THE Guyana Human Rights Association (GHRA) has said that while women’s rights remain the most urgent human rights priority, they remain subordinated to broader gender concerns, as reflected, not least, in the UN International Women’s Day 2016 theme of “Planet 50-50 by 2030 – step It Up For Gender Equality.”

This lack of international intensity on women’s rights stands in contrast with dedicated work done at ground level, which continues to reveal that the achievement of women’s rights remains an uphill task, the GHRA said in a statement to mark International Women’s Day, being celebrated globally today.

“Education of women, for example, reflects progress in women’s rights, but it has also exposed the degree of resistance to re-ordering of domestic gender roles, which the education of girls implies.”

The body said that in the Guyanese context, better educated younger women earning good salaries are no longer unquestioningly available for traditional domestic house-keeping, kitchen-gardening, minding fowls and parenting roles; nor are they helplessly subject to the whims of men and boys, dependent on them for money. They own cars and scooters, and ‘phone in for taxis.

“However, this evolution of women’s rights is not as acceptable or secure as we like to think. Coercive male control, or patriarchy, has always been the crucial gender battleground,” GHRA said, adding that it remains pervasively manifest in everyday ordeals of checking cell ‘phones and interrogation over length of time spent out of the house or on Facebook, and control of women’s earnings by partners.

The body said control is the commonest form of domestic abuse, whether by fathers, husbands, child-fathers, partners or brothers. It also remains, according to recent studies, a huge risk factor for domestic homicide.

“Experts argue that the tactics of coercive control, even when extreme, can be effectively hidden. It is a pattern of behaviour that “includes intimidation, constant put downs, mind games, isolation from family and friends…the victim being forced to perform sexual favours in exchange for small basic items or liberties, such as access to sanitary towels.”

Moreover, GHRA said, control is not only a feature of settled relationships. It noted that a girl who, having told her boyfriend she is going out with the girls for a night and decides to cancel with the girlfriends because yet again he ‘forgot and came around anyway’, is already being controlled.

“Coercive control is pervasive, and generates a wide range of psychosomatic ill-health and distress affecting women’s behaviour in Guyana. This may well account for the widespread use (and abuse) of Valium and other sleeping pills, and (is) no doubt a factor in our suicide statistics.

“But controlling behaviour is not a crime in Guyana, or most other countries. Providing evidence of such behaviour to satisfy criminal standards is likely to be particularly difficult.”

Jealousy
The human rights body moreover related that extreme jealousy and possessiveness can be dressed up to look like care or concern. The organization said that in a culture where police response is difficult to mobilise even with ample evidence of physical assault, “how are they – and juries – to be persuaded to engage in complex issues like coercive control?”

In addition to the police and the courts, the understanding and response to this problem in Guyana by social workers, healthcare staff, the media, and most particularly faith organisations, is nowhere close to adequate, the GHRA said. The body said that while the status of all women remains so vulnerable to domination and the coercive control of men, it is an illusion to believe that the rights of minorities, such as indigenous, migrant, trafficked, and disabled women, along with women vulnerable to sexual orientation discrimination, can be secured and protected.

“This is not to undermine the struggle to secure and protect rights of these minorities. It is moreso to guard against any untroubled belief that women’s fundamental rights are so well-established that they can be submerged into generalities about ‘gender’ – for the next fifteen years.”