that he can co-sign with her on her account application.

Of course, there are some women who will be allowed to do business as a feme sole, or single woman, but their position in society will provide them with this privilege. They enjoy a certain proximity to power that affords them certain rights that other women cannot access. All women are not treated equally.

It is equally insulting that many understand violent behaviour to be the strict purview of males. Women are incapable of behaving violently, yet in their homes they are often the persons who inflict great violence through words or deeds not withstanding their ‘diminished’ stature.

Men are seen to shoot and beat women because they choose to end relationships with them, and the contrary is true as well. In many cases a man will be allowed to walk out of prison free for killing a woman who has ended a relationship with him. The defence is she provoked his passion and so the killing was ‘justified’, yet women are not given such an excuse. Do we consider women to be so inferior that they are incapable of anger?

At the same time we know that women are very capable of anger. Our gender biased way of thinking tells us that women are simply too ‘weak’ to behave in such a masculine way as to express murderous anger or rage without demonstrating any remorse.

The government admonishes us for not congratulating them when there are no murders on a given day, but at the same time they offer that they are not responsible for the social inequalities they are continuing to engineer. They encourage gender inequality and serious social inequity, but it benefits them.

It is enlightening when speaking to persons from across the social spectrum how many people continue to espouse bigoted and biased ways of thinking. They firmly believe that women should be treated as less than men. They do not want laws to change to reflect a changing world where greater equality and equity are being sought for all people. Their way of thinking is remarkably akin to the thinking and attitudes espoused by the French during the French Revolution; they believed that the Haitian Revolution was impossible because Haitians or the enslaved Africans who inhabited Haiti were incapable of creating a revolution. History showed that they were wrong.

The government of the day promised to live up to the country’s international obligations by having a gender equality referendum to address some of the inequalities currently enshrined in the Bahamian Constitution. The same government as it nears the end of its term in office, has done nothing really to encourage gender equality and to promote social equity, in fact, they have espoused all sentiments to the contrary and it seems that they are firmly entrenched in and promoting the thinking that women are less equal than men and that some persons are less equal than others.

The promised public education programme and the awareness building campaign have run on one-horsepower, if that. Without a serious programme that addresses the root misunderstandings of gender, equity and equality such a vote stands no chance of succeeding. Rather than do this, they have created campaigns about gay marriage and the promotion of unchristian ways of being to undermine the process.

Interestingly, many women in government and in the party are resistant to the idea of women being on better footing, too. In fact, a large majority of those who vociferously oppose the referendum are women. Obviously, they do not see the benefits of equity and equality for women. It is most intriguing that the government that has promised to push for the equality referendum is led by the same group that walked out and protested against the same referendum in 2002. What these things say to us is that there is little hope of such a referendum really happening, and if it does it will most likely fail because of seriously poor public education campaign.

Gender equality and social equity are not about a simple turnout to vote, they are about changing the way people think and that cannot occur over night, especially when led down biased and bigoted avenues that promote inequality and inequity. The same thought process that says that a woman cannot be a cold-blooded killer continues to keep us stuck in a way of thinking that though being proved wrong every day, keeps the population shackled and blinkered.