The Tribune

By ALICIA WALLACE

INTERNATIONAL Women’s Day is on Sunday, March 8 and the United Nations has “Rights. Justice. Action. For ALL Women and Girls.” as its theme. “No nation has closed the legal gaps between men and women,” the United Nations stated. “Right now, women have only 64 per cent of the legal rights that men hold worldwide. In fundamental areas of life, including work, money, safety, family, property, mobility, business, and retirement – the law systematically disadvantages women.” With this year’s theme, it calls for action to “dismantle all barriers to equal justice: discriminatory laws, weak legal protections, and harmful practices and social norms that erode the rights of women and girls.”

International Women’s Day has grown in popularity in The Bahamas. Public and private sector entities alike delight in ordering and wearing purple shirts, decorating with purple bows and balloons, hosting brunches, and finding ways to use the day—and, by extension, women—to increase revenue. Few institutions acknowledge the realities women and girls face every day, much less invest in activities that contribute to the advancement of women’s rights, all of which are directly linked with opportunities and outcomes.

The next general election is right around the corner, though we don’t yet have a date. There will certainly be politicians making empty statements and social media posts about International Women’s Day, completely void of commitment to use their positions of power to make the substantive changes necessary to bring gender equality. Any political party or candidate interested in national development, human wellbeing, economic prosperity, youth, and/or family must engage with gender issues and have clear positions in support of specific actions that are long past due.

Three Areas for Gender Action

Marital rape. In 2018, the Free National Movement-led administration produced an insulting draft bill to amend the Sexual Offenses Act to criminalize marital rape with many barriers to reporting and accessing justice and without acknowledging that it is rape. This bill was rejected. In 2022, the Progressive Liberal Party-led administration produced a draft bill, then quickly dropped it, now pretending that it never existed. It attempted to distract those attentive to women’s rights issues by opening consultation on the gender-based violence bill (which it also quickly abandoned) and instead passed the nonsense “Protection Against Violence” bill, which fails to address the particular violence that is perpetrated on the basis of gender. It’s critical that marital rape is criminalized, affirming that all women are human beings with human rights—which include bodily autonomy—which cannot be erased or reduced by any means including marriage.

Nationality rights. The Bahamas is one of only 24 countries in the world that do not allow women to confer nationality equally to their children. While more than one government administration has played at referenda, none have demonstrated a commitment to ensuring that women and men have equal nationality rights and that children are not at risk of statelessness.

Following the referendum of 2016, there was talk of addressing the issue, if only temporarily, through legislation. The current administration stated that it would amend The Bahamas Nationality Act to provide remedy after the Privy Council ruled on Winder’s judgment that children born out of wedlock with Bahamian fathers are citizens of The Bahamas at birth. The ruling upholding that judgment came in May 2023.

The matter has yet to be appropriately addressed in legislation. The drive to ensure that the children of Bahamian people have full and equal access to Bahamian citizenship and all of the relevant entitlements must be greater than the personal ambitions of political actors.

CEDAW compliance. The Bahamas ratified the United Nations Convention on the Elimination of All Forms of Discrimination against Women (CEDAW)--commonly referred to as the bill of women’s rights--in 1993. The state voluntarily recognized the Convention and its principles as necessary, and committed itself to the action required to come into full compliance with it. The Convention, which opened for signatures in December 1979, is clear in its purpose, noting that “discrimination against women violates the principles of equality of rights and respect for human dignity, is an obstacle to the participation of women, on equal terms with men, in the political, social, economic and cultural life of their countries, hampers the growth of the prosperity of society and the family and makes more difficult the full development of the potentialities of women in the service of their countries and of humanity.”

The State is required to submit reports on its progress toward compliance every four years, and it receives recommendations from the CEDAW Committee of experts. Recommendations at the time of its most recent review (2018) included a comprehensive review of all legislation to address discrimination, enhancing the Department of Gender and Family Affairs to make it fit for purpose, establishment of a national human rights institution in compliance with the Paris Principles, and the criminalization of marital rape.

The recommendations by the CEDAW Committee are clear guidance for Government of The Bahamas to eliminate discrimination and violence against women and to achieve gender equality. They provide the structure necessary for transformation through legal systems, policies, and practices that affect the daily lives of women and girls.

Launch of the Second United Nations Decade for People of African Descent

The University of The Bahamas, in partnership with Equality Bahamas, the Bahamas National Reparations Committee and the Unitarian Universalist Service Committee, is hosting a landmark national dialogue marking the launch of the Second United Nations Decade for People of African Descent.

Attend the launch and participate in the conversation on Friday, March 6, 2026, from 1-4 PM at the Performing Arts Centre in the Keva M. Bethel Building at the Oakes Field Campus.

The public forum on Haitian Restitution and Reparatory Justice in The Bahamas and the Region will feature international and regional leaders, including members of the United Nations Permanent Forum for People of African Descent, alongside Bahamian scholars and human rights advocates. Together, we will explore justice, equity, historical accountability, and the path forward for The Bahamas and the wider Caribbean.

Recommendations

1. All We Want is Everything: How to Dismantle Male Supremacy, by Soraya Chemaly. Join Feminist Book Club, hosted by Equality Bahamas and Poinciana Paper Press, in reading All We Want is Everything this month. The publisher said, “All We Want is Everything offers both unflinching analysis and genuine hope, informed by the Bold and revolutionary potential of feminist imagination. From private relationships to global politics, Chemaly shows how naming and refusing male supremacy is essential to resisting the force tearing democracy apart. This fresh, timely, clear-eyed, and necessary manifesto is a call to refuse supremacist identities, relationships, and values in order to build more just, healthy, and sustainable worlds for everyone.” The discussion will take place at Poinciana Paper Press on Wednesday, March 18 at 6pm. To join the club and receive email updates, go to tiny.cc/fbc2026.

2. The Earth Breathes Every Season. This exhibition at Poinciana Paper Press features work by Tracy Assing, Candida Cash, Lisa Codella, Sonia Farmer, Erin Greene, Monique Johnson, Carol Sorhaindo, and Natalie Willis Whylly. It opened on Saturday, February 14 and the work will remain on display for the next two weeks, open to the public Thursdays through Saturdays from 11am to 3pm. “In the latest exhibition at Poinciana Paper Press, seven artists contend with the tethers and portals found in the landscape around them, creating connections between eras, islands, and each other. Whether floating between worlds, excavating a wound, or sitting with the stillness of a breaking headline, each artist stands in the gap of what is unsaid to midwife its exhale. Experimental poems, prints, and books channel these encounters, collapsing wisdom and wonder into powerful play and embodied insight.” This is the last week to view the exhibition.

3. International Women’s Day: Everything Reclaimed. Join Equality Bahamas at Poinciana Paper Press, 12 Parkgate Road, to practice letterpress printing on Saturday, March 7. What has been stolen or hidden? What do you need to reclaim? Join us as we identify everything we must take back, in the name of rights and justice for all women, everywhere. Letterpress printing, facilitated by Sonia Farmer and supported by Equality Bahamas volunteers, will run from 3-5pm. The event is free and open to the public.