The Tribune

In Mexico everyday a number of women disappear and many of them are found dead. During a session of the Committee on the Elimination of Discrimination against Women (CEDAW) at the United Nations, which I attended, all of these issues were discussed. Mexico would eventually not do very well at defending its abysmal record of extreme discrimination against women, which resulted in horrible inequalities and rampant femicide.

Women may be adored as is common under a machista system, but they can also be murdered because of this adoration. They have fewer rights than men do and when they get married, ultimately, they are to become a part of their husbands; their husbands do not, though, become a part of them. Their husbands remain free to drink and carouse as they did before marriage, often drinking away the family’s food money. Of course, such behaviour and inequalities never existed in the Bahamas. So, when the panel representing the country was challenged on a number of points, it was difficult to defend government’s position despite its, according to the Committee, agreement to implement all the aspects of the agreement that it had signed. The government has dragged its feet on changing the laws that would create more equality between men and women in the country.

Inequalities encourage violence. It is not surprising then that women are victimized. Very recently, a man chopped up ‘his’ woman when he discovered that she was going to leave him. She is his. How dare she leave. This kind of ownership is not dissimilar to that which exists in the same machista system highlighted above. Or the kind a where a man can walk into a Wal-Mart and stab his wife who had secured a restraining order against him because he had been violent before. No one stopped him before he had killed her. He was taken away, but could claim a crime of passion and receive a reduced sentence. This is not very different to when a well-known woman was killed in Nassau a months ago, and her boyfriend then killed himself. Some people were alarmed for a while. Others, apparently, believed that she was his and as such, as he had given her so much, he almost had the right to murder her.

Ultimately, society seems to be saying that women belong to men and that men can do with them what they please. Women are here to please. Should they displease, we can cut off their heads and move on. How damaging is this to young men that are growing up seeing and hearing this kind of discussion and seeing this kind of violence? Basically, society is telling them that this is normal. It is normal to love ‘hard’ and should something go wrong in the process, kill the woman he once loved. How awfully 16th century where people could be killed for the simple act of believing in the wrong God.

We do not see the barbaric nature in our thoughts and actions. Also, while we push inequality, we apparently do not see the social impact that all of this has on the future of the country. Young people are steeped in domestic violence and come to see it as normal. To love a woman, beat a women, to slap a woman, kill a woman are all normal ways of a man expressing his masculinity, his love. This is what society expects of him. When he behaves differently, he is scrutinized.

Women are similarly socialised. They are told that they are to sleep with a cheating man, even when he exposes them to sexually transmitted infections. They must be his, and his means that she becomes an extension of him. All that she has is his but not conversely. He can abuse her and she should be happy. When such beliefs are so deeply believed by a society, murders as we are witnessing now where women who attempt to get out of bad relationships are murdered, become common. Yet, it is perceived as her fault. This has not happened once or twice over the last few years but has occurred at least six or seven times in a matter of months. Yet, women in the Bahamas are equal.

Men are hard and love hard and women belong to men and must be soft and not assert a presence, an independent mind, they are murdered. Tragically, this violence springs from our absolute belief that such performances of masculinity and femininity are normal. Men have the right to kill women whom they love, particularly if they want to leave. Even more astonishing is that women are often the greatest defenders of this inequality, especially if the man is her son. The girlfriend was evil. The man holds no responsibility for his actions. Can we not see the horrible inequality the society pushes when women are responsible for their own beatings, yet ‘our boys’ have no share of responsibility?

Ultimately, when the United Nations asks why has the Bahamas not observed its legal obligations to eliminate discrimination against women and therein made efforts to address the obvious inequalities in law and in fact, the answer is because there is no will to do so. We are happy for women to be killed by hard love. What message does this send to men?

• Dr. Ian Bethell-Bennett, Associate Professor in the School of English Studies at the College of the Bahamas, has written extensively on race and migration in the Bahamas, cultural creolisation and gender issues. Direct questions and comments to iabethellbennett@yahoo.co.uk.