Violence against women: new challenges

Nov 25, 2024 Letters

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Dear Editor

International trafficking of predominantly foreign women and girls into strip clubs and bars in Guyana is a serious problem.

Along with local males, they service an equally strong foreign clientele largely from goldfields and possibly oil rigs and construction workers. Its promoters appear to be a mix of armed Venezuelan gangs, Brazilians with mining contacts and local associates including complacent politicians. The victims of this expanding industry are all women and girls, its perpetrators overwhelmingly men. The multi-cultural character of the clientele of trafficking, mining, oil-rigs and bars disguises the fact of heavy male domination. The fact that countering it is the responsibility primarily of an equally male-dominated police force only reinforces the masculine dominance of all facets of the sex-trafficking problem.  This activity attracts little political attention either as a spin-off of the border dispute with Venezuela, or as a criminal enterprise.

Sexual-based trafficking makes a convincing claim for priority attention as the focal point for the sixteen-day campaign surrounding International Day to Stop Violence Against Women. Focus is necessary on the part of all interested agencies on both the political and criminal dimensions of the problem.

In November 2006 and 2007 civil society organizations in Guyana published the names of 127 organizations and groups in a three-page press statement endorsed by over one hundred named organizations across the length and breadth of Guyana calling for reform of sexual violence laws. Eventually, in 2010, a more progressive Sexual Offences Act was passed, representing real progress in the legal status of women by political action.

By political activism, the Guyana Human Rights Association (GHRA) refers to mobilizing broad-based popular indignation. Women’s freedom-related rights can best be secured politically by women’s activism, not by technical assistance alone. Hoping to secure women’s empowerment by defining politics out of the issue is an illusion.

Viewed globally, the evolution of gender law and policy in Guyana has been generally progressive. They include legal protection for equal treatment of women with respect to division of property in divorce proceeding, termination of pregnancy, age of consent, sexual offences, along with milestone appointments such as naming the first female Caribbean Chancellor of the Judiciary. However, over a decade later, it is valid to ask the question whether this trend is being displaced by one in which Guyana is regressing, by seeing and treating women, not as equals in law, but in the way men choose to see and treat women. The proliferation of strip clubs is only one example.

Additionally, the widespread availability of pornography on social media via the internet is further eroding a concerted legal response to sexual violence in favour of one in which men are demeaning women. The more pornography is normalized the more difficult it is for men to recognize they are using force when engaging in sex with involuntary sex workers, undermining hard-won progress on protection of women against violence in Guyana.

Further evidence of deterioration in gender equality in domains dominated by males is manifest in the tolerance of rancid misogyny by elected officials in the National Assembly.   The rules and decorum which should govern Parliament as a site of gender equality are set aside in preference for a regime driven by how men see and humiliate women.  Behaviour in Parliament that would not be tolerated in rum shops attracts no penalties, even when it reaches levels of criminality, illustrating the strength of the ‘bro’/’brudda’ culture. It is only a matter of time before such regressive influences start to erode our liberal approach on issues such as termination of pregnancy and women’s health.

International Day to combat Violence Against Women (VAW) has been transformed in recent years into a more realistic 16-days campaign, culminating on December 10th – International Human Rights Day. In practice, empowerment of women is a process of re-habilitating disordered relationships of power into dignified relationships, governed by principles of equality, respect and human rights. Such relationships are, for example, those between parents and children; female students and male teachers; exploitative employers and rapacious landlords.  Such progress close to home will lay the foundation for undermining violence against women in its more extreme manifestations.

Sincerely

Executive Committee

Guyana Human Rights Association (GHRA)

(Violence against women: new challenges)

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• foreign women and girls, International trafficking, sexual violence laws, strip clubs

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