Domestic violence has been in the news recently, and it continues to a problem not only here in Guyana but, at various levels, across the world.

That said, I believe that the key factor in the level of domestic violence particularly in the Caribbean is that we have both a history of gender roles assigned to a specific system, and a history of social violence that was originally clearly legitimised but then eventually was sunk into our collective minds and learned actions.

I don’t think people factor in the consideration that our foreparents, particularly those who were subjected to slavery, lived in a world where you could be beaten for the least offence, or even on the whim of the person in charge of you, once that person felt you were out of place. This was perpetuated, if not legally, through the post-slavery period, continued to a somewhat lesser degree throughout indentureship, and into the colonial and then post-colonial times.

What we therefore had ingrained in us, and passed on from generation to generation, is that a proper system is one in which people have certain roles within a hierarchy, and the people at the top of the hierarchy get to apply violence to the people below. When we apply that to the typical family situation, it usually translates to saying that the man as the head of the household, the breadwinner, has the right to beat those below him, from his children to his wife.

You combine those ingrained social roles, established and reinforced over a period of decades at least, and then consider that those roles are being upset today, and you have a possible underlying cause for the increase in domestic violence. For example, I read somewhere that 30 percent of domestic violence cases had to do with a conflict over cooking. The traditional familial arrangement had the woman in the role as the manager of the home, including the person who cooked meals, but when you consider that more women are working the same shifts as their male companions, when is a young woman taking the time to learn to cook for a family every single day?
The young woman of today is at the very least equally competitive with her potential mate, particularly when it comes to high-paying jobs – indeed, check the top CSEC results over the past five years and you will see young women dominating academically, paving the way for greater academic achievement and meaningful employment down the line. And of course, this means that they have no interest in the traditional roles society has created for them – check all those top performers’ subjects and see how many, if any at all, majored in Home Economics.

When we are dealing with domestic violence, it is this dual historical culture and the incidental upheaval of it that we are fighting against. How many stories have we had with women, even economically dependent ones, returning to an abusive situation, even as we also consider that the men also remain, against any consideration for the consequences of their actions.

It is my frank belief that while we look at combatting domestic violence from a law enforcement and social services perspective, this is merely a Band-Aid solution to what will be a growing problem. Even as we are developing such measures, we need to undertake an aggressive programme of changing the culture, and doing it strategically where it matters most, among our young people.

We need for example, a comprehensive secondary school programme, probably even curriculum based, that educates our young people not only on the laws about domestic violence, but helps them to understand the root causes of it, including their own conditioned gender prejudices. Our young men need to be taught for example that a domestic situation has to be a negotiated one, and if he has a stay at home wife, maybe the deal is that she does the cooking, but that the situation can equally be reversed and he should at least prepare himself to stir a pot. Our young women should also be taught that a higher salary or a better job than their mates shouldn’t translate into the same type of hierarchy that women are fighting against, and that the man shouldn’t be measured by how small his pay cheque might be relative to theirs. Most importantly, we need to systematically teach them that violence isn’t a solution to a domestic issue, but is in itself another issue on top of the ones you might already have.
By Keith Burrowes