 Good day. Welcome to Tea Talk, a special panel discussion in celebration of International Women's Day, hosted by the Women's Committee of the St. Lucia Teachers Union. I am your host, Volina Joseph. This year's theme for International Women's Day, which will be celebrated on March 8, is gender equality today for a sustainable tomorrow. With us today to start off the second part of our Tea Talk discussion, we have three beautiful, dynamic, innovative women who are all educators, and I will allow them to introduce themselves. So we will start off to my immediate right. Hi, good day. I am Sophia Edwards-Gabriel, the national coordinator for the OECS Spurl, as well as a life skills educator and entrepreneur. Hi, I am Anne Gifford-Elcock, vice principal of the Cassress Comprehensive Secondary School, and also the chairperson, second chairperson of the Women's Committee of SLTO. Thanks for having me. I am Soraya John, past national queen, dancer, and a teacher at the Cassress Comprehensive Secondary School. Welcome, ladies. Welcome. Thank you. It is such a pleasure to have you today as we begin our Women's Day celebrations. So are you ready, ladies, to sip on your tea from Enchanted Kettle? Yes, we are. Great. So there was a time in our tradition when the thinking was that the role of the woman is to stay at home, care for the children, mind the household while the man would go out to work and provide for the family. The man was seen as the sole provider and breadwinner of the family. My question to start off would be, is this still the accepted perspective of the role of women today? I definitely think that this perspective has changed, and it has been a while since we no longer see separate roles for men and women. There has been more of a collaboration in terms of how men and women work in society within the home, especially given the fact that we have moved a long way from agriculture, we have more educated women, we have greater access to education, and so as a result we see that whole dynamic has changed significantly. And it's more, I don't see a role reversal, but more so a merging of the two roles. Definitely. I tend to agree with Ms. Gabriel. I remember growing up as a little girl, not so little as a student of Café's Comprehensive. I did F&N and Covenant Textile, and because of my upbringing as the older sibling and the girl, although I was older brother, but being the older girl, the role of caring for my siblings fell right into my laps. And so as a student I did F&N and Covenant nutrition, and I remember my Covenant Textile teacher saying, and it's too domesticating. And I was wondering, but why is she saying that? Now as an adult, I understand that because even in my role as a vice principal, I find myself murdering my students. They are like my children. So yes, the role of a man and a woman, it has changed somewhat, but to a large extent, we still remain mothers. We cannot separate ourselves from that role of murdering anybody who comes into our care, because that's just who we are as females, as women. It becomes natural. Certainly society's definition of the role of men and women has changed. I mean, what we expect from women now is so much more than what was expected from them back then. And even the role of the men, what we expect from men now, sometimes we may be expecting more, even less. Because of the way women have changed, it has actually changed the role for the man, because now women are being seen in so many positions and doing so many things that were once male dominated, that we actually see in some cases where men are withdrawing or pulling back and allowing women to take the lead. So in that sense, I definitely see that the role of the woman has changed in society. Okay. Just earlier in your contribution, you mentioned that we have moved away from agriculture. And I think from what we're seeing now is that women are going more into agriculture, being engaged more into, and you have more female farmers, women farmers now. And the women actually taking up that role. So with that, how do you think that the changing role of women now going out and doing what the men were normally expected to do? How has that contributed to our society? I think in a way it has helped with our development, simply because women are now fitting into so many different roles in society and making more significant contributions. Traditionally, we would be the homemakers, the child giving caregivers of the children. And whilst we still do that, just as an indicated, we have expanded our role so significantly. So even though we are seeing more women in agriculture, a lot of it stems from women as entrepreneurs, women being self-employed, women being independent. And so it's not as much as women being more supportive or subservient, it's almost a different perspective on it. It has an impact on our society, especially when we look at child rearing. We have so many women out in the workforce, and we also have the men out in the workforce that many of the children are left to sometimes raise themselves. There is less supervision, less guidance, and even before traditionally we spoke of the community raising a child, we don't see that anymore. We see a lot of children raising children. So that is one of the significant impacts that we have with these changes in roles of women now. So you're saying to some extent we as women should probably take some of the blame for some of the changes that we see, especially in the family structure, in some of what exists now in the homes. Well, I'm smiling because as a counselor, I'm a trained counselor as well, as a counselor I have learned and I believe that blaming is not a very efficient behavior of ours. So we say it's one of the most efficient behaviors that we have. So we have to accept responsibility. We have to see where we can contribute and change, and we do that but not really looking at blaming because blaming does not result in change. It doesn't necessarily result in improvement or development. I don't think it's any one particular gender to take the blame, as Mrs. Edward was saying. And where did this come from, where women felt that they needed to come out from the home and to assert themselves and to put themselves in certain places in society where they would not have normally been? What caused that in the first place? And of course, in terms of raising a child, it takes an entire village to raise a child. So the responsibility of how children are raised in terms of discipline and manners and values, it cannot only rest on a woman. It has to be everybody involved. And to go back to your question, Belina, you ask whether women should be blamed for that change, for the most part the responsibility that is placed on women. I don't think so. To a large extent, I feel as a woman that we are putting a position that for survival, we are forced to do what we must do, for ourselves, for our families, just to survive. And I think we are placed in that position through not all of ours, but because we are women, because we are professionals, we go out, we work, and we come back home to take care of the children. And because we are placing that in that role of a professional, we are out there doing what we ought to do. When we come back home, it's like we're still in that same mode, and if the faith is not being done, we just do it. Because we used to just do what has to happen. I want to agree, Mrs. Elkoq, because sometimes it just feels like so much is expected of you as a woman, especially when you're a single mother as well. You are taking on both roles, and you're expected to carry and execute all of them well. I want to chime in here. I think I see it as support, support for the males as well. And I'm always saying I'm fortunate that I have a partner and that I'm not a single parent, because there is no way I would have been able to raise children on my own. I'm so thankful that I have a husband, and I keep saying I respect single parents because it's a lot. So we each have our own roles to play, and the men still go out to work. They work eight hours, like some of them work longer, and come back home and provide support as well. So I see it as a partnership, a collaboration, and I'm happy that there is more balance in the roles of men and women today as opposed to in the past. I don't see the balance. I tend to disagree. Because again, as an educator, the things that we experience, the things that we are seeing, because for the most part, our men have dropped the ball. Our men have dropped the ball. Some of our men. Some of our men. You know what I mean? Well, miss, because of the issues that we are confronted, all the gang violence, all the crime, for the most part, if you interview those young men, and they are young men because you don't have a man figure in their lives, so it can be some of the men who are generalizing here, men have dropped the ball. And I tend to agree with that point there. I'm not sure who is to be blamed for that, if it's women asserting themselves so much that the men probably feel intimidated and feel like, okay, the women have it all. They have it together. I don't need to be a man. Should we step back a little bit and allow men to be men? Men. Maybe we're taking on too much. Very interesting conversation. So far, ladies, we will stop for a break now as we sip on our tea from Enchanted Kettle. Healthy. Has never tasted so good. That's right. Everyone says counseling, counseling, counseling. I don't know what to say. They feel my fate. I don't know what to say. Maliglasia, just yesterday, you asked me advice about your husband and we spent over an hour on the cell. That's counseling. I don't know what to do. Just think about it, Galasia. When you have a difficulty with someone, you ask your friends for advice to help you to deal with your problems. But wouldn't you prefer getting advice from a professional counselor? I hope you're not one of those who think counseling is for crazy people. When your situation keeps going, you don't need professional counseling. But I don't know what to say. I don't know what to say. Don't you know the Ministry of the Public Service has an employee assistance program they call EAP, which is offering six free counseling sessions for government employees? Galasia, why don't you take advantage of it? Really? It's free. Let me call the EAP unit ASAP. Because I want professional, did you say free? Free counseling. Galasia, why don't you take advantage of it? Call the EAP unit at 468-2269. EAP Works, let it work for you. Welcome back to Tea Talk, ladies. It has been an interesting conversation so far. Very. So, we continue. We see a significant increase in single-parent families. In most cases, single mothers. Women have had to take on the role of men while still having to maintain their own role as women. Do you think that women have made it easier or more difficult in some cases for the men to play their role in the family? I'm not even to show what the answer to this is, to be honest. I think we sometimes, perhaps we have to go beyond just gender. I think we have to look at values. We have to look at expectations, what are the boundaries that we're setting for ourselves. And sometimes we also have to know how to adapt, how to change, how to, I suppose, it's almost like a dance that we do. And I remember years ago saying that I never wanted to have children before marriage. And a number of people have questioned me. You don't seem to be that religious. You don't seem to have such values. Where does that come from? And this is something that I looked at many years ago because my mother had many of us. We had different fathers. And I said, I'm not going to be that. I'm not going to be there. I don't want that situation. And so I decided then as a child that I did not want to put another child through that. And that's where the decision-making comes through. So I believe it's so many other factors as opposed to just being male or female. And perhaps we have to look at it from a broader perspective to be able to understand what is happening and to be able to begin to address some of the deficiencies we are seeing. Women have fought so long for gender equality. That sometimes I wonder if an inequality was created exactly for the men. Because now it's like anything to do with a woman, everybody goes all out. Everybody gets their best foot forward. A woman is always right. We even have that saying, men don't argue that a woman is always right. So I'm wondering if that did not disadvantage men in a sense that they feel that they have lost their position, that position of assertion and even to just be the head. Exactly. And even to add to that, women, I mean in our quest, we're so ambitious now and we're going for the leading roles and we're going for our dreams and our goals and what we want to achieve. That sometimes maybe we do not, we tend to maybe expect too much from the men. And for example, you mentioned earlier on that you need, this needs to be done and okay, you expect that the man would do it and you come home and it's not done or you know he's probably taking too long to get it done. And so we do it ourselves. So could it be that it is maybe through our overambition, our, you know, urge and zeal to want to achieve so much that we tend to be, should I say maybe... Overcompensating sometimes. A little too impatient with the men. I think I agree with that. We always have to understand that men and women are not made equal. We are not cut out of the same cloth. And so women have many different behaviour patterns, thought processes, etc. that men will just not have because they're not built that way. And so we try as women to change men into women to a certain extent. We want them to think like us. We want them to behave like us, respond like us. And we have to understand that this is just not possible because men are different and women are different. And I don't think men have that great expectation of women, that we have to be like them and respond like them. They understand that we are women and we do things in a particular way. And to a large extent many of them respect that. But we as women, we usually think that the world has to be... Everything has to happen the way we see it and we perceive it. And so that is part of the issue I think that we have. And that we have to now begin to do some introspection, some reflection, and to begin to see what we can do to address the issues that are perhaps affecting or impacting us now. Because perhaps we've really contributed to it. Even on a subconscious level, you see in the classroom, for example at the school, we recently hosted our assembly in observance of our 43rd independence. And I deliberately made an attempt to have boys be part of the program. You know what happened? All of them for different reasons dropped out. So at the end I only had female students. We thought that without me or anybody doing anything, they just withdrew. And so somebody would listen and say, look at that, only girls, where are boys? They took themselves out. And the question is why? And they got the same preparation. They went through the same process as the girls and they did not make it to the end. You know why you just said it? They went through the same process as the girls. Maybe we should have tweaked the process for them. Maybe we should have approached it differently. Maybe we should have put some things in there that would interest them or motivate them to want to be part of this. I have two children, a male and a female. And my daughter, she would, I would say, just yesterday I'm saying, boy, as an educator, there's a competition, there's an essay writing, there's something. She's nine. And she will say, mommy, let me do it. I want to try that. I want to do this. My son is at secondary school. I say, no, mommy, I don't want to do that. If I were to ask my daughter to come here and be part of that panel, she'll pull up a chair. My son will say, no. So we have to understand the personalities. We have to understand how do... It's almost like the learning styles. People have different learning styles. And how do we cater to them if we want to engage them? And over the years, as an educator, I've always been dominant. I want to be a professional. I don't feel that I have to sacrifice that. But I've also learned that I need to sometimes step back, that I don't always have to be in the forefront, that I can actually say, okay, you take the lead on that, and then I follow. And so we need to have that kind of balance, that kind of give and take. But you also need to, if you can, prepare your partner, prepare the men to do that. Because sometimes women tend to mature a little faster. Women tend to think differently. And then it means, therefore, that if you have a partner, that's probably your same age, et cetera, that you may be leaving them behind. Because we don't mature at the same rate. We don't develop. We don't think. And so sometimes, even with me, if I want to do something, I'm like, okay, I'll wait for you to get there. I know you'll probably take a few weeks, a month, or whatever, but I'll wait. And then when you come, we'll do it together. Because I understand that. And so sometimes these are some of the things that we have to consider. That's very true. You mentioned in your discourse that men and women, we don't think the same. And I think for the most part, a lot of women don't get that. We don't get that. So we want this and we want it now. But you must also understand, as you clearly stated, that they take a longer time to get to it. But we must also know when we have reached that point also. So while we're going to understand that we are different, we're going to get there differently, we may have different routes of getting there, different objectives. We share that. But as a woman, we must also know and understand when we have gotten to that point that, okay, I have them all. All I can. And let me just step back and decide what's the next step for you as an individual. So that's very important. Very true. Okay, so given the changes in the family structure, women decide to raise their children on their own. Or in some cases, you have two women who are in a relationship and they decide to raise a child or children on their own. Does the man still have that important role to play in the family? As a single mother with no choice of mine, I can tell you I would never choose to be a single mother. And it's a fear that I always had to not have children and then end up being single because I appreciate the contribution that men have on their children. I believe that children need to be raised by their parents, for me, male and female. Because we, like you said, we are very different. The genders are different and the child needs to be able to experience those differences. The way a man will deal with his son, I can never deal with my son that way. So I have a boy, I am trying to think like a man so that I am giving him enough experience, enough values, enough everything for him to survive on his own. I am only going to be able to give him what I know to be a woman because that's what I am. So now I have to try to think and to be a man so I can give him those values so he's not missing out on too much because I know that it is important. So for me, I just cannot understand why somebody would want to choose to have a child and to raise a child on their own as a single parent when we see the repercussions of children missing out on the opposite sex, in their family. I totally agree with Soraya. I look at my situation and every day I am like boy, I am thankful that there is a man there and I have to fear not having that because sometimes I see the value that the man brings into the discipline, into the guidance, into the support. There are times when I would speak to the children and they would at a second glance as soon as daddy says that's a totally different story and so I really respect that balance that you get and that is why I say I respect single mothers because I know it's quite a challenge for single mothers to raise children and so that is why I also support and believe that there is the importance of grandparents, the importance of family members perhaps it is. It cannot be one person raising a child. I agree. Now it's not to say that the concept of single parent families is anything new that has always happened but as you rightly said back then the extended family support was there so mommy would go to work and granny would be there and auntie would be there. The village, someone said earlier that village to raise the child so the issue for us now is was the role of women have changed and we have a lot of all those different kinds of family structures including the single parent family what's missing is the support. And to add to what you're saying with all of those changes the role of the man the function of the man the responsibility of the man has not changed we still expect the man to be the man True And to a large extent some of them are not meeting the target meeting the expectations. It's true because you may have families and they're not single parent they have both parents but are both parents supporting each other are they setting a good example for the children do they even have the same values and the same beliefs and when you look at families where that doesn't exist where you have different parenting styles then that is also a problem so it's not just a matter of the man and the woman or a single parent family there are lots of dynamics that we look at not just with families in the workplace in the communities and so that is why whilst I respect the idea of gender and gender issues I think we need to look broader we need to look at other factors that contribute to who we are and where we're going and I don't think in all of that we can get the point of ensuring that boys or girls, our children understand who they are as individuals to be the wholesome strong individual and therefore have a strong man and a strong woman so it would definitely take the influence of both the man and the woman father and mother to raise a child to get that child to develop into that holistic individual that would I suppose contribute towards building our family structure and our society by extension ladies, it was such a pleasure having you to tea talk our first ever panel discussion organised by the Women's Committee of the Saint Lucia Teachers Union we would like to say a big thank you to NTN for making this possible also thank you Enchanted Kettle Healthy Never Tasted So Good I'm Belina Joseph and this has been Tea Talk Thank you for tuning in Thank you