WomenSpeak

Nalita Gajadhar works as a Programme Officer at the Bureau of Gender Affairs, Barbados. She is President of the Business and Professional Women’s Club which has been running a crisis hotline and shelter for women and children affected by domestic violence since 1986.  It is the only shelter in Barbados. 

CODE RED finally caught up with the Barbadian feminist activist, and with just five minutes to spare before returning to facilitate a Gender Sensitivity Training workshop, she shared her passion for saving and changing lives. 

How long have you been working against domestic violence?

About 30 years.

What keeps you going over 30 years? Where does the energy come from?

Because it really does save lives.  It’s about saving lives. It’s about helping people to understand a little more about the issues relating to violence. 

It’s about clearing up the myths and the misconceptions. I had seen from a child the impact of domestic violence on family and society. Before there was a shelter or a notion of what a shelter was I grew up in a house where my mother made our home a shelter. Many a night you shared a bed with people in the community who ran from violence. My mother always opened the door to let the woman and the children in and she would stand at the door and face down the man who was racing after the woman.  So it was just something that I have lived. I guess I just continued to do it.  But I don’t do it the same way my mother did.  I do it through the [women’s] groups I have joined and the kind of advocacy that I do.

What are the challenges you face? How have they changed over the last 30 years?

I think at the beginning people were a little bit more compassionate even though they accepted violence as part of the norm.  Once you got them engaged they realised that they needed to do something about it.  It was a task to engage them because violence was seen as the norm. Today it is recognised more as a human right but in terms of getting people to commit the resources it is difficult.  To try to change things we need resources. We have the shelter, we have the advocacy programme but what we need is transitional housing. We need opportunities for people to be able to move away from that place of abuse and not have to deal so much with the economic challenge that sometimes keeps them in that place where they sometimes die. I don’t want people to believe that violence is only limited to people in a certain socio-economic bracket. It is not. But having the ability to move away from it, sometimes when you don’t have that you stay, and sometimes you die.

Looking towards the future, what is your dream for Caribbean women?

What is it that makes you happy? We should not always be fighting to do what our grandparents said to do, what our mothers said to do, what society says we should do. We need to find relationships where there is really love, where there is caring and where you find happiness.  Not sometimes, but all the time.  Even when the person is not with you, you are happy because you have the freedom to just be and to be happy.  If we could just believe that we have a right to be happy. I think that that would be exciting if I could just get Caribbean women to understand that.

Thanks for chatting with us, Nalita.  May a new generation of Caribbean feminists inherit your commitment, passion and energy!

To reach the Business and Professional Women’s Crisis Hotline, to get information on counselling , the shelter and other resources in Barbados for women experiencing intimate partner violence and domestic violence, please call 246-435-8222 

On the 25 November, which also was International day against violence against women. I was severely beaten by my husband of eight years. At six in the morning my seven year old daughter was awaken by my screams for help.

I was slammed into the wall, cuffed in the abdomen and breast, beaten in the head and most of all publicly humiliated.

I feel broken with no where to turn and no one to help me.I am especially afraid of what this is doing to my child.

Needa L.

Today is International Day for the Elimination of Violence Against Women. And not a moment too soon. All around the world today there will be marches, exhibitions, symposiums, all manner of important events to help bring about a better understanding of the ways in which Violence Against Women is perpetrated and the devastating effect it has on women.

Today also marks the beginning of 16 Days of Activism Against Gender Violence which is an international human rights campaign to raise awareness and encourage action to help end violence against women. The 16 Days begin on November 25^th and ends on December 10 – International Human Rights day, to emphasize the fact that #VAW is a human rights issue.

Women have a right to be free from violence; from abuse by their intimate partners, sexual violence, trafficking and murder. But women are not only subject to violence from individuals, they are often subject to violence from the media, the legislature and even the state. 

Over the next #16Days we will discuss these various types of violence and hear from extraordinary everyday folks who are doing what they can to help end gender-based violence.

What can YOU do?

YOU can exercise your own personal leadership in helping to change the pervasive cultural inertia around VAW issues and challenge the destructive messages and thinking which blames women for the violence perpetrated against them.  

For a start you can reblog and share our posts and participate in our discussions on twitter and facebook. Moreover, you can start your own conversations with friends and take the initiative to find out and share information about Crisis Hotlines, Services and legal recourse for women and men who have suffered gender-based violence.

We also hope that some of you will be inspired by the work of our activists and discover ways to use your special talents and abilities to contribute to making the Caribbean, and the world a safer, freer and more just place for women and girls.

Her screams fill my head, especially when I close my eyes. When I witnesses that video of the 13 yr old special needs girl being raped it was all I could do to hold back my emotions. It call came back to me in a rush. I was attacked at my home 6 months ago. My home was broken into while I was asleep I was tied up, my head wrapped and then I was raped while my children slept in the next room. This is still very fresh in my mind and sometimes I wish that the assailant did kill me like he promised too so that I wouldn’t have to live to feel what I’m feeling. Don’t get me wrong I’m grateful to be alive but when I hear how people are treating with this incident so lightly as though its no big deal. I feel to scream at them and say yes its a big deal! A huge deal! She was raped! She will never forget it and now there’s a video that the world has seen of her horrible ordeal. Don’t we understand that every time we view th e video we rape that child all over again. Doesn’t Mr. Alleyne Know that? Every time I had to repeat my story, to the police, my family, to my therapists it got harder and harder. I understand its called re-victimization, so if Mr. Alleyne believed what he did was right he must be a qualified therapists to deal with sexual abuse survivors and special needs ones at that.

Its been almost two weeks since the airing of that video and I’m back to using sleeping pills because every time I try to sleep I hear her voice in my head begging him to come off and then I feel someone over me and I cry remembering my ordeal. I wake up with cold sweats. I’m a single mom with children and this whole situation is just too much. Just seeing the way the public reacts so flippantly to the crime of rape, I know in my heart that no one must know my secret and now more than ever I choose to remain silent and suffer quietly because if I get that re-action to me I will surely lose what little sanity I have left and then what would happen to my kids? Who would protect them?

Crying Heart