Protect Our Girls

One Caribbean Nation.

Gone are the days when the region’s girl children were expected to be nurses and teachers, and relishing their great advancement beyond what was expected of their grandmothers and mothers, who were expected to be home makers, domestics and other low -paying wage earners. Since independence, our girls have made great strides, and are now the majority pursuing education at the tertiary level and according to some statistics, they are “out-doing” our boys, in the examinations that highlight the transfer from primary to secondary schools.

No longer, when they reach womanhood, are they dependent on “don0carish” men, who traditionally were the breadwinners and in many cases, were known to have more than one family to look after. The days of the village ram are disappearing as our women continue to assert themselves in every area of national life, including corporate and political leadership. Thins development has been so widespread that men have rushed to form organizations to canvass their cause. They are now claiming that the law favors women when it comes to domestic matters; they believe that the large numbers of female teachers are making our boys to be” little “sissies” and they have been calls for the reintroduction of single sex schools. Men suddenly look like crybabies!

However, long before they reach womanhood, our girls are also invading some spaces once almost exclusively occupied by our boys. More girls are now involved in crime and when we peruse the court coverage in our newspapers, girls seem to be in numbers that threaten to even out do they male counterparts. Our girls are the victims of cultural penetration and they have been influenced by such foreign, mostly American, images as those of the popular Housewives reality shows, where they observe rich or at least well-off women having the time of their lives, underwritten by usually wealthy husbands. Their model of dress and style is heavily influence by the ‘Afro American women, with their excessive weaves and artificial hair. We warned many years ago that cultural penetration, will erode our post-independence gains but as usual we were deemed alarmists.

In addition to the invasive cultural penetration, our girls are now the victims of crimes such as the sex slave industry and being forced into prostitution. Many of them are experiencing sexual and physical abuse. So, while they are way more advanced than their mothers and grandmothers in many areas, early motherhood via teenage pregnancies and exposure to sexual health issues are some of the challenges they face.

We urge regional governments to move swiftly to protect our girls because if we fail to do so the next generation of our females may be ill-equipped to consolidate the gains of post-independence. And the treasured mothers and grandmothers of days yore, will be nowhere to be found.