I READ the article which was published in (the Chronicle) on Thursday March 10th captioned: ‘Social Exclusion and Women on the eve of International Women’s Day’.

The article was so misinformed and skewered that, I have to confess, it left me speechless. I am perturbed about someone writing in such detail about an event which, by his own confession, he did not attend.

Surely, this is gross carelessness on the part of both the writer and the editor of the newspaper, and I cannot help but wonder how someone could have been comfortable writing this article which at least 300 persons in Guyana (attendees at the event) know to be untrue.

Firstly, the Theatre Guild has a capacity of about 320. As our aim was to celebrate women we invited mostly women.  Any reasonable, right thinking person would appreciate that we could not have ALL Guyanese women present at the event as the writer seems to be asking for.

Secondly, male members of the press were not prohibited from going “near the event” as the writer claims.

The Chronicle photographer was present and provided the newspaper with the very picture that it used to accompany this disconnected and offensive article. He is a man. It is true that we asked the press not to be obnoxious in its coverage and even refused coverage so as not to block persons from seeing the show nor to make our women present uncomfortable.

I have never been able to get accustomed to cameras in my face without regard to my personal space. I wanted on this special day to spare my fellow women that invasion. The women from the press that we invited were invited as guests as opposed to press people to cover the event. In fact for the above reasons, we sent out no press release/invitation to cover the event.

Thirdly, our guests were from a wide cross section of society and in fact at least 70% of our invitees had never gone to the Theatre Guild.  We had in our audience, maids and lawyers, cleaners and doctors, ministers and teachers, social workers and recipients of social assistance, farmers and diplomats, businesswomen and hairdressers, housewives, secretaries, students and a judge.

We had atheists, Christians, Hindus and Muslims. The assertion, therefore, that is predominant in the article and on which all other conclusions are based that women who were poor and/or not of society and that the “real women” were not there, has no basis in fact. That a national newspaper would be so careless is no less than shameful.

Fourthly, if a modicum of research was done by the writer…(then he) would have learnt that International Women’s Day has moved away from a day where the world is reminded of the negatives affecting women to a day where the positives are celebrated, where women are reminded that they are beautiful and worthy.
This can happen and is possible because of all the efforts of those brave and mostly ordinary women over the last hundred years.

However, it has been my experience that every responsible speaker on these occasions would indicate that there is more work to do in the worldwide search for equality between the genders. Every speaker that night so indicated.

Even the performance sent that message. I specifically thanked the women of everyday who played and continue to play their role in developing Guyana. Did the people who told the writer whatever he said they told him not tell him this?

In an attempt to sound profound and bright on a topic that the writer clearly knows little about, discloses a deep and inherent snobbishness that assumes that only women of wealth could dress up and attend the Theatre Guild.

That is a view and a reality that has long outlived its truth in Guyana, thanks to the very many developments in so many of our sectors. It also discloses a fear of people, who are stuck in time, to expand beyond the norm by, for example, using theatre in our national life. Thankfully, Guyanese women understand their worth and beauty and that in our country serious efforts are made by various means to remove the social divide.  Thankfully they avail themselves of the services provided.

I doubt that I can say anything more than I have said over the last four years on the variety of things that the Government and as a country we have done to improve the lives of women that could dent the writer’s brain now.

I do ask the writer who, from his article, is clearly disconnected from reality to henceforth at least attend the event he will write on. A failure to do this very basic thing in reporting , that is, attending the event you will report on, results in the kind of bizarre article written by the writer in your newspaper.

Mr. Editor, Guyanese deserve no less.