The Tribune

By KHRISNA RUSSELL

Tribune Chief Reporter

krussell@tribunemedia.net

PRIME Minister Philip “Brave” Davis says Bahamians must work to break the glass ceiling in society that condones acts of sexual and physical violence against women and children.

While expressing his support for the Zonta Club, which is observing 16 days of activism in the fight against domestic violence on children and women, Mr Davis said there was a level of embarrassment attached to certain acts against these groupings of society that have been hidden in the closet.

He said men must take the lead on speaking out on this kind of injustice.

“More has to happen insofar as the voice of men are concerned in speaking to and about gender violence,” Mr Davis said in Parliament yesterday.

“I think we have to accept that there are some cultural issues that attend to this that’s (a) deep rooted (problem) that might require a whole resetting of the mindset and attitude of men and women because if they don’t speak up, we will not know.

“Very often they are content to just live in the circumstance they find themselves when they don’t necessarily have to.”

Mr Davis pointed to his time as a magistrate when he presided over matters of abuse on women and children.

“I know about it. I recall being on the bench as a magistrate and children reporting their fathers to the police and the wife or the girlfriend chastising and punishing the child for doing so. There is some embarrassment attending to these facts, but we have to rise above that now. We have to find ways and means to encourage men to speak out, women to speak out and that is one way we’ll get it done.”

He alluded to another situation in which a father said he was simply “checking” his daughter because she came home late from school.

“…They found that as acceptable. The mother found it as acceptable too when in fact that was a cultural practice.

“…That’s the kind of glass ceiling that still has to be broken in this society today.”

Mr Davis said he firmly supported the efforts of those who speak out against violence against children and women, adding there had to also be a resetting of the words— whether in jest or not—that are used to refer to women.

When she spoke on the issue, Education, Technical and Vocational Training Minister Glenys Hanna Martin said that The Bahamas had some of the highest rates of violence against women in the world.

She expressed a view that men also needed a voice in the debate on marital rape in order to steer proper national discussion.

For his part, newly sworn in Official Opposition leader Michael Pintard said in days gone by sexual predators were not dealt with harshly, adding that young men needed to be taught to see young women in a positive light. He also echoed his calls for the criminalisation of marital rape, saying there were many instances by which a woman could decide that she did not want to engage with her husband intimately.