…and harassment of women
Your Eyewitness was intrigued about the Women & Gender Equality Commission’s (W&GEC) recent launch of a programme taking on sexual harassment of women in the workplace. He wonders if the salacious revelations about the “exploits” of Donald Trump – sexually harassing women to the max – look what he boasted about grabbing – had anything to do with it. But even if it didn’t, why haven’t they explicitly taken aim at what goes on in the offices of the very people we’ve elected to office?
Governmental offices in general and Ministerial offices, in particular, are veritable hotbeds of sexual harassment. Not that offices in the private sector and other workplaces are immune…but the phenomena is particularly rampant among the political tribe. And there are good reasons for this. You see, dear reader, sexual harassment is committed predominantly by men against women – especially younger women. And like everything between men and women, it has to ultimately do with power.
Most men still see women as either in their possession or to be made into their “possession”. So when a woman enters the workplace – where females are still automatically the more lowly paid – those around see her as fair game – or to continue the analogy – as “fresh meat” to be “hunted” and “conquered”. In politics, where power is pursued for its own sake, it thus becomes almost impossible for one of the species not to see women as “prey”.
Just check into the offices of several of the new Ministers, and you’ll suffer horripilation to hear the lurid stories of groping hands and worse. Even the milder ones seem compelled to engage in double entendres that’d make the proverbial sailor blush. Most women really don’t know how to deal with these unwelcome advances from men who’re so highly placed.
Many of them blame themselves for possibly “leading the lechers on”. In fact, there’s a strong sentiment in Guyana that younger females “throw themselves” at older power holders. That just goes to show some of our females have been socialised into accepting sexual harassment as par for the (work) course. The point is…once there’s a power differential between the men at the top and the women below them (get the picture?) there will be sexual harassment. And the ones at the bottom shouldn’t be blamed.
What the W&GEC ought to be doing is to struggle for equality of women in all spheres in life. When this happens…only then will the harassment by men stop. And that’s true of all harassment, isn’t it?
So imagine when the woman’s poor, not of the “in” ethnic group, and rural!!
…abuse and justice
Well…we’ll…we’ll. Strike one for the Judiciary at a time when many fear an early muzzling of that fraternity. Here it was, Cavil Duncan had committed the worst sin possible in an ethnically fractured society: he joined “the other side”!! Now if that doesn’t call for a lynching or worse, what does? At least that’s what the government thought.
But you have to give them credit for first trying to use the velvet glove – or the greased palm, if you will – to try to buy out Duncan. Now this is illegal – and yet no one has even rapped the government on the wrists for subverting the constitution. But when Duncan didn’t bite, they brought out the steel fist.
They hauled him before the courts on clearly trumped up charges of “fraud”. But the Judiciary vindicated him!! The evidence, in the words of the magistrate, was all “heresay”.
And the documentary “evidence” was a photocopy – which even a child can tamper with!
…and high handedness
Your Eyewitness should’ve known as soon as he saw the new column in the Chronicle by the PM’s shill, Imran Khan – “FYI by DPI”. Khan, of course, is “Director of Public Information”.
The Editor in Chief hasn’t sold out – Khan was made Chairman of Board of the Chronic!! But no interference!!
