Women must stand together

CAROL MATROO

Co-founder and chief “PLOTTer” of Powerful Ladies of TT (PLOTT) Gillian Wall has said men should show women respect, acknowledge their skills, competencies, and the contributions they continue to make at all levels of society and industries.

Wall observed the Global Gender Forum confirmed that if the current rate continued, gender parity was at least 200 years away, as she spoke on Friday at the InterClub of TT and PLOTT’s panel discussion on achieving gender security at Hyatt Regency, Port of Spain.

“We say, say it isn’t so, it can’t be. We can, we must, we will, as women accelerate the pace, and the only way we could do that is through collaboration,” she said as women throughout the world continued to celebrate International Women’s Day.

“This week saw NGOs (non-governmental organisations) and civil societies, the private sector and state coming together to discuss the challenges our women face, to encourage women on any level to speak their truth. Do we as women speak our truth? Do we as women stand courageously next to one another? Our only way for progress is remaining true and stand by each other’s side,” she said.

She said much may be displaced in this society, but all was not lost.

Terry Ince, Chair of the Convention for all forms of Discrimination Against Women (CEDAW) Committee of TT, said there have been many calls for action to end all discrimination against women, as well as to protect and defend women.

However, it was former US first lady and secretary of state Hillary Clinton who spoke about women’s rights as being human rights as she addressed the United Nations 4th World Conference in Beijing 20 years ago.

“Even today there are those who are trying to silence our words, but the voices of this conference by women must be heard loudly and clearly. It is a violation of human rights where babies are denied food, or drowned or suffocated or their spines broken simply because they are born girls. It is a violation of human rights when women and girls are sold into slavery or prostitution for human greed, and the kind of reasons that are used to justify a practice that should no longer be tolerated,” Clinton said in a clip played by Ince.

Clinton said it was a violation of human rights when women were doused with gasoline, set on fire and burned to death because their marriage dowries were deemed too small, or when individual women were raped in their own community, and when thousands of women were subjected to rape at times of war.

“It is a violation of human rights when the cause of death among women ages 14 to 44 is the violence they are subjected to in their own homes by their own relatives... when young girls are brutalised by the painful and degrading practice of genital mutilation... when women are denied the right to plan their own families when they are forced to have abortions or being sterilised against their will.”

Ince said the only way women would be able to get results was by working together in communities, bringing their ideas together, and showcasing them to the world.