The Tribune

THE home of Mizpah and J Egbert “Bertie” Tertullien in Blue Hill Estates brimmed with books. There were shelves of books on politics, psychology, economics, social sciences, literature – especially West Indian and African literature – and other topics. Ideas and current affairs were exuberantly and spicily debated at the Tertulliens.

The couple met in Canada after Mizpah, who was a nurse, went to the University of Toronto to study psychology and there she met Bertie, a statistician, who eventually became the Director of Statistics for The Bahamas. They were a multifaceted and intellectual couple who enjoyed liming with friends and good conversation.

Mizpah Tertullien nee Duncan (1930-2015) was a progressive, smart, vibrant, strong woman, whose mother hailed from Ragged Island. Her father was Jamaican, an elegant gentleman who was a taxi driver.

She attended Government High School in the 1940s along with Sir Lynden Pindling, Sir Orville Turnquest and others who played a pivotal role in the country’s national development. Like others of her generation, she dreamt tremendous dreams for a sovereign Bahamas.

After she passed away in 2015, then Prime Minister Perry Christie observed that she “contributed significantly to the development of the modern Bahamas in a variety of spheres”.

Mrs Tertullien, a leading female politician of her generation, was also a psychologist; a newspaper columnist who wrote “Psychologically Speaking”, which also became a title of a book; a radio personality; attorney and author.

INTELLECT

Despite Tertullien’s intellect and accomplishments, the Progressive Liberal Party (PLP) never nominated her for a winnable seat, though many less accomplished and capable men were repeatedly given nominations.

The PLP continued to run her in Shirlea, a seat the party knew she could not win. Had she been a man, it is probable that she would have been given a safe seat and served in the Cabinet.

Dame Dr Doris was given a nomination for a seat in Eleuthera, which she stood no chance of winning. In a nod to women, she initially served in the Cabinet as a minister without portfolio.

After Warren Levarity was dismissed from the Cabinet, Dr Johnson was given his portfolio. The argument was made that because she was unelected she should not have been given the portfolio. But some believe that there was sexism at play in this argument.

Bahamian women were integral to the success of the PLP in terms of votes, grassroots organising, fundraising, branch development and other support.

Some continue to erroneously suggest that majority rule came in 1962 after women secured the right to vote and that “the majority of the voters elected the United Bahamian Party (UBP) as the government on that day”. This suggestion is a grand lie.

In 1962, the PLP garnered 32,261 votes but only eight seats. The UBP got only 26,500 votes but 18 seats. The 1962 results showed how corrupt and unfair the electoral system was, and that was after Secretary of State for the Colonies Alan Lennox-Boyd had ordered the addition of four new seats for New Providence, two in the South and two in the East.

A pernicious slogan by the UBP in the 1962 election, geared primarily toward women, was: “Vote PLP and Starve.” Despite this, the majority of black women voted PLP.

Still, despite the votes, the organising capacity of women, and the role they played in electing the PLP as the first majority rule government in 1967, women apparently were not good enough to sit among the men in the House.

SEXIST

The sexist pattern was to nominate women as tokens for seats the party could not win. It was okay for women to campaign, to raise funds, to fry conch fritters and to do other chores, but serving in government was supposedly beyond their capacity.

The sexism that failed to run more women for the House of Assembly and that failed to ensure women in the cabinet for decades after majority rule and independence, was in terrible evidence at the Bahamas Independence Conference in London.

At the constitutional talks, convened 12 days before Christmas 1972, the PLP opposed full equality for Bahamian women in terms of passing on a right of automatic citizenship to children born outside The Bahamas of a non-Bahamian husband. The PLP could have taken Dame Doris to the Independence Conference. But it failed to take her or any other woman as a delegate.

This denial of full equality by the governing party was not an oversight. It was a matter of contention between the Free National Movement, which argued for full equality on the citizenship question, and the PLP, which defended its patronising, antiquated and discriminatory position as an international norm.

Had the FNM’s position prevailed, we would not still be struggling as a nation on these constitutional matters, which also discriminates against a category of men.

During a break in the formal talks, one of the most senior PLP leaders was pressed by an FNM delegate on the matter. The flippant response was that if Bahamian women got such a right, they would then want the right to use the men’s washroom.

ENTRENCHED

It is a tragic and prime example of the entrenched sexism of that era that the party which raised eternal hell in dismantling the Old Guard’s resistance to blacks attaining political power, failed to move heaven and earth to quickly get a woman elected to the House, the centrepiece of Bahamian democracy.

Except for the brief period Dame Doris served in an early cabinet of Sir Lynden Pindling, while she was a senator, not a single other woman sat in the Cabinet of The Bahamas during the PLP’s initial quarter of a century rule. Apparently, women were also not good enough to serve in Cabinet.

The failure to empower more women to serve at the highest level of government was a systematic depreciation and attack on the intellect, intelligence, creativity and imagination of women like Mizpah Tertullien, a cosmopolitan spirit, who would have been a powerful voice around the Cabinet table.

A few women did serve in the Senate during the PLP’s first 25 years in office. Still, had more women been recruited to run for winnable seats and if more had served in Cabinet during those years, we would be more advanced in terms of women in elected office.

SHATTERED

It was not until 1982, two and a half centuries after the establishment of the House of Assembly that a woman was elected to that chamber. The glass ceiling was shattered by Dame Janet Bostwick of the FNM.

With the FNM’s 1992 victory three women were appointed to Cabinet posts with portfolio assignments in health, social services, national insurance, transport and the public service.

After a Cabinet shuffle during that term, women were appointed to portfolios dealing with education, foreign affairs and that of the attorney general.

Following the 1997 election, both the Speaker of the House, Italia Johnson, and the President of the Senate, Lynn Holowesko, were female. A midterm change of senators resulted in 50 percent of the Senate being female.

As noted last week, the House evolved over the centuries, becoming the centrepiece of Bahamian democracy representing the relative advancement and equality of various segments of society.

To advance and ensure greater equality, including on issues of gender-based violence, more progressive women need to be elected to the House. Women activists today must work to recruit and ensure that more women run for the major parties.

Political power is indispensable in all struggles for equality. In countries where larger numbers of women serve in parliaments and cabinets there is greater equality.

The FNM ended the practice whereby male public officers were routinely promoted over women and winning higher salaries because they were invariably seen as the principal breadwinner.

The FNM abolished the dower and made surviving spouses, regardless of gender, heir to the matrimonial home. It abolished primogeniture. These equality changes were made because of progressive men and women in parliament and cabinet.

Today, there is general agreement that more women should be in Parliament. Also, the major political parties need to have more ambitious recruitment and training programmes for better male and female candidates.

Many qualified women have sat in the Senate and accepted other high public offices by appointment, but were unwilling to offer as candidates for election.

A concerted programme and targets by political parties for female representation in the House is essential. Activists have a role in encouraging and supporting more qualified women running for office.

The sidelining of women in the 1970s and 1980s was a depreciation and a lack of respect for female intelligence and ability. The failure to ensure constitutional equality is a failure to enhance the autonomy and agency of women.

The failure to outlaw marital rape and to more aggressively address domestic and sexual violence is a depreciation of and attack on women’s bodies as the “property” of men.

To ensure a greater culture of gender equality and to cultivate new mindsets in men and women requires political activism and involvement, both of which Mizpah Tertullien demonstrated in her activism, writings and engagement in party politics and government.