The Tribune

By DR IAN BETHELL-BENNETT

As the Bahamas celebrated International Women's Day last Thursday it is interesting to see that we have so fully embraced the language without the matter.

Yes, women have advanced a great deal in the world, and in Bahamian society in general, but at the same time there are places in the world where women's agency has devolved.

As the Bahamas has signed onto and participated in many UN treaties which include but are not limited to CEDAW (the Convention to Eliminate all Forms of Discrimination Against Women), yet has done very little to implement these articles into Bahamian law.

As with many places, we tend to rest on our laurels and celebrate what we claim to have done rather than what has really been done. We thrive on perceptions rather than reality.

As one of the countries with the highest level of violence against women, how has this improved the lives of women and girls? How has the government and the public worked to implement mechanisms and policies to offset or mitigate against the stunning levels of gender-based violence the afflict the country? Have penalties been increased? Have laws been enacted to protect women's rights? Have efforts been made to change the perceptions of women's rights in the general community?

These are examples of advancement of women in the country. Have laws that do not allow women to participate in the same way as men in the country and its democratic process been changed? Have programmes to improve the way we see women's and girls' inclusion into the mainstream been initiated? Have institutions been strengthened that will work with women's and girls rights? Indeed, have efforts been made to foster better and deeper understanding of the roles women play in a democratic country?

The Bahamas has made a great deal about International Women's Day, which it should, because we do need to put the spotlight on women and their empowerment. We do need to underscore that women's rights are human rights, not some set of rights way out there in left field. On a more basic level, though, is the performance of women in the workforce.

According to pundits and even women who see themselves as holders of access for other women, women are out-performing men in society. A paper by June Carbone and Naomi Cahn observes that there a "disappearance of stable male employment that pays a family wage and women's increased workforce participation" (The End of Men or the Rebirth of Class, 2013).

So what makes it necessary for women to "out-perform men" is the lack of male performance in society. Nationally, we also choose to ignore the glaring and alarming class differences that Carbone and Cahn tackle in their paper. Further, while we like to think that we are a developed nation, our massive inequities and inequalities, especially when it comes to earning power, speak to a more violent, less kind reality.

We are posited as a rich country because of a GDP that does not recognise the class differences inherent in the system. Also, we ignore the alarmingly high gene coefficient. So women in the upper classes may earn more and have greater access, but this usually comes with their ability to negotiate relationships and marriage with better partners; they are the minority. On the other hand, women in working class communities have been forced into a hard and fast roles where they have few choices.

Their power within relationships, however, has fallen; they enjoy less, not more, power to dictate what the men "should and should not do." If women had such power they would be forcing the men to clean up their act, stay sober, and stay employed.

Do we celebrate this? Are we sure that we are celebrating the right things? Yes, some women, but very few, are doing very well, and these are usually in relationships with successful men and have a certain amount of autonomy. Meanwhile, most of the women we choose not to see, the very ones directly and indirectly, even if unknowingly, impacted by laws that limit women's equitable participation in the country, are not doing well. They are suffering tremendous social and structural, not to mention cultural violence.

This cultural violence is often seen as government announces plans to hold "women empowering" referenda that fail or to shift laws that disempower women, met by fierce outcry, usually from areas that argue that they are in favour of women's empowerment. Further, the very women elected to government to supposedly represent all people, so put in positions of relative power, use their power and access to further the course of misogyny and paternalism.

As Carbone and Cahn argue:

"We suspect, however, that if women were in fact to gain greater societal power, they would want more than individual success or more supportive domestic partners. We believe that what they would want is a more equal society. Wary of the traps of essentialisation, we nonetheless note that while some women certainly want money and power and others want independence, women as a group are more likely than men as a group to prefer healthier and more egalitarian communities."

The travesty of celebrating progress for a majority group treated like a much maligned minority is that as Carbone and Cahn demonstrate: "The ensuing policies, which block further economic equality for women and blue collar men, in turn increase women's dependence on access to male income at the top and marginalise the women in the middle and the bottom who are making it on their own".

Are we celebrating that women can be as misogynistic and paternalistic when in power as can some men or that they choose to allow the status quo to remain so that women should never challenge male authority because they understand that they will be slapped down? Are we celebrating that women cause their own rapes, according to authorities, and that they are property of their husbands? Where is the younger generation's challenge to this unveiled patriarchal misogyny?