The Tribune

By DR IAN BETHELL-BENNETT

According to some, there are no inequalities in the way we live today. They claim that we are all equal and we are all treated the same. Yet we seem to have a breakdown in understanding. All citizens are not treated the same in law nor in custom. It is absolutely dishonest to say that there are no inequalities.

Men cannot pass on their citizenship to their children who are born outside of the country if those men are not married to their child’s or children’s mother. That is not the same as the way a married man is treated.

A single woman can pass on her citizenship to all children born to a foreign father outside of the Bahamas. A married woman, on the other hand, cannot pass on her citizenship to her children when they are born outside of the country to a non-Bahamian father. This is not equality. When people say then that there is no inequality, who are they trying to fool? For a purportedly Christian country, why are we so invested in making women have children out of wedlock?

In the day to day, women are not equal; they are treated very differently from men.

Why are we as a country justifying the current ways in which women are subject to inferior status?

When working in the public service, women lose their housing allowance when they get married. They are treated differently than men who do not lose their housing allowance when they get married. So if a woman marries a man who has no home nor job, then she is required, based on this policy, to pay for her housing the day after she gets married. Is this inequality?

If a man marries, he loses nothing. We also see cases where men will be allowed to bring their spouses with them and the employer will pay for both, but in the case of married women, their husbands must pay for their own way. Is this equality?

While we may agree that the government is able to make changes to the law that could bring about more equality without going to referendum, government will not do this.

They argue that they are not in a position to change any laws because they are not in a position, according to their actions, to go against the popular power. They do not wish to potentially upset their voting base.

Women get paid less than men do for the same job even when they are equally qualified as their male colleagues. We pay girls less than boys. We tell girls that they should not pack bags in the food shop after school because this is for boys. However, this is changing. This change is frightening some people.

Women are still required to have the approval of their husbands before they can have their tubes tied. If they are not married, they are still asked to bring their boyfriends. Notwithstanding that their bodies are supposed to belong to them, they really do not have the full power to determine what happens to those bodies. What we are saying is that women are not able to govern themselves, their lives or their bodies. However, more than half the households in the country are headed by single mothers.

Inequality means that some people are treated differently. They have less access to legal rights and representation.

Again, many women are treated differently to their male siblings. They are often required to present themselves with their male partners or brothers or fathers to be able to open bank accounts. They are often told that they should have a male sign with them when they want to get mortgages. Much like the requirement to present government-issued identification when going to the bank, but the bank often refuses to accept a drivers license or National Insurance card, although they are both issued by the government. Customary discrimination makes them less acceptable? So if someone does not have a passport, does that not mean that they face discrimination?

It is senseless that we argue that there is no discrimination when in every aspect of our local lives we face discrimination. When a wife whose name appears on a bill is required to present herself with a letter from her husband to say that he vouches that she lives in his house, that is inequality. The husband would not have to bring a letter from his wife to say the same. What happens if the house is hers?

Our socio-cultural reality does not line up with the position that there are no inequalities in our country. Women are usually met with greater opposition to their full integration into society than are many males. In a community where more than half of homes are headed by single women, why would we continue to argue that we support a patriarchal society and that men are the heads of the house? It is also ironical that men feel that they can beat women because they are lower on the totem pole than men.

Society has changed in recent years to allow women to legally inherit land and other assets, where before that was not the case. However, there still remain legal and cultural inequalities entrenched in the way we live. To be sure, there may be fewer obvious inequalities than there few decades ago, but why do we choose to hold on to customs that make women lesser humans than men? Obviously, someone is benefiting from this system of inequalities.