Maintaining Pride and Purpose in IWD, 50 Years On

Just eight days from today, the international community and especially the women of the world, will celebrate a milestone in the global struggle for justice, equality and human rights, the Golden Jubilee of the official recognition by the United Nations of International Women’s Day (IWD).

When that momentous declaration was made in 1975, the world was a very different one to the world of 2025.

For instance, 50 years ago, even as the UN raised its voice in support of the rights of women, billions of women in the world were still living in countries controlled by foreign powers, and like the rest of their societies, had little say in determining their own destinies.

Take the Caribbean as an example. Most of the region was under European and American control, as colonies. Besides CARICOM’s “Big Four”- Jamaica, Barbados, Guyana and Trinidad and Tobago, Grenada was the only other island to have achieved independent status.

St Vincent and the Grenadines (SVG) was, like the myriad other islands scattered in the Caribbean Sea, still a colony, of Britain in our case. So how could our women be enjoying freedom, when our country as a whole was controlled by external forces?

Vincentian women like their counterparts in most of the rest of the region were the colonial subjects of the British, French, Dutch and American colonists.

It was therefore a bold step by the UN to at last recognize a call made almost a century before, for a day to be set aside to inspire women’s struggles for equality and to celebrate their heroic achievements. Much has happened since then, both positively and negatively and the world of today has changed in many ways positively from what it was then. Not only has our country gained its independence but many social changes have occurred in regard to the status of women in our society.

Though there remains much more to be done, we need to celebrate our achievements so far. What is puzzling is that today, after all those struggles by women’s organizations at all levels of the society, including building what became an impressive array of organizations in a once-vibrant National Council of Women, our women themselves seem to be resting on their laurels, basking in their achievements and ignoring that much more remains to be done.

Today our Head of State is female as is an impressive number of leading governmental personnel- in Cabinet, the leading echelons of the public service, in the administration of justice ranging from judges to the Police Service, in health, education and even areas that one would not have imagined 50 years ago, as in religious bodies for instance, as well as in business. No one can deny these advances nor begrudge our women for celebrating them.

Yet there are sections of our society which are yet to enjoy the fruits of this advancement and signs that complacency has set in. Nowhere is this more evident than in the realization that one week away from IWD there has been little or no mention by the women’s organizations here about plans for the occasion. What can we expect, therefore?

If we are serious about consolidating the gains of women and extending their role in national transformation and advancement, we must be more proactive than this. Social and economic advances are not irreversible.