“I can promise you that women work­ing to­geth­er—linked, in­formed, and ed­u­cat­ed—can bring peace and pros­per­i­ty to this for­sak­en plan­et.” —Is­abel Al­lende

These words by the cel­e­brat­ed Chilean writer are of­fered to­day as mo­ti­va­tion for the women across T&T work­ing to bring about pos­i­tive change in this coun­try. Many of them are un­sung hero­ines, of­ten over­looked but res­olute in their de­ter­mi­na­tion to shat­ter glass ceil­ings and break down bar­ri­ers.

With­out them, In­ter­na­tion­al Women’s Day (IWD) in T&T would not be as mean­ing­ful as it is to­day, as an oc­ca­sion when the coun­try’s progress in achiev­ing gen­der equal­i­ty can be gauged.

This day, ded­i­cat­ed to recog­nis­ing women’s achieve­ments in var­i­ous spheres, is al­so an op­por­tu­ni­ty for ramp­ing up the ad­vo­ca­cy to bring down the bar­ri­ers and erad­i­cate the bi­as­es still faced by women and girls.

The var­i­ous IWD events to­day are im­por­tant plat­forms to am­pli­fy the is­sues women here face dai­ly in the strug­gle for equal rights.

This is al­so an oc­ca­sion for cel­e­bra­tion, as this year marks the 30th an­niver­sary of the adop­tion of the Bei­jing De­c­la­ra­tion and Plat­form for Ac­tion, the land­mark agree­ment for ad­vanc­ing women’s and girls’ rights glob­al­ly.

Yes, there has been progress but the strug­gle against out­dat­ed so­cial norms and stereo­types con­tin­ues.

In the push for a more in­clu­sive and eq­ui­table T&T, the sta­tus of women and the equal rights guar­an­teed un­der our Re­pub­li­can Con­sti­tu­tion must be kept in fo­cus.

Thanks to the vi­sion and per­sis­tence of the pi­o­neer­ing women who have bro­ken through the glass ceil­ing to take up po­si­tions of in­flu­ence and lead­er­ship in this na­tion, there have been ad­vance­ments in ed­u­ca­tion from the pri­ma­ry to ter­tiary lev­els, to the ex­tent that girls have been out­per­form­ing boys in many aca­d­e­m­ic ar­eas.

In the sphere of pol­i­tics, women have oc­cu­pied the of­fices of prime min­is­ter and pres­i­dent but there is still work to be done to boost lev­els of rep­re­sen­ta­tion in gov­er­nance. At present, just over 28 per cent of the seats in Par­lia­ment are held by women.

There are still many oth­er ar­eas of con­cern, al­though there have been gains for T&T’s women in terms of equal­i­ty of ed­u­ca­tion and em­ploy­ment. Fore­most is the epi­dem­ic of gen­der-based vi­o­lence, which con­tin­ues to threat­en the safe­ty and well-be­ing of women and girls.

Adding a dis­cor­dant note to to­day’s IWD com­mem­o­ra­tions are the dis­turb­ing sta­tis­tics on gen­der-based vi­o­lence in T&T, in­clud­ing the fact that 44 per cent of women and girls ex­pe­ri­ence some form of gen­der-based vi­o­lence in their life­time —far above the glob­al av­er­age of 33 per cent.

This is a per­va­sive is­sue that re­quires ur­gent ac­tion, which is why the 2025 IWD theme, Ac­cel­er­ate Ac­tion, is a clar­i­on call to the ac­tivists on the front­lines of the push for gen­der equal­i­ty. It is a goal that will re­main elu­sive as long as gen­der-based and sex­u­al vi­o­lence re­mains preva­lent, de­priv­ing women and girls of their rights and safe­ty. It is time to ramp up ac­tions to trans­form this na­tion.

A start­ing point for the ac­tion ur­gent­ly need­ed to erad­i­cate this plague is the Na­tion­al Strate­gic Ac­tion Plan on Gen­der-Based Vi­o­lence and Sex­u­al Vi­o­lence of Trinidad and To­ba­go 2023-2027, a doc­u­ment to guide the im­ple­men­ta­tion of much-need­ed poli­cies and strate­gies.

T&T has a long way to go. Let’s there­fore Ac­cel­er­ate Ac­tion for gen­der equal­i­ty.