Glynis Roberts, Minister for Labour and Social Development and Gender, Grenada.

© Hegel Goutier

Is Grenada a good country for women?

It’s a nice country for everyone but we do have challenges for women that are not unique to Grenada, but problems faced by women worldwide. A deep concern is violence against women and our need to empower them to be an integral part of development. I believe that fear is our biggest deterrent; the fear of change and of expressing ourselves. We still live in a man’s world where the men believe that the women should be there… but only to a certain point. I want to be an agent of change for women because if I can do it, anyone can. For development to happen, we must do things collectively because we all have our different talents – both men and women.

Wherever you go, it seems, women do get top posts but those at the very top are always in the hands of men

Sometimes we allow ourselves to be used and marginalised by men, or even women. I can use my own life experience to encourage women that you can climb the ladder, but we have to be mindful of being respectful to one another. Women have to elevate themselves because others will not have confidence in you if you do not show confidence in yourself.

Do you think women in high-level posts have to work twice as hard to arrive at the same positions as men?

In Grenada, I don’t think women are attracted to politics. Politics for women is quite different to politics for men; particularly women who are wives and mothers because you have to find the right balance to look after yourself, look after your constitutency and still look after your family. Women often have to consider other factors in their lives whereas if a man leaves home at nine in the morning and returns at two the next morning, the most his wife will do is frown. If it is the other way round, it becomes a difficult situation.

What about going the same way as countries in the north of Europe – such as Finland – where no ministerial meeting takes place after five or six p.m and men are compelled to take paternity leave?

Further along, we may have to do this but in our parliament now we only have two women in the Lower House; one in government and one in opposition. In the Upper House, there are just three women so we will have to work together to do things that affect us. All in all, I encourage women to be part of the decision-making process – it’s a necessity. We need that female touch to the whole thing.

So how can you achieve it?

We need to focus more on building families. This will give us stronger communities and stronger nations. We need a collective approach and move towards doing things for the family, and not only on the government side but also with churches and NGOs.

You have situations where a person is being abused by an individual: you are abused once, twice, but you still go back and have a child with him. This syndrome locks us into poverty. How do we free ourselves from the chains of abuse and poverty? It is not the sole responsibility of the churches or government to do this. Women have to take up the mantle. One of the biggest problems of humanity is our fear of negatives or disappointments. The biggest fear you have going into politics is: “What if I fail”? We still have the perception that certain positions are for people from a certain clan. We say we are liberated from the colonial masters but we are enslaving ourselves because we are not open to saying yes. I want to be that beacon for women who feel they are marginalised. As a woman who came from a poor, rural community and as someone who used to be hungry at school and who did not go to university, also as a mother and wife, I always kept my strong will. I am not saying that everybody will have the fortitude that I have but I believe if we dig deep, we can see that inner strength that will bring us through.

Is your Ministry planning programmes to enable women to take control of their lives?

We have quite a number of programmes, for example, a national parenting programme where we bring parents, churches and community health centres together to teach people to parent their children because this is one of the biggest problems we have. There’s a cycle of violence because children have grown up seeing their mothers being battered. Like everything else with funding and costings, it will take time. You have to understand that in Grenada now there is a ‘dependency syndrome’; we have to go back to liberating people to making their own decisions.

What measures have been taken to stop violence against women?

In Grenada, we have an Act, hotline and shelter for women but the biggest problem is of wanting to take the perpetrators to court – you cannot force it. In many cases, the victims – women and children – do not want to go to Court. We are moving towards OECS reform and setting up our own Family Court where for such cases you would not have to go through the big court system but a different, more relaxed setting, although still with the aim of getting the persons punished for their wrongdoings.

How dynamically involved is civil society in the gender agenda?

The Grenada Organisation of Women does quite a lot in terms of advocacy and running community programmes to support women who are victims of domestic violence. We have quite a lot of church and other organisations, groups against cancer, community bodies and cottage industries but we need to do a lot more so we can bring the benefits to both men and women for a well-balanced society.

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