Saturday’s report in the T&T Guardian that 45 women have been murdered in this country for the year is another sickening and outrageous statistic in what has become a year of unrelenting brutality.
Analysis conducted by a non-governmental organisation (NGO), and reported on in Saturday’s edition of this newspaper, indicates that about 43 per cent of those murders were done by stabbing would seem to indicate that a significant percentage of the women were killed by people they knew.
The obvious conclusion is that women in T&T are still being subjected to an unconscionable amount of violence and abuse—most often at the hands of immature or insecure partners.
Sadly, far too often that violence and abuse that women are being made to suffer, sometimes daily, is being translated into the ultimate act of violence—the crime of murder.
This escalation of criminal acts against women suggests one significant aspect about this society that too many of its citizens—both male and female—choose to ignore: to a large extent, the culture of T&T condones violence against women.
That condonation is manifest in the fact that men can say the most vile things to a woman walking down almost any street in this country and not be admonished or condemned by witnesses or bystanders.
The condonation is manifest in the fact that the screams of a woman being physically assaulted by her partner can be heard by her neighbours, but the number of times that that awareness is translated into an intervention is shockingly low.
These attitudes to half of the population of this country are inculcated in children when they are in the cradle, reinforced when children are growing up in the homes and underscored by behaviours outside of the home, especially in some soca and chutney songs.
For T&T to begin to reduce the violence against women over the long term, continuing efforts will have to be made to address the culture of violence and the culture that condones violence against women.
In the short term, more companies and NGOs—such as chambers or commerce, trade unions and church groups—have to speak out on this issue. Also, the Government and the Opposition need to be at the forefront of efforts to transform the society on these issues.
But all will come to naught if the police service is not subjected to a thorough culture change on the issue of violence against women.
There have been too many reports over the years of women going to police stations to report an act of violence or abuse, only to be treated with insensitivity or ignored by the officers therein.
Such culture change in an institution can only come about by a process of training, orientation and leadership.
The high command of the police service have got to take the lead in stamping out the culture of the condonation of violence against women, by including guidance on appropriate behaviour in the police regulations and repeatedly condemning inappropriate attitudes as being totally unacceptable anywhere in the world in the 21st century.
But the police leaders cannot only talk the talk on this issue. There is an expectation of both words and deed, which would mean ensuring that those who do not adhere to the guidance should be punished and those who do should be praised.
Apart from reports of murders, rapes and battery against women, a perusal of the press releases issued by the police service in 2016 reveals an alarming incidence of teenaged girls, and younger, going missing throughout the country—another area of serious concern.