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Tag: Dr Gabrielle Jamela Hosein

Remembering who we are

Dr Gabrielle Jamela Hosein

A PEOPLE’S aspirations can never be defeated. This is the lesson of our history.

I’ve written repeatedly about how divided we are in Trinidad and Tobago – by class, geography, race, and more. This did not start today, and it has not been helped by those in government – this, the last, or those before.

This division shows itself in a thousand ways: the abandonment of rural and south Trinidad from necessary infrastructure like access to pipe-borne water, paved roads, and completed schools, despite pleading and protest. It shows itself in statements thrown back and forth – from the racist “go back to Africa” from those believing they live in “UNC country” to those in the PNM who look at Indo-Trinidadian citizens and disparagingly “wonder if we’re living in Bangladesh or Delhi.”

We are separated by numerous systemic and historical superiorities and inequities, and everyone impatiently galleries with the little bit of power they have.

A major challenge is that what some read as racist is often not recognised or affirmed as so or is downplayed by others – though examples abound on all sides in how we debate on social media; in how we weaponise each other’s “government name;” in the eras during which we find our voices and speak out and the eras during which we don’t; and the issues we consider important or not and how we interpret them.

At times, we do not even properly understand what upsets our “other,” and we fail to focus on bridging the experiences, fears, and rhetoric that make us disagree.

Social media has made it worse because we do not have to “live good with each other” online – and typing comments is a terrible substitute for talking, but also because media and blogging culture thrives off clickbait, big reveals, echo chambers, and posts that amplify dismissiveness, disinformation, obfuscation, and a sense of threat, anger, and exclusion.

These are perilous times for public deliberation if we don’t see the urgency of crossing these divides by connecting our common ground.

Caribbean organising which crosses boundaries – bringing us together over shared concerns, whether in relation to women, artists, domestic workers, ecological destruction, agriculture, sports, or peace requires courageous engagement with those whom we consider different and, sometimes, denigrating.

It requires movements born out of the hard work of consensus-building. It requires understanding who we are such that we can see our strengths and common values and counter the modus operandi of those whose bread and butter is stoking what Professor Emerita Rhoda Reddock theorises as a politics of “competing victimhoods” and a world of vastly different and partial grasps of the same reality.

Indeed, who are we?

We are the thousands who sell in our markets each week, carrying what we have grown across the region by boat, and commonly believing that “everybody have to eat,” in putting a little extra, and in building social relationships out of economic transactions. The same people, excluded from banking, who found ways to save using sou sou hands; grounding a grassroots practice built on trust, mutuality, and shared betterment as a local ethos.

We are indigenous communities – from the Amerindians in Guyana to the Maroons of Suriname to the Garifuna of St Vincent, the Kalinago of Dominica, the Maya of Belize, and Trinidad’s First Peoples – who believe in collectivism, communal land, co-operatives, and models that counter individualism and disconnection.

We are people who believe in the arts as sites of collective and home-grown spirituality, skill, and transcendence – whether pan, tassa, dance, literature, theatre, oral traditions, and traditional forms of commemoration, masquerade and celebration that bring multi-ethnic histories to culture, sharing it so generously across our territories.

We are people who believe in care for others, as witnessed by the thousands of citizens who contribute to food, healthcare, homes, counselling and much more to those in need – whether locally amid floods or everyday poverty, or in Dominica, Cuba, Jamaica, or Haiti following disasters.

We aspire to peace. We aspire to treat each other with dignity. We aspire to regionality. We aspire to justice. In the face of political elites, multinational corporations, and Monroe Doctrine militarism, we aspire to self-determination.

We can fight each other or mediate a unity that exists around what we value and all to which we aspire. Even as no one can take these aspirations from us, no one will do the work for us, not governments, politicians, militaries, or foreign powers.

Take a breath. Find your best self. Understand well what we most must do.

Diary of a mothering worker

Entry 571

motheringworker@gmail.com

More of us must be brave

Dr Gabrielle Jamela Hosein

GLOBAL public outrage over the savagery and cruelty of Israeli settler colonisation, state military decimation, and ethnic cleansing of generations of innocent Palestinians continues to grow.

Yet, European and US diplomacy defers to trade and military interests, and support for settler Zionism.

The partition of Palestine became a colonial policy position with the 1917 Balfour Declaration, when British foreign secretary Arthur James Balfour endorsed “a national home for the Jewish people” in Palestine. 1947’s UN Resolution 181 took most of the land from Palestinians for establishment of an Israeli state.

Enforced mass expulsions by settler paramilitaries, and then Israeli state military, have been occurring since at least the 1948 Nakba, or “catastrophe” in Arabic, when an estimated 750,000 Palestinians were displaced from their homes in present-day Israel with no right of return. After 1967, Israeli policies in the West Bank, Gaza, and East Jerusalem, including settlement expansion, annexation, and military law, appeared to aim for permanent control over all of historic Palestine.

This week, Al Jazeera reports that “Israel is demolishing more Palestinian homes across the occupied West Bank, including occupied East Jerusalem, at a higher rate in 2025 than any previous year since the occupation began in 1967.” Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu, for whom the International Criminal Court issued an arrest warrant for war crimes, is considering full conquest of the Gaza Strip.

Tens of thousands of children are suffering from malnutrition and dehydration under Israeli occupation. Michael Fakhri, the UN Special Rapporteur on the Right to Food, described Israel as building “the most efficient starvation machine you can imagine.”

Food distribution has been eclipsed by the Israeli and US-administered Gaza Humanitarian Foundation (GHF). It established four aid sites in Gaza, inside Israel’s militarised zone, forcing Palestinians into long and dangerous journeys to get food. Hundreds, including aid workers, have been shot at and killed around its distribution sites.

One hundred and seventy charities and NGOs, including Oxfam and Save the Children, are calling for the GHF to be shut down. In the words of UN humanitarian chief Tom Fletcher: “It makes aid conditional on political and military aims. It makes starvation a bargaining chip. It is a cynical sideshow. A deliberate distraction. A fig leaf for further violence and displacement.”

Netanyahu’s war is so horrific that, this week, 600 former Israeli security chiefs, including from the Mossad, Shin Bet, and the Israeli Defence Forces, have called for an end to suffering in Gaza, and negotiated exchange of political prisoners and hostages.

What is the position of the powerful?

The European Union is Israel’s biggest trading partner, receiving about 30 per cent of exports, and Israel is the EU’s third biggest trading partner. There have been small shifts in trade restrictions, particularly in arms exports, but Germany and Italy are Israel’s main European suppliers of arms.

On July 31, 58 former ambassadors of the EU wrote an open letter calling Europe’s silence and neutrality “complicity” with Israel’s crime of “apartheid” and betrayal of the Union’s “every principle.” They called for immediate suspension of all arms exports to Israel, banning of trade with Israel’s illegal settlements, sanctions, and recognition of Palestinian statehood.

Between October 2023 and October 2024, US military assistance was increased to a minimum of US$22 billion – substantially more than annual aid provided to Israel since 1959. Such spending, funded by taxpayers, provides guaranteed revenue or a form of corporate welfare for US defence contractors. By contrast, the US has committed only 30 million to the GHF.

Companies cozy with Israel include Boeing and General Dynamics (bombs used in airstrikes on civilians), Caterpillar (armoured bulldozers used to demolish villages), Ford (armoured pickups), General Electric, General Motors, Lockheed Martin, and Trump financiers Amazon, Google, and Microsoft which provide cloud services.

War profiteering is the Goliath to be defeated. The US and Europe are its biggest bedfellows. Condemnation of their equivocations in the face of genocide is non-negotiable.

Moral conscience is always in a fight for its life against blood money, but ordinary people everywhere are protesting Palestinians’ gunpoint hell of captivity, terror, and dispossession. Civilian flotillas with humanitarian aid, representing 44 countries, are aiming to break Israel’s illegal blockade. Woe to the downpressors for people power is the shifting tide.

Conscientious objection becomes angrier the more bombs are dropped, expands across geographies the more children die, revolts with greater unity the more reprehensible the injustice, and grows more certain the more those in authority lose credibility.

For the Palestinian people, more and more of us must be brave.

Diary of a mothering worker

Entry 561

motheringworker@gmail.com

A nation divided

DR GABRIELLE JAMELA HOSEIN 

JUST SHORT of three months after the April 28 election, we are a nation divided.

First, the PNM has not found its feet. Even under new leadership, it has not admitted to specific governance and development mistakes made over the last ten years. There’s been lots of reputation management, and a surge in hour-by-hour blogger pettiness, disinformation, and vitriol, but little accountability for more than “not listening” – which is both far too obvious and far too nebulous.

What specifically could the party have done better across sectors? What did a post-mortem suggest should have been completed, implemented, evaluated, legislated, and much more? And why wasn’t it?

The party has gone into the most stereotypical of opposition modes and there is no clear sense of what might be different next time. Martin Gonzales “Bangladesh or Delhi” description of Indo-Trinidadian citizens never received appropriate public opprobrium from the party. This will not be forgotten. While many looked on since 2015, ethnic parity on boards was a non-issue in a PNM town so the hysteria feels hypocritical now.

This feeling abounds. What could a PNM statement about the SoE possibly say when the party made a similar decision just months before? And, when the UNC’s axe turned to Cepep, and PNM lawyers gathered around contractors, why not also concede that spending unaudited billions for a decade was negligent at best and scandalously suspect at worst, facilitating the potential for trough-feeding yet to be fully presented to the public.

Cepep Company Ltd CEO Keith Eddy’s affidavit, as reported by the press, should leave us livid about the mess that was left, now costing us in the courts.

Poor and politicised oversight created the context for Cepep workers, among the poorest in our population, to now suffer. The party could therefore take down the show of moral high ground and admit these things to voters who are non-aligned, not convinced by spin, and willing to swing. I wish the Ms Beckles well as she has a near Sisyphean task ahead.

On the UNC side, it’s a kind of “signal when it’s time to hold yuh head and bawl” situation for we know our overall economy has contracted and it will take a co-ordinated, serious, and results-based approach to inch ourselves away from the quagmire. No one yet knows if this government has what it takes.

On the one hand, there is a “it’s been 11 weeks, how come all the national issues haven’t been solved” circus. On the other, across vastly neglected swathes of land past the lighthouse, a sense of relief, satisfaction and optimism remains sustained, though such faith is deeply fragile.

In some instances, boards should have already received instruments of appointment and the business of ministries kept from stasis. In others, party loyalists and executives are being rewarded with positions. Some of those appointees could be suitably qualified, but it leaves a sceptical population thinking “PNM or UNC: same thing” when it is not clear what those qualifications are.

Also, it’s not clear whether gender parity in those appointments matters in 21st century TT, including in terms of board chairpersons, particularly as there are more women with professional degrees and qualifications than men in the country. I have my own scepticisms about excitement to get into power, but shallow commitment to progressive politics once there, despite having a woman at the helm of the state.

So, we find ourselves here.

PNM people, right up to the top, are acting as if there was no corruption, waste, or mismanagement, leaving us broke. UNC people are holding to a populist discourse of love and care in the hope that they don’t begin to read headlines about indefensible elite politricks and personal aggrandisement among their own. They are as anxious about corruption a second time around as they are desperate for competent leadership and ministers that do not gallery.

Meanwhile, social media feels like one nation comprising divided people who demand pretence about themselves and honesty about their opposition. We are caught between anger and anticipation; populations with very different emotions; those who accepted or condemned the SoE then and those who accept or condemn it now; those who felt victimised before and those who feel victimised today; those who see only Indian racism and those who see only African racism; those who attack mercilessly but complicitly defend their own; and those pushing hate and propaganda for one side or the other.

We are distracted by our own in-fighting. Meanwhile, the poor keep getting poorer.

Diary of a mothering worker

Entry 560

Motheringworker@gmail.com

Remembering rebellious Indian women

Dr Gabrielle Jamela Hosein

WHAT DOES it mean to bring post-indenture feminist politics to how we remember the past? The Botanical Afterlife of Indenture: Imaginative Archives, which opens on June 10, 6 pm at the Art Society of TT and continues until June 21, provides an example.

I use post-indenture rather than jahajin or girmitya because the first anchors us to those women who crossed the Indian and Atlantic Oceans as jahajis to become indentured workers, and girmitya defines our bond to them by their five- and ten-year plantation contracts.

The term post-indenture incorporates these and a range of other inherited terms but is distinctly contemporary, drawing on the past but located in the present. It is also multi-ethnic, seeing all of us across race as impacted by the Indian indenture experience and living post-indenture Caribbean lives.

By feminist politics, I mean our solidarities with those from the past who challenged norms of gender and sexuality, defined rules of respectability, sought self-determination, protested injustice, and worked through the mutual recognition necessary for cross-ethnic organising.

Post-indenture feminist politics, then, draws on the most rebellious and radical, seeing in them an example of the struggles to which our politics should remain committed. It means reading archives carefully for its abundance of transgressive and fearless Indian women, men, and queer individuals.

Amid commemorations of Indian indenture in the Caribbean, I often look for bold affirmation that most Indian women did not come to the region as wives, but as workers, whether by choice, trickery, or kidnapping.

They sought far more economic and sexual autonomy than today’s voices extolling the patriarchal Indian family would approve. They brought their children with them as single mothers. Left unsatisfactory men and took their jewellery, savings, and land with them. Fought men in court. And, used every form of freedom or power available to be the makers of their own histories despite colonial exploitation, violence, domestication, and dehumanisation.

They chafed at exploitative working conditions, raised their voices, downed tools, and lead protests. Some dressed like men, some desired women, some were promiscuous, some were sex workers, some were own way, and some were bad gyals.

All of them were our foremothers, just like the respectable ones.

They say nice women do not make history. On the other hand, troublesome ones are hardly exalted. A post-indenture feminist politics is not concerned with whether women met feminine ideals, but with their bold and fearless spirits’ contribution to changing who Indian women could be today.

The Botanical Afterlife of Indenture exhibit centres these women. The 19th and early 20th century ones on the margins. Those who wore a dhoti and shirt, and men’s clothes, while working on a coconut plantation. Those who were angry at their sexual vulnerability in plantations, villages, and towns. Those who didn’t protest politely. Those who didn’t defer to male authority because it was men. Those who chose sex with the partners they wanted and refused those they didn’t want. Those who made sure daughters finished their education before they even considered marriage. Those who could be vulgar. Those whose daughters inherited as much as their sons.

I see excitement in my young women students when they realise they don’t have to fulfil myths about Indian women because there were foremothers who never met or refused those ideals. For them, empowerment is tracing histories of Indian women being who they want to be. It is understanding that, from colonial portraiture to contemporary representations, those women are easily erased from history.

For example, there are dozens of images of docile-looking, bejewelled, indenture-era Indian women on the internet and near complete absence of studio images of Indian women’s defiance and protest.

The Botanical Afterlife of Indenture: Imaginative Archives makes these women visible through its engagement with archives of Indian womanhood.

It brings jahajin bandals (creolised as “georgie bundles”), rangoli, mehndi, godnas (tattoos), jewellery, film, and photography to its imagining of the legacy these women left for generations who came later. To remember them like this is to absolve their defiance, rather than disown their ruction. The exhibit is contemporary, political, historical, and beautiful in these ways.

It is produced in collaboration with Abigail Hadeed, Melanie Archer, Risa Raghunanan-Mohammed of Henna Trinidad, Portia Subran, Nicola Cross, Mitchum Weaver, Richard Rampersad, Michele Jorsling, Geneva Drepaulsingh, Chandra Rattan, Christeen Harewood, Vinay Harrichan of The Cutlass Magazine, Lyndon Livingstone, Ziya Hosein-Livingstone, and Lina Vincent, Gaurav Maurya, Dhanya Kolathur, and Setika Singh from India.

Join us at the Art Society of TT in their honour.

Diary of a mothering worker

Entry 557

motheringworker@gmail.com

Gender stereotypes in political life

Dr Gabrielle Jamela Hosein

MOST people dismiss gender stereotypes in political life.

We are keenly attuned to racialised “dog whistles” or coded or suggestive language in political messaging which is meant to draw support from one group or another.

The group that feels targeted is typically more attuned and may feel the sense of attack they are experiencing is denied by perceived opponents or the public. This means that what is seen by one group as racist, or “racial” in “Trinbagonian,” may be unnoticed, trivialised, or dismissed by another.

Gender stereotypes, however, typically go unnoticed by anyone unless extreme or racialised. This is because they are considered normal or natural by many, and where women and men might disagree, women’s (and feminists’) views are typically scorned as deluded, exaggerated, or wrong. We therefore think about politics as if gender stereotypes are not constantly at play.

Gender nonetheless appears in election campaigning. For example, in the US, abortion is a gendered issue because debates are informed by ideals about femininity, sexuality and motherhood, the rights and power women should have over themselves and others, and the rights that others, such as child-fathers, the state or even a foetus, should have over women. The subordination of women rests in the very fact of their biology as female humans, and the social – and therefore feminine or gendered – expectations placed only on them and their bodies.

Gender appeared in our own election campaign in terms of the targeting of trans people, and youth and adults who do not conform to expectations of masculinity or femininity. Pre-election, the UNC’s press releases presented trans rights as a threat to the women and children, and were deeply transphobic, creating misleading panic about gender pronouns, people assigned male status at birth using female washrooms, and other US right-wing hyperbole.

Commentators and bloggers didn’t seriously call attention to these “dog whistles,” meant to stir up an “us” vs “them” circling of wagons, though they misrepresented those they targeted and reproduced the myth that biology determines gender.

Keep in mind that gender refers to our beliefs about masculinity and femininity, our expectations and what we consider ideal ways to be, and how people reproduce, negotiate, challenge, and transform these ideals.

In my first television interview after Kamla Persad-Bissessar and Penelope Beckles won their general election and internal party battles, the first thing I was asked to discuss was whether “women are soft in leadership” given that (apparently) “many become apprehensive and nervous when a woman is at the wheel.”

I was astounded, of course. Two women had just led long epic battles against male leadership considered both more powerful and more competent than them, and they roundly trounced them. Persad-Bissessar had, in fact, defeated many internal battles before annihilating the PNM in the North, East, Central, and South.

–

Yet, despite all evidence of strength like steel, somehow the stereotype of these two women as soft prevailed.

Perhaps, it is because they do not appear as domineering or vicious in the style of the men in their midst. Is it, then, that women’s styles of power are not recognised unless they appear in a way we recognise as masculine or authoritarian, toxic or violent?

PM Persad-Bissessar and Opposition Leader Beckles’s styles are clearly not Dr Rowley’s, but in no way are these women soft. Indeed, the PM herself had to warn those in government not to mistake her kindness for weakness. Imagine any man in government ever having to use those words.

This brings me back to under-recognised gendered “dog whistles.” The hyper-attacks on Persad-Bissessar’s physical health are an example. This strategy was deeply integrated into the election campaign and will continue, and it is interwoven with the discourse of her as weak and frail, and therefore unfit to lead. This, despite her “who ent dead, badly wounded” victory over the PNM, and its phalanx of fit and healthy men.

Soon after her win, fake news about a stroke and amputated toes circulated. One person, who I thought should have known better, compared Persad-Bissessar to Biden, who was forced to step down from his campaign, not merely because of his physical state, but his obvious and overwhelming mental incapacity.

Present evidence of such comparison, like the amputations, is not there, but stereotypes of women as weak, soft, unfit, frail, and mentally feeble are a bedrock on which this kind of framing relies as a cognitive shortcut or a “dog whistle.”

Politically expedient, gendered stereotypes are wielded and cause harm. Just listen carefully.

Diary of a mothering worker

Entry 556

motheringworker@gmail.com

 

Small wins for women

Dr Gabrielle Jamela Hosein

A MONTH ago, I wrote about the exclusion of women from national decision-making given their minority status in the current Cabinet. Today, I look at the candidates and what we can expect in terms of women elected to the House come April 29.

The UNC-led coalition is fielding 39 candidates of whom nine are women, with one being a Progressive Empowerment Party representative. They are in Arouca/Lopinot, Chaguanas East, Couva North, Cumuto/Manzanilla, Deigo Martin West, Moruga/Tableland, Princes Town, Siparia, and St Augustine.

Of these, predictions are that Vandana Mohit will be returned to Chaguanas East, Jearlean John to Couva North, political leader Kamla Persad-Bissessar to Siparia, and Khadijah Ameen to St Augustine. Dr Aiyna Ali is in a “safe” seat in Princes Town and, last election, Cumuto/Manzanilla went to the UNC, whose candidate is Shivanna Sam.

Against Marvin Gonzales in Arouca/Lopinot and Hans Des Vignes in Diego Martin West, those are typically lost seats for UNC or other parties. So, it is possible to predict that of the nine women candidates of the coalition, six may make it to Parliament as elected representatives.

The PNM is fielding 41 candidates of whom 12 are women. They are in Arima, Caroni East, Mayaro, Moruga/Tableland, Naparima, Siparia, St Ann’s East, St Augustine, Tabaquite, Trincity/Maloney, Tobago East, and Tobago West.

Of these, Pennelope Beckles is expected to be returned to Arima, Dr Nyan Gadsby-Dolly to St Ann’s East, Camille Robinson-Regis to Trincity/Maloney, and Shamfa Cudjoe-Lewis to Tobago West.

The constituencies of Caroni East, Mayaro, Naparima, Siparia, St Augustine and Tabaquite have not typically gone to the PNM and will be a fight for the women put there.

Moruga/Tableland is considered a seat difficult to predict in this election, and the PNM has a woman fighting there also. From the perspective of predicted seats, of its 12 women candidates, it is likely to return five or six women to the House, just above a quarter of the minimum number of MPs a party needs, none of whom are Indian women.

In Tobago, there are seven parties vying for two seats. The UNC-led coalition does not have candidates in Tobago, but the PNM has Ayanna Webster-Roy in Tobago East.

Of some interest, Watson Duke of the Progressive Democratic Party is contesting that seat as is the Tobago People’s Party, the Patriotic Front, the Innovative Democratic Alliance, and the Unity of the People. Two of these parties are led by women, with Dr Denise Tsoiafatt Angus leading the IDA.

It’s a challenge to the male-dominated status quo when women who are serious and committed organisers opt for the uphill battle of being leaders of political parties. This is an important departure from our masculinist political history, and worth documenting by scholars of our post-independence efforts at expanding access to an equal place on terms that include gender, in addition to creed and race.

Fascinating things are happening with the Patriotic Front where Mickela Panday seems to have generated ground-level excitement. I know folks in Couva North who are going to the polls to put an X by her name, which rocks up things in interesting ways for the UNC’s Jearlean John who is, no doubt, taking every vote seriously.

The Patriotic Front fielded more candidates than any other of the recent, small, or upstart contenders. Of its 37 candidates, 20 of them are women.

This completely defies the narrative that women do not want to contest elections or participate in political leadership and it slams both the UNC and PNM’s inability to identify, invite and encourage women to run, or to assist and mentor women from the brigades and women’s arms, who are at the base of the party hierarchy, into more elite and national levels of power. Which signals a disinterest in doing better than keeping more men than women at the top.

Kudos to the Patriotic Front for showing the entrenched goliaths how it’s done. They put money into a different kind of more modern politics from one which keeps qualified women at the periphery. It will be interesting to see how many votes the party gets in Couva North and San Fernando West, where every vote counts.

Come April 29, we might expect 11 MPs who are women – numbers can shift depending on Tobago East –, adding up to approximately 12 women of 41 in the House, or just less than one-third. I’d love different numbers. An election victory for women in Trinidad and Tobago certainly seems far down the road.

Diary of a mothering worker

Entry 554

motheringworker@gmail.com

Sex work as livelihood

Dr Gabrielle Jamela Hosein

I’M WRITING this just at the end of a month that has sought to raise awareness about the struggle for women’s rights in all its complexity. Earlier columns focused on challenging the sexualisation of girls in sports, and sexism in women’s experience of political leadership. This week, I want to explain sex work as a form of low-income women’s livelihood, and why we should support sex worker unions.

To be clear, this is not a column in support of or advocating for sex work. I am, quite obviously, aware of the many problems associated with sex work, particularly for subordinated and stigmatised women workers. This is a column about why, if one is going to have strong opinions, it is necessary to try to at least understand why sex-worker unions exist, what they advocate for, and why.

On International Women’s Day, Renuka Anandjit, graduate student at IGDS, The UWI, held up the sign she has been holding up at the march in Port of Spain for the past few years. It said: Sex work is work.

It was reposted on social media by an often poorly informed men’s rights activist whose comment was: “Hmmmmm. I wonder how many passes you need for that work. I dunno how that is Women Empowerment or proper Womentorship for International Women Day. So many young girls looking on.”

This was irresponsible. When one has a platform, framing issues in ways that misrepresent, trivialise or demean a movement’s advocacy simply makes life harder for those who are most vulnerable. Public figures should take time to at least understand marginalised groups’ calls for recognition of their rights, and not assume that these groups are simply stupid or deluded or haven’t already considered the relevant issues despite living and thinking about them every day.

Typically, by the time a slogan or a call to action makes it to the mainstream, there’s been decades of sophisticated debate and strategy, and it takes little effort to become informed. I kept asking myself, why couldn’t this man take five minutes to google, “why is sex work considered work?” before jumping on social media to show that he really did not know.

No one advocates for sex work and everyone who frames this as a labour issue is aware of the challenges, from the higher risk of men’s rape of women to higher risk of STDs, principally because negotiating condom use with men who buy sex is notoriously difficult.

The slogan “sex work is work” reflects decades of global activism by sex worker unions, including from Africa and India to Latin America and the Caribbean, to treat prostitution as an area of labour relations in which workers have rights, such as the right to work without fear of violence or the right to be treated with respect by police or the right to non-discriminatory health services. The way we have historically criminalised and stigmatised sex work has only made engaging in such waged labour dangerous and alienating for the labourers involved.

Sex work is not going to go away because men everywhere will continue to purchase sexual content and services, and because the poorest women and girls still have the fewest income options. Our moralising simply gives men with more wealth and socio-economic opportunity even more power over unprotected sex workers.

To quote ASIJIKI, the Coalition to Decriminalise Sex Work in South Africa, “Stigma, discrimination and criminalisation also mean that sex workers find it hard to get protection from labour, health and safety laws. They also cannot strongly unionise or be part of pay discussions and collective bargaining. Because they have little legal power, sex workers who work for employers like brothels and massage parlours are often treated very badly at work. This includes often having an unfairly large amount of their pay taken in ‘fees,’ being made to work long hours, unfair dismissal and being made to see clients they dislike or who are abusive.”

Acknowledging sex work as work provides support to those already engaged in sex work, including to move out of it.

I urge those not engaged in sexual-economic exchange not to fall for the soundbite trap. There is far more to say which is informed and nuanced. The Guyana Sex Worker Coalition and the All Indian Network of Sex Workers are just two of many important unions. Our politics should be grounded in listening to the kinds of allyship they need. Taking time to be informed is an act of much needed worker solidarity.

Diary of a mothering worker

Entry 553

motheringworker@gmail.com

Walking the talk for women

Dr Gabrielle Jamela Hosein

I COUNTED nine women and 20 men in PM Stuart Young’s Cabinet. This tells us that the shift from an older generation of men to a younger one doesn’t necessarily gain us any greater commitment to gender parity, a concept which refers to the equal contribution of women and men to every dimension of life, whether private or public. Incidentally, only one of 29, Indian women have the least access to national decision-making in comparison to other groups of women and men.

Given that, prior to being sworn in, Young came out batting on women’s issues, and congratulating TT on women’s leadership, cabinet decisions are where “the rubber hits the road” or a moment of truth.

I’m typically sceptical of speeches because as (then minister) Young himself put it at International Women’s Day celebrations at the Diplomatic Centre on March 7, actions speak louder than “lip service to something at the moment and at a point in time as opposed to who is prepared to walk the talk and ensure that our women are respected, that our women are provided with levels of leadership that they deserve, and levels of support that they deserve.”

We know that women are the “strong, independent, vibrant, intelligent backbones” of our society, but as valuable as this role is, the majority seem to be stuck there.

Cabinet appointments are not the same as women’s promotion in the public service to the position of director or permanent secretary, which is based on individual effort, meritocracy and years of service, and is earned. It is not the same as a range of other positions which are primarily but not only symbolic, such as president, president of the Senate or speaker of the House, which do not have the decisive power, authority and resources attached to the Cabinet as an executive arm of the state. It is not that these do not matter, but apples are not oranges.

Feminists also continually ask us to consider how it is that women can “dominate” UWI graduating numbers for the last 30 years and yet still be so excluded from political power. This resilient glass ceiling says everything about male headship as naturalised in our society, and the fact that women need far more than qualifications to access the privileges, or glass escalator, which accumulates more men at the top while we tell ourselves it must be because they are more deserving.

So, where does TT rank in the world? The “Women in politics: 2025” map published by the Inter-Parliamentary Union and UN Women presents data up to January 1, 2025, after a slew of significant elections across the world. Globally, women represent 22.9 per cent of cabinet members heading ministries. There are only nine countries in which women hold 50 per cent or more of the positions of cabinet ministers leading policy areas.

At the top of the list in terms of the share of women cabinet members who head ministries, with 50 per cent or more, are Nicaragua, Finland, Iceland, Liechtenstein, Estonia, Andorra, Chile, Spain and the UK, in that order.

In Nicaragua, 64.3 per cent of cabinet appointments are women. As of March 17 in TT, it is 31 per cent. Dominica with 38.5 per cent, Guyana with 35.3 per cent, and Jamaica with 33.3 per cent are ahead of us, ranking 30th, 40th and 45th respectively. Despite having the iconic Mia Mottley, Barbados is at 31 per cent, which is where TT was before yesterday, then ranking 55th.

I’m not easily swayed by state-media biographies, press features or platform kudos on #acceleratingaction because measurable advancement of gender justice is a priority in my own conception of what development should accomplish, or else half the society remains both unequally burdened and unequally benefiting.

Currently, the words being used to describe the global achievement of gender-equal cabinets are “glacial,” “alarming,” “stagnating,” “backsliding,” and “unfulfilled.” More women don’t necessarily mean more gender-sensitive governance, but numbers still matter in righting historical inequity.

Given their vastly unequal access to supremacy, men have greatest responsibility for gender parity, particularly in relation to nominations and appointments over which they have command and especially in relation to ministerial posts. This isn’t a women’s struggle, it’s a sign of men’s principles and political will, and more real than promises.

I remain hopeful as one must. However, for no partisan reason and based solely on the numbers, as we commemorate the 30th anniversary of the Beijing Declaration and Platform for Action, each of us might deliberate what exactly there was in Monday’s historical moment to celebrate.

Diary of a mothering worker

Entry 552

motheringworker@gmail.com

Respect her game

Dr Gabrielle Jamela Hosein

A NEW report, launched by UNICEF, Plan International and UN Women, reviewed how adolescent girls’ lives have changed in the last 30 years since the Beijing Platform for Action was endorsed by 189 governments in 1995. Its key message is: 30 years of uneven progress for adolescent girls.

Women and girls continue to be sexualised in sport, sexually harassed and represented in sexualised ways by the media. There’s a global movement challenging this.

Think of the recent case of former Spanish football federation president Luis Rubiales, found guilty of sexual assault for kissing player Jenni Hermoso without her consent.

In 2021, the Norwegian national team was fined 1,500 euros for wearing bike shorts instead of bikini bottoms as required by beach handball rules. The shorts were considered “improper clothing” because they were “not according to the Athlete Uniform Regulations.”

Sexualisation of women and girls goes beyond the sporting field and can also be found online and includes how women’s bodies are discussed and photographed. This has impacted the greatest of athletes, from tennis legend Serena Williams to multi-gold medalling gymnast Simone Biles.

When track athlete Tara Davis won the women’s long jump event in January 2022, the clip was slowed down and layered over a sensual song in a viral TikTok. The comments included men saying she “knows what she is doing;” in other words that her intention was sex appeal at this moment to which she had dedicated her lifelong training.

Unlike male athletes, representation of women athletes can overshadow their on-field performance. Presented in suggestive poses and clothing, or even nude, the media often projects a “woman first, athlete second” attitude. Think of covers of magazines like Sports Illustrated.

The world is highly contradictory and there are many women athletes who monetise their beauty, femininity and sexuality for sponsorship deals and social media followers. Those who oppose sexualisation can face societal and peer criticism, and lose support, money, and camaraderie for not conforming to the status quo.

Besides minimising athletic accomplishments, sexualisation reduces women and girl athletes’ self-esteem and identity. It’s dehumanising as it frames athletes within confining gender ideals, both those who conform and those who do not fit.

It also prevents sport from being one of the few spaces where girls can develop a healthy body image, free from expectations to be attractive to men and boys. Indeed, body image is one of the reasons many girls avoid sports in the first place. Research has found that young women exhibit more self-objectification and negativity towards their own physical appearances when they view images of sexualised athletes than images focused on performance.

The sexual objectification of young girls and women contributes to mental health issues but also towards rape culture and violence against women. This is important for us in a society where one in five women have experienced non-partner sexual violence, and where the risk of sexual harm begins from childhood in girls’ lives and never ends. In our society, currently, girl athletes see, hear and experience sexualisation before they even know what it is.

When did we decide as a culture it was acceptable to sexualise girls?

In TT, women and girls in sports face the harmful effects of sexualisation, often reflected in explicit, objectifying music at events. This alienates families, sends the wrong message to boys, and amplifies validation of sexual rather than sports skills. Such music undermines respect among athletes, regardless of gender.

For International Women’s Day 2025, along with corporate partners, the Institute for Gender and Development Studies, The UWI, has started the Respect Her Game campaign to promote empowering, gender-sensitive music that encourages athletes, particularly girls, to value their strength and capability over what they hear played on airwaves, including at sports events. This is because sports enables girls to improve their health, build confidence, defy gender stereotypes, and break into male-dominated areas.

Respect Her Game challenges the sexualisation of girls in sports, and is centred in child rights and protection, gender equity, girls’ empowerment, and healthy, safe and respectful youth athlete development.

The campaign comprises a national Youth Sports Music Mix competition to provide playlists for sport events. This immediately creates the alternatives we want to hear. It includes outreach to corporate bodies, who sponsor sporting events with youth athletes, to sign on to Respect Her Game. This creates commitment to immediate change.

Join in. Corporate sponsors, sporting associations, clubs, parents, coaches, and DJs can all accelerate action toward the world that girl athletes still need us to create.

Diary of a mothering worker

Entry 551

motheringworker@gmail.com

Dark times for the world

Dr Gabrielle Jamela Hosein

THE determined swing to the right, which began as a backlash to the progressive politics of the 1960s and 1970s, has now accelerated overnight. At least that’s how it appears, though the ground was set by Thatcherism and Reaganomics in the 1980s, and observers had been sounding an alarm for decades.

It’s like fossil capitalism’s ecocide. We all saw climate change coming, most of us decided not to care, some of us made sure to profit, too many chose to believe nonsense, and too few backed those trying to pull us back from the brink. Yet how many will claim ignorance, helplessness, inevitability or, worse, innocence when we are all climate catastrophe’s victims?

We abandoned the collectivism that aimed to socialise wealth and power and opted for “us versus them,” particularly when “they” were poor, women, LBGTQI or migrants. Men’s groups decided women’s rights were the problem. The rich lobbied for less tax, barricaded themselves against the outcomes of increased class inequality, and left the “have-nots” struggling to stretch welfare.

The mainstream erupted in homophobia and transphobia, as if marginalised people wanting equal sovereignty over their own identities, bodies and hearts was an actual threat to the billionaire broligarchy crushing workers and democracy.

And, everywhere, citizens of states devalue migrant lives and rights, despite all evidence that this is foolish, poor policy and lacking in empathy. In a hemisphere where all of us, except for indigenous peoples, were once migrants, it is so easy to turn us ideologically against ourselves.

We – men, the rich, the well-educated, the politically dominant, the religious – have been selfish, self-righteous, fearful, and exclusionary. Short-sightedly, it seems, we will only realise where we are long after we have arrived.

This dark time feels like the years before the Nazis came to power, when ordinary Germans voted for Hitler, aware of his rhetoric. Later generations would hold them responsible for their complicity as we should be held responsible for ours.

Gaza. Gaza. Gaza. Obliteration, extermination of generations, and mutilation of children. The world’s powerful are most guilty of silence. University students in the US had to risk loss of scholarships, suspension, and expulsion to show the courage we most need.

Meanwhile, amidst the US militarising of the Gaza Strip’s annihilation, Trinis were awarding the US ambassador and jumping up to celebrate (without irony) US independence as if war crimes and the occupation of Palestinian territories mean nothing.

Jared Kushner, Trump’s son-in-law, visited Gaza and confirmed the plan to turn it into a demolition zone, force Palestinians from their homeland and develop it as “waterfront property” a full year ago.

We in the Third World were once a majority voice for the “underdog”: Indian farmers against Monsanto, African mothers against Nestle, Latin American popular movements against the CIA, Palestinians against Zionist settlers.

Today, Trinis support Trump, as if his defence of white supremacists is a line it is acceptable to cross. Elon Musk is embracing Germany’s far right party and somewhere someone is still hailing him as a good businessman.

When insanity seems to be escalating daily from the White House, where does conscience begin and end? Will you wake up one day and act surprised that it has all gone too far?

At home, we are just as susceptible to distraction and apathy. Union members are offered six per cent while the PM’s salary is to increase 47 per cent, the Opposition Leader’s by 76 per cent, and government ministers’by 27 per cent.

We should be livid at such elite self-aggrandisement. Why wear a party T-shirt and wave a flag when none of those increases are for you?

Further, from the Privy Council’s dismissal of the Minister of Finance’s appeal, we can see clearly when political muscle and state resources are used to intimidate watchdog institutions. The Auditor General, Jawantie Ramdass, is a boss for insisting on her role and independence. Lady Simler of the Privy Council actually asked, “To what extent is the minister’s conduct going to be investigated?” Will we let the ruling party dismiss this as nothing?

On the Opposition, Kamla Persad-Bissessar’s panic-mongering obfuscations about a “woke, extreme left-wing agenda” are opportunistically capitalising on this era’s right-wing swing.

Such propaganda is not for me or my family.

Forces like the Nazis came to power because people supported their divisiveness, allowed the mighty to act with impunity, were unthinkingly loyal to leadership, believed misinformation, and failed to defend the right principles when it mattered most.

Those lessons from the past confront us today. We should heed them before it is too late.

Diary of a mothering worker

Entry 550

motheringworker@gmail.com

Politics of having a mister

Dr Gabrielle Jamela Hosein

BUT, of course, Lady Lava is in the gayelle with the Mighty Shadow.

The key message in her 2025 sensation, Ring Finger, appears to be that real partnerships are married ones. “You don’t have a ring, then you don’t have a mister,” she delivers.

Lava’s salvo is straight out of the traditions of calypso – and now chutney, zess and steam – where women and men equally fling warnings about the untrustworthiness of the opposite sex. As Mighty Duke sang in Trust Yuh Wife, “The worse thing any man could do/Is go back home when your wife not expecting you.”

For her part, Lady Lava chides women: “Don’t let him chain up yuh head, you know, sister. If he love, is ring on the finger.” Otherwise, expect men to be in multiple partnerships with child mothers, neighbours, and already-partnered women. Lava herself admits to being repeatedly horned with Jan, Jane, Susan from in the lane, and Kim from Tinder.

“Speech,” Lady Lava introduces, rephrasing the classic line with “Show me your man and I will tell you who you are.” In other words, everyone knows when you are fooled and foolish, talking about “yuh man” as if an imaginary respectability demands his permission or your refrain from bending over. No, is you self who is free to bend.

Lava’s provocative, though conservative message flies in the face of Caribbean history. Afro-Caribbean families have long practised informal cohabitational or visiting unions, delaying marriage or remaining in separate houses while women and children live together. This has many explanations related to the impact of African enslavement on family life or, alternatively, matrilineal African traditions (although today these are multi-ethnic practices).

There has also long been rejection of Victorian, religious and middle-class norms of women’s confinement to domesticity, economic dependence and marital monogamy and, instead, preference for free unions with greater economic and sexual autonomy, including to leave unsatisfactory men or have multiple partnerships.

More recently, a small, qualitative 2007 study conducted in Sea Lots and Point Fortin found that relationships were transactional, meaning women sought a “personal” man, but also kept others near enough to meet potential economic, status, beauty, or sexual needs or to replace the “personal” man if he elevated another woman to his “main” or could not sufficiently protect or provide.

Indeed, marriage – associated with religious expectations that men be the head and woman the neck – has typically clashed with more gender-egalitarian folk practices. It can be a “chain up” in which men “tie you down,” also accomplished through impregnating a woman, while they continue to be a co–sman. At any rate, after initial bacchanal, married men in the Caribbean with outside women and children are well accepted, so a ring is no inoculation against horn. The sexual politics of having “a mister” are therefore hardly resolved by wedlock.

To perhaps explain men’s low investment in marriage, one must turn to the Mighty Shadow. In Yuh Looking For Horn, a young man asks Shadow for his opinion about “a lady he want to marry.”

Wise griot, Shadow comments: You working? You joking? You stealing? You dealing? The young man answers “no” to all, punctuated by the song’s horns. Shadow reasons, “Why you want to marry?/You don’t have no money/You ent working nowhere/You don’t have a payday/You think is so the thing does work?”

He concludes that, in his old shoe and without employment, trade, hustle or magic, the deluded young man will be unable to pay for hairdo, callaloo, perfume, good things to consume, hot rice or fried chicken, and will inevitably get horn.

Writing of the impact of neoliberal economics on the Caribbean since the 1980s, Rhoda Reddock points to reduction of mainstream economic opportunities, public and private sector retrenchment, the growth of short-term occupations without stability or social protection, and the impact on masculinities and gender relations.

The myth of the male breadwinner remains an ideal. Thus, men with the most limited social, educational and employment skills and options find gangs and crime more legit than remaining “broken.”

If the men in Lady Lava’s soundscape are Mighty Shadow’s “young fella,” then it makes sense why their women have no ring to show on their finger. Indeed, in Lava’s video, the cars, boat and pool all symbolise the aspirational wealth such access (to women) requires.

The hit kaiso highlights how both the traditional and contemporary inform popular intimacy and sexuality. Amidst worsening economic contraction, Shadow lyrics portend that out here will have plenty women who to bend.

Diary of a mothering worker

Entry 549

motheringworker@gmail.com

Young and restless

Dr Gabrielle Jamela Hosein

THROUGH the most top-down and elite of processes, Stuart Young is now heir to the prime ministerial throne.

Politics is Machiavellian, referring to the political theory of Italian Niccolò Machiavelli and meaning cunning, scheming and unscrupulous. Seizing and retaining power is cut-throat business.

The party would have concluded that Young could pull in more campaign money from suburban and multi-ethnic uber-rich financiers. He is widely considered pro-business rather than pro-labour and already rubs shoulders in those circles; and he has been mentored for this role over PM Rowley’s tenure – the way that older men mentor younger men so they climb the leadership ladder higher and faster in a bestowing of power from elder to younger patriarch.

Known as the glass escalator, it is invisible advantage gained from class, masculinity, and “boys’ club” networks (from secondary schools to golf clubs, business associations, male-led law firms and family companies), enabling privileged men to conveniently believe that it’s their hard work and natural brilliance that fast-tracks them to the top.

Although it was never really explained why 21 MPs considered Young the best choice, throughout this brief brouhaha, I was less interested in the process of straw polling among the few than the public discourse of the many. For example, regardless of what is allowed by the Constitution and House of Parliament maths, people questioned the process of proposing to crown Young as PM of the nation “jes so.”

Dr Rowley didn’t die. He didn’t get ill. He didn’t throw a tantrum about being disrespected and threaten to retire. He didn’t even withdraw from politics. Rather, he announced both his healthiness and retention of power as party leader; likely to be the most macho figure on the hustings.

What happened was that the nation got played by a long-conceived election strategy. It might have been one thing to watch 100,000 PNM faithful be levelled to a mere red rubber stamp, party democracy be damned, but to see the position of prime minister be cynically manipulated for the gamble planned quite rightly feels suss. No disparagement of interpreters, theorists, newspaper columnists or what the opposition did ten years ago will take away from that.

People will ask questions. What has Young achieved, particularly in relation to national security, when the murder rate says it all? Will he appear as heartless, under the guise of bureaucratic efficacy, as he did during the pandemic when he wouldn’t allow the ill, impoverished, visa-less students, and a range of legitimate others to come home while some well-connected others were flying in and out? Do we believe his smart, brisk head-boy persona or his risk of mic-unmuted homophobic and sexist immaturity?

Typically, when Dr Rowley wants to appear more “man of the people,” random newspaper features, as blatant as all-out propaganda, appear with him hugging sheep. Photographs of him golfing are a major “no no” in these moments, for who in precarious urban hot spots earns $60,000 (set to be $89,000) a month and golfs?

Never having been “of the people,” Young doesn’t bring those vibes which is why Dr Rowley may roll as elder statesman/shepherd/scolding-schoolmaster on the campaign trail. As past athlete, Young might be marketed as a guy who takes a sweat with “the youths” and understands sports development as a strategy for tackling crime in communities, though it’s a little late to champion this after years in national security. We might get energy czar of the Saith and Lok Jack tradition, except our energy base has contracted and fossil extraction is increasingly associated with climate catastrophe, so, as legacy, this is a little sketchy.

We might get “fresh new face” to frame Persad-Bissessar as “aged has-been,” and some might be partial to the narrative of making ethnic history. However conceived, a media campaign will need to make him appear less “one per cent.” It will be disappointing to hear what the UNC did ten years ago dredged up as a bogey. That would mean a party unable to convince voters of its ability to deliver on promises or focus on the future.

What does all this mean for us? Watching these Young and Restless episodes, we must focus on what should be happening in our society, be loyal first to democratic and national needs instead of elites, and name exactly what we see unfolding plainly and fearlessly. We are ever at risk of leadership that offers less than we deserve, caught as we are in the machinations of one-upmanship among political parties.

Diary of a mothering worker

Entry 549

motheringworker@gmail.com

Dreaming of a better world

Dr Gabrielle Jamela Hosein

IN A TIME of unprecedented crisis, unlike any other in human history, we ricochet between anger, anxiety, celebration, and joy. This year, our most needed emotion is hope.

Hope counters apathy. Apathy is a turning inward to social media scrolling, entertainment, and consumerism as escape. It is an individualistic approach to advancement and success that gives up on unconditional collective responsibility for a greater, more peaceful, and equitable good. It is a disconnected sense of powerlessness and lack of care about the conditions that surround us even while they close in. It is a fearful narrowing of life to what feels safe or, worse, pretence that the earth isn’t burning, and our nation isn’t collapsing while we continue with either business as usual, the din of the fete or entreaty to God.

Hope is enemy to all these: apathy, individualism, feelings of powerlessness, fear.

If we refuse to give up on the possibility of a better nation and world, if we continue to see this future as a necessity, we will choose decisions that hold it sacred, understanding that this is our most fundamental shared ethical ground which needs protection and nurturing in a deeply threatening time. We have given up this ground far too much. There is still time to turn back now.

We have given up decision-making to the wealthy and powerful. Globally, it has meant that the fossil-dependent companies, which for decades have known about their role in advancing climate catastrophe, have chosen shareholder profits over the fate of billions of people. Do not believe that any will make difficult decisions to save the planet’s masses.

One look at corporate lobbying at climate change meetings will tell you why states are dragging their feet on decisions which should have been made long ago. Pay attention to agreement to mine the deep oceans by the International Seabed Authority in Jamaica, which is being heavily lobbied by corporate mining interests.

We can and must revolt against their power over us, their selfish agendas, and their death-politics for ecosystems. This is not a time for distractions for which we and other species will pay with our very lives. Our supposed dominion as humans requires us to practise deep and present guardianship.

We have given up peace for war as a technology for securing resources, accruing obscene wealth, and flexing military muscle. Whatever our diplomatic relations, in our hemisphere, the US remains the greatest force of global instability, whether in terms of its production of military weapons as a war economy or in its immoral funding of atrocities against Palestinians or NATO’s aggression and in its militarising of Chinese and Russian borders.

Now is not the time to be inattentive to global and ecological politics, and authoritarian men at the helm. Solidarity with those ordinary people, migrants, Indigenous and social justice movements challenging the swing to right-wing extremism requires us to be informed. Find a way to so organise your TikTok algorithm to get news about change-makers. Fire bun Meta and Elon Musk. It matters with whom we are allies.

If you are reading these words, hearing any news, you cannot say you did not know nor that there was nothing that we could have done together. We must find meaningful connection in taking responsibility for what is ours. History will not absolve us for vanity and greed, for championing how many billionaires there are instead of how many billions have improved access to water, food, shelter, schooling, decent livelihood, and rights.

Now more than ever before, our politics must be global. There are choices to make. We cannot keep hurtling ahead living dangerously and destructively. How each of us can contribute is already clear because what is unjust, wasted, inept, poisonous, devastating, and corrupt are always right before our eyes.

One hopes that we could shift global consciousness overnight, throw smooth-talking or hate-mongering or excuse-making or propaganda-mouthing or nation-impoverishing or genocide-backing bastards out of power, storm global meetings and lock out transnational corporate lobbyists, and opt for gentle, caring, collaborative, and inclusive leadership that takes our custodial role seriously. In these dark times, this is the dream.

Yet, there is much good news if we look beyond mainstream media. Everywhere, scientists, teenagers, lawyers, activists, farmers, teachers, and inventors are creating the alternatives we need, just as musicians and artists are reminding us that we are beautiful and worthy. A different world is being made. Declare war for that world and all it needs. Make hopefulness our first strike against defeat.

Diary of a mothering worker

Entry 548

motheringworker@gmail.com

A different playlist for athletes

Dr Gabrielle Jamela Hosein

IT’S DOWN SEASON for triathletes, but there were back-to-back 5k races and track and swim meets these past few months.

In many of them, including corporate-sponsored, fundraising 5K and 10k races, I was alarmed and troubled by the music played.

This column is for everyone who holds sports competitions of any kind in which children and adolescents participate. It’s for the DJs and the sponsors, the coaches and the bodies that govern sports.

Sports is one of the few places where girls are valued for being physically strong and fit, and where their bodies are not sexualised. In a world of advertising, music videos, fashion, Carnival, gender socialisation and street sexual harassment, where they are bombarded with expectations that they be attractive and desirable to boys and men, sports is a refuge that focuses on their determination, discipline, ability and ambition, the way that education is a refuge because it values girls not for how they look, but for their minds.

This role of refuge, from pervasive sexualisation from early adolescence and for the rest of girls’ lives, is huge. We should feel protective of it and make decisions that reflect such protectiveness.

I’m imploring every sporting event in the country: please stop playing music with lyrics that repeatedly instruct girls to bend over, go down, spread out, wine up, take bam–o, push back or any other inanity that totally violates the space that sport provides for girls to be recognised on terms that have nothing to do with sex, sexual skills or sexiness.

To be clear, I am in full support of adults being as sexy as they like. This is not conservative moralising about respectability.

This is a column about irresponsibly blaring messages that are inappropriate for children and adolescents, and particularly for adolescent girls who are training to win medals and podium places, who are aiming for scholarships, and who are building confidence in their toughness, grit and power.

Why should I bring my 14-year-old minor to race and have her be bombarded by music which, in such a context, is shockingly demeaning?

I’ve gone up to men DJs playing music in triathlon and track, and asked them to please play something else. Typically, it’s not something they have thought about. Many are dads. They usually get it once we start talking, and fully agree.

Bend over in a fete. Bend over in J’Ouvert. When it comes to sports, try to bend over backwards to think about how to make it the most mentally and emotionally healthy space for young athletes, many of whom don’t know there is a whole world of great music and the possibility of a whole future world that isn’t sexist.

In sports, where there are children, we must be more mindful as adults of showing them, and especially girls, that we respect them enough as athletes to think through our playlist.

It’s not just that, bizarrely, music is blasted so loud it can be hard even to have a conversation, because speakers are placed immediately next to the allocated seating or bleachers. It’s also that neurodiverse children and athletes of all ages, including non-diagnosed ones (who are the majority), may find music so loud to be over-stimulating and dysregulating, affecting their behaviour, performance, and even emotional state and need for recovery when they get home.

We want pump, excitement, vibe. Parents who have been paying fees, buying gear and driving up and down to training want to scream and cheer from the sides. Everything is a lime. I’m right there with those parents – on the field, at the swim meets, at the 5ks, at the triathlon events.

I just want that over-loud music to be a little more mindful of gendered realities of sexism and objectification.

I’m hoping that there’s a selector, a DJ who can mix, or a remixer who can see a niche that needs to be filled and produces the sessions that can transform TT’s sports events’ music. (For a start, I asked Ziya’s remixing dad, “Where’s your long-promised Razorshop Live Mix Sports Session?” He said, “Check Lyndon Livingstone on Mixcloud this weekend’).

I’m hoping these words resonate. I’m not asking for a big change. I am asking for songs telling girls to twist themselves into what appears sexy not to be played where there are young athletes.

Parents teach by repeating things to our children. Loud music on repeat everywhere socialises them in the same way. Our developing sports heroes and heroines deserve better. It matters what DJs play.

Diary of a mothering worker

Entry 547

Motheringworker@gmail.com

Every parent’s journey

Dr Gabrielle Jamela Hosein

ADULTS CAN be unfair to children. Sometimes we hold them to account for things for which they don’t even know they are responsible, particularly when we know we were not so clear about instructions or arrangements or plans, perhaps even to ourselves.

When they are then confused, we blame them for not asking, clarifying or knowing. We pretend they have had enough life lessons to know that miscommunication is easy and to always ask questions to understand what is expected.

Sometimes our tone conveys our power even when they’ve done nothing wrong. We quarrel with them when we are tired and they are being difficult, though we don’t articulate that it’s not just poor behaviour that is causing such “bawl up,” it’s also us feeling mistreated, disconnected, unheard, and unloved despite all we do.

Few adults apologise to children, something that teaches by example and is necessary for their trust in us to be whole. We think that we are doing so much that it is our right to talk to them as we choose, that they should be grateful regardless of the mistakes we make, and that whatever hurts we cause are theirs to accept. We are surprised when children speak to us the way we speak to them, hearing their tone or backchat as rudeness, but rarely hearing ourselves.

Obviously, parents are trying their best. Obviously, children say and do (or not do) many things that are beyond frustrating. We were those children.

Mostly, Caribbean parents treat children as we were treated. We shout, give licks, embarrass, and punish. Rarely do we speak about our emotions: “When you speak to me like that it hurts my feelings and I feel like you have no respect for me, and I become angry.” “When you don’t do the things you should, I feel like I am someone who can be taken for granted and as if all I try to teach you doesn’t matter.”

We quarrel because children are not doing what they should, and they don’t hear unless we quarrel, but if we are being real with ourselves, many moments are wrapped up in our feelings of being ignored, unappreciated, disappointed, and exhausted, and sometimes our own fears, failures, and mistakes.

I always wonder why we talk to children the way we talk to no one else in our lives and would not tolerate being spoken to. Further, we expect them to accept our behaviour unconditionally even when we are mean, harsh, impatient, or emotionally disregulated.

Each time we treat children unfairly, it erodes their love for us. Then, one day, our relationship with them is not what we want it to be. Again, we blame them, rather than acknowledge the many small cuts of hurt we occasioned. Like us with our own parents, they will remember these moments long after we forget them.

Ziya turns 14 this week and it’s been a true journey. She’s like many teenagers; preoccupied, “grumpus,” and in her own world, but as she grows, she increasingly – as many teenagers do – shows us our limitations and gives us back what we teach by example.

I quarrel and I boss her around (I thought I told you to clean your room! Why is this done halfway? Don’t be poohar! Come off your phone! Why didn’t you get organised last night?), but I believe in owning up to mistakes and apologising when I’ve been unfair.

If I don’t do this, then she won’t expect it from her relationships, there is less chance of her doing this in her relationships, and she will feel justified treating her children the same way.

Transiting from parenting a child to an adolescent is accompanied by serious lessons. Increasingly teenagers’ eyes are like adult ones with clear insight about parents’ personalities.

I try to see myself through her eyes, to welcome the honesty necessary to become a better person. She keenly observes us and there are many moments I get right and many moments I can improve. It’s important to evolve and change as she does and needs.

Amid all this, she is also happy and full of laughter, curious and feisty, and a whole world of joy, meaning, and connection. Every day I remind myself that growing together is what is most important. Like all children, she challenges me to care in a way that is loving and emotionally healthy. Isn’t embracing this every parent’s journey?

Happy birthday, beautiful Zi, thank you for all you continue to lovingly teach me.

Diary of a mothering worker

motheringworker@gmail.com

Entry 544

Waiting for US to sneeze

AS THEY say, when the US sneezes, the Caribbean gets a cold. This is not just because of its proximity, but because of its imperialist politics.

In other words, the US sees the Caribbean as its backyard and expects the region to conform to its foreign policy priorities and positions. If not, it will blockade as in Cuba, destabilise as in its support of a coup against Chavez in Venezuela, undermine democracy as it did in a potentially communist Guyana, misrepresent as it did in relation to the building of an international airport in Grenada and occupy as it did in Haiti.

Therefore, what happens in US politics affects the Caribbean even if we have our own sovereign contexts and concerns.

The candidacy of Kamala Harris, a mixed-race (what Trinidadians/Tobagonians call dougla) woman of Indian and Afro-Jamaican descent thus concerns us all.

Defeating Donald Trump, who embodies maniacal masculinity, would stem the surge of the white right in the US, a place where white supremacists march on the streets, where white men trash state buildings to protest legitimate election results and face virtually no social consequences and where black lives barely matter.

Harris as president would be historic for women of colour in the US, particularly for black women, who are at the bottom of a status hierarchy and its concentration of economic and political power. She’s not a cheat, sexist, sexual harasser, or xenophobe. She could be the dream of Shirley Chisholm, a Barbadian-descended black woman and state representative, finally fulfilled.

Yet we in the region need to maintain perspective and see the world from our Global South location and history. Will Harris reduce the billions of dollars being funnelled into Israel’s genocide of Palestinians? Based on her history and funding, she will likely not (be able to) make any policy change.

The Zionist lobby is very strong in the US – we saw this in the crackdowns in universities against students and faculty, in the denial of jobs and speaking opportunities to dissenters, and in the US’s continual blocking of UN Security Council resolutions.

People in the Caribbean are afraid to support Palestine publicly in case it means being denied a visa even to be in transit. Meta is pro-Zionism. Elon Musk is backing Trump.

Harris will have little room to manoeuvre if she either wants to be elected or achieve any goals while in office.

The world wants to see a dougla woman, with Global South and immigrant roots, intelligence, experience and a progressive track record win. It’s historic, necessary, and long overdue.

But what will be historic about a mixed-race woman funding Israel’s bombing of women and children in the occupied territories?

Asking these questions in solidarity with those critical of US (-funded) imperialism, including university students on the right side of history, is just as necessary.

In my home, there is much excitement about Harris, but as Prof Ruha Benjamin put it at a graduation speech in April this year, “Black faces in high places are not going to save us.”

This goes for brown faces and for women, who have both been more progressive than white men, despite having a harder time getting to the top and achieving while there, but who also become “conscripted into positions of power that maintain the oppressive status quo.”

How we evaluate leadership must always be by the extent to which it advances peace, empowerment, self-determination and justice in the lives of those most oppressed, and we should amplify those movements that fight to make even Global North women’s dominance accountable.

Harris will be better for reproductive rights, following in the path of Latin America, which is more left than the US and in which the Green Wave has secured safe and legal termination victories. When George Bush came to power, he reinstated a ban on funding health centres in the Global South that even provided information on abortion. This destroyed women’s access to reproductive healthcare across Africa, for example. So pro-choice politics are absolutely central to South-South solidarities.

Regarding other foreign policy positions, we wait and see. The US is escalating tensions in the Pacific Rim and the Russian border. Harris’s hawkish statements about the US having the strongest and most lethal fighting force mean billion-dollar profits for arms and reconstruction contractors, hence the endorsement of Republicans who should be considered war criminals, like Dick Cheney.

Will Harris back oil companies, deep-sea mining, and drilling in Alaska?

Inna dis backyard, such politics most certainly matter.

Diary of a mothering worker

motheringworker@gmail.com

Entry 540

Dangerous world for girls

Dr Gabrielle Jamela Hosein

THE TRANSITION from childhood to adolescence for girls is gendered, and introduces concerns, risks and knowledge for which boys are not held similarly responsible as they grow. It’s not just that teenage girls begin to learn that they must live with less mobility and freedom than boys, it’s that they begin to learn that boys and men (and some women) present a constant threat of sexual harm from which they must protect themselves, and this extends for their entire lives.

As they gain greater independence, they are taught to be careful; to police their clothes, words, behaviour, and online interactions; to expect danger everywhere; and to feel irresponsible if they do not exist in a state of constant mistrust. Whatever dangers boys face, the shift to teen consciousness isn’t accompanied by parental conversations about male sexual violence – everyday, everywhere and from anyone. Girls learn they are more likely to be prey to sexual predators because they are female. They learn that nowhere are they safe. They learn that this is normal in our world.

If we examine this as adults, we need to acknowledge that it is unbelievably horrific that parenting requires girls to be this aware from so young. Our patriarchal world has fundamentally failed girls because it cannot promise them basic safety from boys and men. Teen girlhood is therefore defined by learning to live as a survivor of the daily threat of male harm. Whatever empowerment women have gained, this represents a fundamental state of subordination and terror.

It’s not so hard to see why girls are sceptical, think parents are being overprotective, take risks that don’t seem a big deal, or try to live in the ways boys do without understanding that they occupy an unequally dangerous world.

We judge girls’ intelligence or ability to “be smart” by their young brains’ capacity to grasp all this rather than naively thinking that it’s exaggerated. Indeed, girls are where they should be when they are trusting, confident and friendly. Yet these are the very characteristics that they get lectures and warnings about as potential liabilities.

The imposition of such knowledge will never be experienced by boys or truly understood by men – because it isn’t lived in their bodies. Still, protective fathers, male family members and good men grasp these dangers and consider them as disturbing as I do.

To explain, on the weekend, Zi was with a friend at the cinema. Both sets of parents were nearby, casting an eye, when a boy came up and sat close next to them. We figured this was someone they knew from school or knew well, were curious about their body language toward him – which was to virtually ignore him with fleeting recognition that he was sitting so close – and wondered if this was a boy one of them “liked” or not.

He soon left and we called them over to ask. Turns out he was a “mutual” (a friend or family of a friend) they had never met before but “knew” from Instagram and they had never met the friend herself before, but liked things each other posted, and “knew” each other that way.

What did four parents have to say?

You don’t “know” anyone you have never met based on their Instagram stories. You cannot trust their values, behaviour, or respect for boundaries. Why would a boy meeting you for the first time sit up next to you when there was a chair opposite? Boys and men can get too close and touch inappropriately. Assert a sense of personal space which only those you allow can enter, and let that be earned rather than immediately presumed.

There are boys and men who will drug your drink, so watch who is near it, never leave it unattended, never accept a drink that you haven’t seen opened or poured, and never leave just any boy or man to watch your drink, even if or especially if you think you trust them as a friend, colleague, schoolmate or “mutual.” Always go to the bathroom with another girl and take your bag and phone with you. For women, being followed, fooled, groomed, propositioned or sexually violated truly happens.

All I could think while we drove home was that Zi and her friend were not wrong to consider it a non-threatening moment with a harmless-looking teenage boy. Unfortunately, in a world in which predation is a reality, such innocence can only be fleeting. How unjust that girls must learn all this at just 13.

Diary of a mothering worker

Entry 539

motheringworker@gmail.com

Demanding life of the athlete

Dr Gabrielle Jamela Hosein

ZIYA JUST returned from the Carifta Triathlon, Aquathlon and Mixed-Relay Championships where regional youth competed in Barbados.

Having entered the world of competitive sports less than a year ago, she has met teenagers on TT’s national triathlon team and seen the performance of medallists from other nations, who are swimming, running, and cycling ten, 12, 14 times a week, and who are giving up school holidays, weekends, sleeping in, and social activities with friends. She’s discovered not only physical training, but a huge psychological and mental learning curve. Enduring pain, exhaustion, and heat is also a must.

Athletes can only do well if their nutrition, strength training, coaching, psychological management and family support provide what they need. Athletes may also have health challenges such as asthma, be neurodiverse or autistic, or be predisposed to anxiety or depression. They must learn to excel at time management and still do well at school. And success doesn’t come overnight. The journey has moments of mistake and “failure,” just as we all experience in life.

Parents’ mindset to make these into learning opportunities isn’t just a decision, it’s a carefully considered strategy that takes a huge amount of intentionality, constant communication with coaches, consistent messaging over months and years to the children, encouragement, and adult learning, self-reflection and patience.

These are also teenagers going through typical adolescent growing pains in a social-media mediated world. It’s easy to see the successes, but not their everyday struggles.

One must grow as a parent and be willing to put your child’s or children’s sports’ success – or even their development of life skills that will give them the best chance of future success – at the centre of the family. It can mean giving up time, sleep, savings, work, adult time and liming. That is simply what committed parents of competitive athletes do.

Often, that is what mothers do, for the majority of those making the time and career sacrifices appear to be mothers. It’s not clear whether that is because of two-parent or extended-family consensus regarding how to share responsibilities, or because some fathers are less or not interested in such sacrifice or are not regularly present, or because the unequal burden of care still falls on women. Mothers in the Caribbean have historically made their children’s generational advancement a priority – saving in biscuit tins and through sou sou hands.

Thus, while men dominate as coaches and many fathers are fully involved, mothers fill in the rank and file as “chief cook and bottle washer” everywhere in the stands, on the sidelines and in the background even as they may also be primary economic providers.

Keep in mind that care or reproductive labour isn’t just about cooking and washing, it is about who keeps deadlines and demands in mind; researches the best approaches, nutrition, and gear; is responsible for communicating with everyone involved; makes sure that emotional needs are anticipated and met; and waits at and watches most trainings.

I highlight these here because planning, communication, consumption, emotional management and time-use for family are feminised; meaning repetitive, mostly invisible and largely undervalued tasks are typically assigned to mothers, aunts and grandmothers, and stereotypically considered to be “soft” skills which women do better, rather than ones they do because somebody has to. Women make it their business to build whole networks around this care responsibility the way that boys’ clubs have traditionally operated around the public world of money and business in which childcare is at the periphery.

There’s always natural talent, but for many it can take years before an athlete begins to win medals at international competitions, and it can take a decade to reach Olympic-level qualifiers. Technology, coaching, camps and even the right gear (such as road bikes, which cost the equivalent of thousands of US dollars) and opportunities to compete internationally are key.

For me, last week’s outcry at two-time Olympic medallist Keshorn Walcott’s $250,000 cheque from the Ministry of Sport and Community Development misrecognised the needs and realities of elite-athlete training, including access to international competitions and technologically-savvy coaching experiences. If the public wants gold medals, we have to see the long-term financial and in-kind costs of sport development, not just for individuals but in terms of facilities and sponsorship for youth.

Athlete development through adolescence is a moving target; expensive, multi-faceted, transnational and complex. Improvement is not linear, and gains come with a willingness to invest in disappointments and dust-offs, setbacks and comebacks, and sweat and tears.

Diary of a mothering worker

Entry 537

motheringworker@gmail.com

Protecting the deep seabed

Dr Gabrielle Jamela Hosein

SCIENTISTS continue to make unexpected discoveries in the ocean, including on the ocean floor. For example, in the past two weeks the global press has been covering the publication of findings of “dark oxygen” in the Pacific Ocean.

This is oxygen produced in complete darkness about 4,000 metres below the ocean surface, without plants that use sunlight for photosynthesis. This is a major step in scientific knowledge about nature and evolution.

More important for the current moment, this discovery has thrown the International Seabed Authority (ISA) under an even closer microscope.

If the seabed can change the future of science, and offer huge new insights about life itself – including thousands of new species and geological formations still being discovered and understood – should we approve deep-sea corporate mining for minerals like cobalt, nickel, copper and manganese?

Having seen how mining corporations have poisoned rivers all over the world and decimated ecosystems for shareholder profits (ask Guyana’s Indigenous peoples about mercury poisoning from gold mining, ask Jamaicans about the red mud tailings ponds from bauxite mining), do we trust them with the most pristine depths of our oceans?

Given the extent to which corporations have repeatedly suppressed or debunked science, bribed and bought governments, and failed clean-ups, we should be very sceptical of their PR.

Marine scientists and mining engineers overwhelming agree that mining would be dangerous, reckless and irreversible for the seabed and the life it supports. The nodules (basically rocks) with minerals on the sea floor cannot be collected without destroying all the life on them, an estimated 30-40 per cent of Clarion-Clipperton Zone (CCZ) species in the Pacific Ocean.

However, marine species outside of the mining zone will be at risk of decimation from the process of expelling unused sand, like a sandstorm occurring at multiple depths, thick with metal shrapnel.

As I’ve written in my column of January 18, 2023, the fight between mining corporations and…well…the world is taking place in Kingston, Jamaica where the ISA is located. It is in the process of developing international mining regulations over a vast area of ocean floor.

The ISA is a questionable body with the institutional authority to approve seabed ecocide. As John Oliver pointed out in an excellent episode a month ago (check it out), the ISA has never refused an exploratory licence. Note, exploratory mining to test the effect of deep seabed mining has effects from which, even over decades, the sea floor does not recover.

At best, the ISA has been accused of lack of transparency, developing non-binding and non-specific mining standards behind closed doors and an indefensible rush, prompted by The Metals Company and the island of Nauru, to support mining of the seabed. The ISA has committed itself to managing a transition to exploitation even if science is saying it could be catastrophic.

Earlier this year, Greenpeace reported that the ISA released a consolidated text of the draft mining regulations which contained verbatim inclusion of proposals by The Metals Company and Blue Minerals Jamaica Ltd which were in direct opposition to states’ positions and were not visibly marked as “new text,” and words like “rare or fragile” (as in ecosystems) were removed with no trace or track changes.

Indeed, Greenpeace’s report, “Deep Trouble: The Murky World of the Deep Sea Mining Industry,” should be required reading. It highlights that metal companies, some states and the ISA should not be trusted.

Activists protest because they do not trust states to protect the interests of either ordinary people today or future generations tomorrow. States also think in terms of borders whereas oceanographers, environmentalists and scientists think in terms of the planet or biodiversity or the commons.

Thirty-two nations and a handful of corporations are expressing concern, but key to social change is ordinary people everywhere forming a tidal wave of demands on all governments and a protective human wall of solidarity around our oceans.

Regionally, we are being led by our Jamaican sistren and bredren who just last week were continuing calls for a moratorium on deep-sea mining. Look up the video “Jamaica Says No to Deep Sea Mining” by Esther Figueroa.

Speaking about their ongoing activism and successful prevention of mining approvals, Dahvia Hylton, president of the Jamaica Climate Change Youth Council (JCCYC), promised, “We will continue to protest. We have, for the past two years, been outside the ISA meeting at each session, and they’ll see us again next March, to ensure the voice of the people is heard on this issue.”

Diary of a mothering worker

Entry 537

motheringworker@gmail.com

Understanding why women stay in abusive relationships

Dr Gabrielle Jamela Hosein

In past generations, women were not encouraged to leave violent relationships.

While feminists transformed this message over the last decades and mobilised to demand improved police and social services response, there are still many reasons why women stay, or leave and return.

Women return to male abusers for many reasons – economic insecurity, fear for their life or lack of support and intervention. These are external factors with which we have grown familiar, and for which there are state and NGO responses.

There are also internal factors.

Women victims may have challenges managing their emotional connection with their batterer and miss him when they are separated. While they may want violence to stop, they may not want the relationship to end.

They may believe their batterer’s remorse or apology. The batterer may have convinced them that he is suffering as a result of their abandonment or that he is the victim who has been punished enough or is the one who is hurting most. He may have threatened to kill himself.

Abusers are extremely emotionally manipulative and can make victims feel responsible for the violence, responsible for batterers’ emotions and actions, and responsible for the relationship ending or lasting.

How many women ended bad relationships and were blamed for being the ones who walked away?

Victims also underestimate their vulnerability to returning to violent relationships or the emotional turmoil they may experience when leaving. They may want to leave, but experience sudden decisions to return, perhaps feeling power in rescuing or reassuring an abuser who has promised to love them and care for their needs. Abuse can destroy victims’ self-esteem and belief that others will love them.

Abusers often follow violence with a phase of being loving or making convincing promises that minimise the future likelihood of violence.

We need to talk more about the confusing and contradictory feelings that accompany leaving abusive partners and ending relationships, including guilt and loss.

Feelings of attachment to abusive relationships are not hard to understand. We continue to love abusive parents and feel sorry for hurtful family members. It takes long to leave relationships where we feel unloved, put down or unhappy.

It’s important not to treat victims who return to violence as if they are different from others also struggling with toxic relationships. Our society normalises unhealthy emotional behaviour and notions of love.

Beyond all this, it’s important to recognise that beliefs that condone violence in some circumstances or blame women victims continue to exist among adolescents and young people across the region.

In other words, we have failed to sufficiently teach another generation of girls and boys what violence is, that violence is intolerable and is not an expression of love, why it occurs and how victims should respond.

As documented in numerous studies, we simply don’t give young people the tools they need to understand emotional negotiation and power dynamics in relationships, despite the fact that they continually ask for this information. We literally never educate them about how intimate-partner violence (IPV) manifests, how it is experienced, why victims return to relationships repeatedly, and how they can protect themselves, despite the fact that relationships can become the most important part of their lives.

In the 2018 Women’s Health Survey, current physical intimate partner violence, which means it had occurred within twelve months before the survey, was higher among younger women. Among 20-24 year olds, 7.2 per cent reported current IPV. Among women 25-29, one in ten reported current physical IPV (10.5 per cent).

Among 15-19 year olds, one in ten reported experiencing physical and/or sexual partner violence in their lifetime (9.1 per cent). And among 20-24 year olds, such as 22-year-old Shameia Went, who was tragically killed, one in four reported experiencing physical and/or sexual partner violence in their lifetime (24.6 per cent), often by older men.

As I have written about many times, in response to femicides the nation marched and called for gender-based violence (GBV) education in schools as a prevention strategy.

Curriculum changes were recommended for the Health and Family Life Education programme – itself not a sole solution – to include GBV prevention content.

To this day, the Ministry of Education will not roll out this curriculum.

One must ask: how many more young women must die?

The problem is not whether women stay in or leave abusive relationships. The problem is perpetrators of relationship violence and, too often, men who are violent to the point of femicide. Globally, victims find it difficult to leave partnerships even with extreme violence, something prevention and protection approaches need to keep in mind.