#BTColumn – Gender analysis of the recent Throne Speech

Disclaimer: The views and opinions expressed by this author are their own and do not represent the official position of the Barbados Today Inc.

by Marsha Hinds

Gender Analysis is one of the tools of measuring how policy, in this case Government policy, has been adapted or not to encourage and promote gender equality as a development goal. 

Gender analysis is especially important in highlighting aspects of our lives which are often seen as ‘soft areas’ like the quality of family life and the effectiveness of parenting. These areas can be difficult to quantify, but they are unarguably important in any attempt to construct effective economic and other frameworks for organizing our societies.

As of the 2010 census in Barbados, the female population outnumbered the male population, 117 970 to 108 223 respectively.

In addition to the simple fact that the female segment of the Barbadian population is numerically bigger, there are many ways in which gender norms differentially affect the lives of women.

Before we even begin to analyze the numbers, the reality is that enumeration itself is not a neutral exercise. The way census data is collected in certain categories, reinforces the reproduction of gendered norms – the ways that we, as a society, construct duties and expectations based on the assigned sex of a person at birth.

The census collects information about fertility and unions for females segment of the population only. This feeds into the traditional stereotypical gender norms of child making
and rearing being seen as an exclusively female domain.

The data itself exhibits the burden that women carry in relation to child rearing. 79 300 women responded to the questions about their union status and the number
of children they had. 48 791 women reported that they had between 1 and 10+ children.

  Only 15 027 were raising those children with a husband, while 6 146 reported that they had a common law partner. 10 795 women were raising their children without ever having had a husband or common law partner.

Put another way or one that we are more familiar with hearing and seeing in our society, many Barbadian women are single mothers.

Women also make up more of the workforce in almost every employment category.  46 749 women are employed by an employer compared to 40 564 men.  12 377 women are employed in government compared with 10 772 men.

In private enterprise, 31 428 women are employed and 28 582 men.  869 men earned a living in private households across the Island with more than double that, 2 647 women, employed in this category.  In the self-employed category there were 4 285 women compared to 10 882 men.      

This small sample of data from the National Census, I hope, highlights the importance of a gender analysis and some of the deeper questions we have to ask in order to ensure that public policy is successful, by which we mean that it achieves its objectives of moving the greatest number Barbadians forward in a dignified and sustainable fashion.    

It is against this backdrop that I suggest that a Throne Speech that does not once mention gender equality as a goal cannot be an effective forward plan for Barbados.

To begin with, Barbados signed onto the United Nations Sustainable Development Goals, along with one hundred and ninety two other countries.

The goals are to be achieved by 2030 and although there are likely to be revisions to the timelines, these cannot be put off indefinitely.

Early in the Throne Speech, there was a call for Barbadians to go back to basic “Bajan” values.

A reasonable question for us to consider is what exactly is a Bajan value?

We might well ask, why would the women of Barbados want to return to traditional values and what exactly would they be returning to?

Traditional gender norms in Barbados are problematic and give rise to various forms of abuse of women and girls.

Simply using “going back” to the days when Barbados was perceived as more caring or sharing or community oriented does not take account of how those good old days might not always have been good for women and girls.

Another point that caught my attention in the Speech was the claim that the government had started to achieve a number of goals it had set itself.

The first few goals such as reversing downgrades and rebuilding foreign exchange are quantifiable and measurable. However, other claims were not so easily verified, and require more information.

How has social malaise been halted in Barbados? If we choose indicators such as levels of crime, youth engagementor responses to domestic violence, it is difficult to substantiate the boast of achievement. Based on the case intake numbers for civil societies.

The COVID pandemic has led to an increase in domestic violence on the Island, in line with international trends. As far as I am aware the government has at no point outlined a comprehensive and well-resourced strategy for households affected by domestic violence.

This is overlaid on the fact that prior to COVID, we were not collecting statistics on domestic violence. As a nation, we have no real way of knowing how many households are really affected and what the COVID increase means. Without statistics such as these, it is virtually impossible to measure social malaise or the halting of the same.

The Throne Speech asserted that families are in turmoil but the lack of an application of the statistical information available, resulted in no real strategy for how vulnerable households might be identified and assisted.

Shoring up families in the environment of COVID is more than addressing the fallout of loss of income – it is about creating a national strategy to treat to domestic violence, providing affordable interventions for mental wellness and illness concerns and ensuring that children are insulated from all types of abuse and manipulation.

Some time was spent in the speech articulating the importance of ensuring mental health and wellness as an important asset for Barbados.

With a gender lens applied this results in an understanding that mental wellness and illness fallouts often result in greater levels of family violence. Had gender considerations been intentionally brought to bear on the Throne Speech we could have more effectively moved policy in the direction of tangible action.   

There was some discussion of parliamentary reform as a goal to be achieved in the new parliamentary term. Given Barbados’ slow progress when it comes to the representation of women, one would have thought that the first female Prime Minister would have prioritized this issue, and used the Throne Speech to articulate ways in which women can be supported and encouraged to run for political office.    

The setup of a family court was again mooted in the Throne Speech. The only detail that was given was that the court would be decentralized. One of the areas that we needed to provide stimulus in was research capabilities so that past and potential clients of the family court can provide feedback on the real needs of the clients of the family court in Barbados and identify solutions to the challenges they currently face.

It was heartening to hear that the records at the Queen Elizabeth Hospital were being digitized.

The files of countless women who are frustrated by long delays and inaction for arrears of court ordered child maintenance also deserve to have those records digitized.

As noted earlier in almost all categories of employment, women outnumber men.

A gender analysis reveals a direct correlation between women having to spend days and hours at court for family related services and a loss of work time and productivity.

A few months ago, Barbados lost out on millions of dollars of funding to address the areas gender violence, specifically the impact on family, when we were excluded
from the Spotlight Initiative due to our failure to meet five important criteria related to addressing services.

We failed to show that we had a national prevention campaign in the area of domestic violence, institutions dedicated to tackling family violence as a national concern, the presence of law and policy on the issues, services for families affected and data collection mechanisms.

If we are serious about the family court, why we are not seeking to address some of those areas in order to put ourselves in a more solid position for international funding including the Spotlight Funds?

Sections of the Throne Speech dealt with injustices facing Barbadians and the need to address the justice system.

What was noticeably absent was again a gendered approach that could specifically recognize the harms women face.

For example, women have been killed in Barbados by intimate partners and their families are still awaiting justice in some cases seven and eight years on. Their alleged killers are on bail passing family members who are constantly re-victimized and re-traumatized.

If it is simply the right thing to do to appoint civil servants with three years of service to their posts, certainly it is the right thing to bring closure and some measure of psychological healing to families who have lost loved ones in tragic circumstances.

Certainly it is right for us as a society to ensure that the children left motherless receive full psychological support and intervention.  This is where the anti-bullying campaign should begin.  This is where we should begin to tackle school deviancy because if we trace the statistics, most of the children underperforming or acting out in schools have a bigger story that requires redress.

If we want tourism workers, who are predominantly female, to benefit from training and upskilling, and we want to create inroads for women in construction related jobs, then we have to talk about a national plan for child and elder care. That is because applying the gender focus to these types of programmes reveals that this work falls disproportionately on women, and that  women will be hamstrung by receiving only a portion of their salary and still having to pay unsubsidized child care costs to attend training.   

Gender realities are not just fanciful talk in the development world.  In the same way that Barbados had to treat the matter of same sex relations because of its ability to tarnish us on the world stage many are paying attention to our record on gender justice in relation to women and girls.

In the same way that the struggle to improve the lives of women and girls featured prominently in the preamble to announcing relief for other stakeholders, the women and girls in Barbados want to continue their journey toward equity and fair play regardless of physiology.

The Throne Speech seemed to lack a clear roadmap on treating to the issues of women and girls and as this article started by outlining, those issues are the ones that facilitate or hinder all other type of planning including economic organizing.

I am grateful to Prof. Alissa Trotz who took time out of her busy schedule to assist me in my attempt to produce this analysis.

Marsha Hinds is the president of the National Organisaiton of Women.