 Welcome to Tea Talk, a special panel discussion hosted by the Women's Committee of the Saint Lucia Teacher's Union in celebration of International Women's Day, which will be on March 8th. The theme for this year's International Women's Day is gender equality today for a sustainable tomorrow. To start off our first ever Tea Talk, we have invited three very confident, accomplished and dynamic women to chit chat with us. So first we have Dr. Rosemary Malfrey, husband's Malfrey, my past teacher whom I adore. She served as Speaker of the House and presently she is the Parliamentary Commissioner for Public Sector Administration. Welcome. Thank you so much. Thank you so much. Glad to be here. Thank you very much. Great. And then we have Mrs. Joyce Lynn Eugene, who is the Co-ordinator of School Counseling. Welcome Mrs. Eugene. Thank you. Happy to be here. Great. And then we have our very own Ms. Tracy Dolsey. She is the Treasurer of the Women's Committee. She is also, she was a teacher, I think now she's assigned to the Ministry of, help me out there. Education. Ministry of Education. So welcome Tracy. Thank you. So ladies, it is such a pleasure to have you today as we begin our Women's Day celebrations. Are you ready to sip on your tea from Enchanted Kettle and have a chit chat? Great, great. So you know that topic for today, are men really the head and should women submit? But to start off I'm going to read a scripture of us. So it's taken from Ephesians 5, verse 22 to 24. It reads, wives, submit yourselves to your own husbands as you do to the Lord. For the husband is the head of the wife, as Christ is the head of the church, his body of which he is the Savior. Now as the church submits to Christ, so also wives should submit to their husbands in everything, should submit to their husbands in everything. I don't say it, Ephesians said it. Now according to the Oxford Dictionary, submission is defined as accepting or yielding to a superior force or to the will or authority of another person. Now my first question is does submit means know your place? Well if you look at it in the earthly sense of it, as in the regular definition or layman's perspective on submissive would be know your place. So I think you began in the middle of the sentence, that gives the context in which we talk about wives must submit to their husbands. I want to say the verses that well before, so that we can have a good discussion of where the context of that submission comes. Okay let's say. I think we generally miss verse 21, which says submitting to one another in the fear of Christ, 21 brings us mutual submission, which then causes the rest of the verses to fall into line. And then if we're looking at the scriptural perspective, we're talking about in Christ. This is specific to a relationship for those Christian believers who are married, which is the other context, wives, submit to your own husband. It says own husband, submitting to any other man or any other person's husband, your own husband. So in that sense it creates a context, however if we take submit by itself and the definition that you use, then we could see conflict. But wait just with a second, let me get that. So verse 21 says submit to one another, submit to that effect. But then to me the other verses overpower, they overpower it, the other verses that follow. So why did it not mention submit to each other again, but it specifically says wives, submit yourselves to your husband. Why didn't you say husband, you intend to submit to your wife? I think one of it is that we all teachers, and there was the main idea, the first sentence. And the main idea. And the first in details are important. But let's understand the main idea, which speaks to a mutual relationship in Christ. It's not a question of man to woman and every organization, man is the head and woman is the servant. No, no, no, no, no. Let's think about the context in which that was written, a mutual, love-giving, life-giving relationship. And in that mutual relationship, we go on further to hear the details. Because if, like in any organizations, you have an organization, you have an organizational structure. And in that organizational structure, there is someone to lead. And when we're talking about that leadership in Christ, we're talking about a sort of a spiritual head. We're talking about the relationship of a man and a woman, mutual relationship, mutual cooperation. Because if there is no mutual, it's a man pulling hair, woman pulling hair, disaster, you know, fight, et cetera. If we take, just submit, you by itself. So you expect me that I will just submit to you, just so? No. But let me just ask, before you go on to see. So are you saying that a lot of people, I don't want to say man or woman, people misunderstand the scripture. And because of that, women allow themselves to be abused and men abuse them? I believe there is a misunderstanding of the scripture because, again, you cannot take the verse by itself. If you take this verse and you accept it for what it is, you accept Genesis 1, you accept from Genesis where it says, for this reason, a man shall leave his mother and father and cleave onto his wife. You cleave onto someone you want to be with because you all have a mutual interest in building family, building community, building society, building nation. When you enter into a business agreement, you do not enter into business with people you don't agree with. You enter into business and you mutually agree to the strengths and weaknesses of what we have. And we pull that together so our business can be successful. Therefore, this context is the success of a marriage between two mutualism, let me just say something about the question you asked earlier. When you look down, what it does is actually show you what submission looks like. So submission looks this way for the man as head and it looks this way for the wife who is in the relationship with him. So all it does is break up the main idea and give you all of the other contexts in which this is going to be working and of course to help you determine how you are going to navigate if you are to agree to get into marriage. Absolutely. I'm happy that Miss Eugene actually, Joyce, touched on something which is submission just being beyond even the marriage. And it's not just a Christian perspective, even for instance when you go with Muslims, you have the women submitting to their husbands and I would go further in a business partnership. I think the whole idea of submission is does that person deserve my respect? If you have somebody who deserves your respect, you submit whether you realize it or not. It's a natural thing to work together that one must compromise to an extent. And the compromise, again, there's a difference between bending or compromising and abuse. Use is when one is given more, compromise entails there's a force, there's a whole power struggle. But within a marriage or within a relationship, because we know there are civil partnerships, within the context of a relationship, there is always that measure of one has to give in order for one to gain. And is there an extent, when you start measuring it is when the issues happen. Are there specific qualities that a man should have to be considered the head? Because I know we spoke about Mrs Eugenia's book about having mutual values or share the same beliefs. But sometimes you get into a union and I am specifically not staying on marriage because I know you said that relates to marriages. But I feel once you have a union, a solid union, the same principle should hold. The principle applies, but the text you use speaks to marriage. We cannot move, we cannot deviate from that. The text specifically says wives and husbands and it speaks within a context. But the principle of submission, the principle of relationship, can be extended to anyone that you come into contact with. You and I are driving down the road and I meet the intersection. One of us must yield, that is submission. If neither of us want to yield, I mean I have right of way, you have right of way. We're going to end up somewhere right away. But is there any point, at any point a woman should say, I am taking charge and I am becoming that head? She wouldn't need to. Exactly. If there's an understanding of what the... But you see, you have people being married for 20 years and the marriage fails. It breaks. It doesn't break at the end of the 20 years, you know. It breaks way before that and then what happens? The woman keeps suffering because she's saying this is my head. This is my head and the woman keeps suffering. So I want women to understand clearly what you're saying when we say the man is the head. Are we telling women that we should just be there? And okay, because we share similar values, similar ideas that I should just accept certain things even when it's not right. Because I remember speaking to somebody and she's saying that if my husband, I have in a discussion or an argument and we come, it's deadlock. We cannot decide if it's black, if it's white. I go with the husband. If we cannot decide if it's black, if it's white, we agree to disagree. We agree to go with one. But how would you agree with one side? But we're supporting the outcome. So how would you decide which one you go with? That is the thing. The yielding must come mutually. So I can agree this time, you know what? Baby, let's go with your... Because when you have children, that is another thing. And if I give the example, my husband and I, we have a son. To my mind, I said he's going to... I think we should send him to this school. My husband said, we think we should send him to this school. And we came down to a deadlock in terms of, again, principles of our Christian belief and so on and so forth. And then we said, okay, you know what? Can we meet in the middle? Where is the middle? Where does he want to go? You understand, so we took away from... I guess it comes to compromise as you're saying. Yes, and it comes back to, what do we want? Are we trying to build our home or are we trying to force our point, take up a position of control which can lead to further conflicts in the situation? It comes to, if the relationship is a mutual relationship, then there are decisions that will take because I have the stronger interest in that. Yes, so when it comes to schooling, my husband will say, listen, you choose the school. I wanted to go to this school, but you are saying, let's go, okay, fine, we're going if you have a decision. You are the editor. Ladies, we must really take a break right now while we sleep on our tea from Enchanted Kettle. Helphie never tasted this good. Thank you. Break. And genetically modified foods are harmful to health and the environment. Join the Good Food Revolution. Grow, buy and consume organic. A message from Rye St. Lucia and the Ministry of Sustainable Development with funding from the GEF Small Grants Program, UNDP. The Good Food... Oi, you realize you step on my toe. Well, do something about it. Gasai Bustindaman. Hold on. Keep somebody trying to cross you. Hold on. And your matting start to take you. Hold on. No need for your over your lens because the police is there to help you. Hold on. If a trouble starts in this session, all right. No need for your mission, boys. Studio 758, acid creation and the royals and Lucia folks. Welcome back to Tea Talk. I hope you enjoyed your tea from Enchanted Kettle. Okay, so we're going right back into the discussion. Before the break, Tracey, we're going to talk about what qualities makes a man... make, sorry, what qualities would make a man the head. Well, I will not say, I would say what quality makes a man deserving of my respect. In terms of within, well, I am single, but I'm between two married ladies. But I would say that for sure, in order for me to consider somebody, my husband, who's deserving of respect, we still go back to the wood and we go back to what a man is. A provider, a protector and a professor of love. I'm looking for the free piece. I need somebody at the end of the day who's deserving of my respect. He must be able to protect me. In terms of if a man protects me, he's not going to verbally, physically or otherwise abuse me. He's going to protect me even from myself. And that's a tall call. Trust me. He's going to be able to provide, not just financially, but emotionally for our families, spiritually as well. Then you have, he must be able to profess love, not just for me, but to a higher being, because if he cannot profess love to others out there and to Christ, he can't profess love to me. Now when a man comes packaged like that with his bow and everything on, trust me, sister, I am ready to submit. That's right. But the thing is that I think a lot of women misunderstand because I have a problem when I hear a man is supposed to protect me. A man is supposed to be my provider. I can do these things for myself. I can protect myself. I can provide for myself. I do not need a man. And you find women putting themselves in all precarious positions and accept anything because they need the free piece. And here is where I'm a promoter of equity. There are certain things that a woman will be able to do better than a guy. That is normal. There are certain things that a woman can do. The day a man is able to have a natural both of a child, we will talk about equality. The day that I can lift up some of the weight, some men can lift up naturally without my womb being affected, we will talk about equality. But I believe in equity. But I want Dr. Maffre to speak about this free piece for me, please. No, I was just thinking that as Tracy was talking about the free piece, protector, provider. Professor. And I'm thinking that what other qualities do you need? I mean, that says it all. Now, provider doesn't mean that he's supposed to make more money than you. That's not the provision we're talking about. But you know a lot of women think so. They will not be for men who make less money than them. And today, I think in a world where women have taken on a very advanced role, we no longer the bread makers in the home. We are the rule makers and the legislators and so on. We have partnerships, relationships that cannot survive that. That cannot survive the fact that a woman has a salary that has $10 more than yours. So I'm just saying that we have to look at the relationship in Christ. That he's your protector. You know, he is the one who's going to give you the spiritual guidance, the provider, the profession of love, because it is a love-giving, life-giving relationship in Christ. It is not just a man and a woman and that relationship in Christ. If he comes with these qualities, however, whoever he may be, that is an easy opportunity for you to... I said Mrs. Yichit, I know she's going to agree to the free piece. I'm not even about to do that. I want to say that because we have so many people who misunderstand the context, that what we have actually done is taken the word and we have used it as a battering ram and an abusive tool against the lives of people when we know that that's not the intention of the word. So to my mind, this is where the problem is. But do you think the churches are responsible for that to some extent? There are levels of delivery of the message that are responsible for that, but that does not mean we do not have a choice. You have a choice to be able to know what the word says, to study for yourself, to show yourself approved, for you to have an understanding, to have discourses like this, where, as Tracy said, she's a single woman, but you hear her profession of faith basically about what it is she's looking for. You hear married women who are telling you, I'm not in an abusive marriage. I have no difficulty submitting to my husband. I see submission as a gift. And the reason I gift him that submission is because together we mutually agree to what we would want to see as a family. However, putting that aside, we see a lot of abuse in society. We see mothers dominating sons, to the point where sons are bereft of showing any kind of emotion. So then they cannot become good husbands, because they're trying to think, and then you have those who are actually trying to get the person who should be their wife to fill in the role that the mother did not fulfill. We have a society that has, you know, made everything, turned everything upside down and is heading in a lot of ways. And so because of that, you constantly find yourself in conflict when it comes to what is the desirable relationship that you have. When you meet someone and you want to enter into a conversation with them, do you go in saying, hmm, when he said this, I'm going to say that. And if he said that, I'm going to make my point. You don't do that. You want to be able to go in genuinely to have a conversation about things, see where the person's head is at, and see how we can work together towards accomplishing what we want to accomplish. And then with that, you can determine whether you want to marry. And marriage is not for everybody. Oh no. I agree with that. I really agree to that. Now you know the irony is I like the fact that Miss Eugene brought something up that in women taking on a more dominant quote unquote role, you have had that some men have gone into a much more submissive role. And so you have that change. And I totally agree that we have to stand up. We have to become independent. But again, if gender equality has to be sustainable in the long run, both genders or all genders, should I say, must be able to rise together. Because it makes no sense that today, for instance, we have so many women who are heading government positions with the private sector, they're getting qualified and our males are left on the block or in bodily. So you have to get from the slim pickings and expect them to step up. So I see my question now. You have so many women as you say heading organizations. How does that woman make the transition from being the head for eight hours? And now you go home. I think we have to submit. What's the transition like for you? Do you forget? Not at all. I know my role and I stay in my section when I am in my section. For instance, there is no way. I didn't have a problem transitioning from speaker of the house to wife. I didn't have a transition of telling the legislature's order and going home. And taking the order. And being part of a relationship where my husband can ask me to do something and I would happily agree with him. Okay, yes. Let's go with your suggestion, etc. Because that's a relationship born in Christ. And that's a relationship that comes with another aspect that does not, of life and love giving that ends in the House of Parliament. And you know what's the irony? Is that many men, or there are some men, when they realize, okay, you're probably somebody who's accomplished, they automatically feel, oh, that one is too high for me to climb up. And they don't realize there are many women who are in positions of power who are looking to be able, when I get home, to take out that hat. And just to be a wife. Just to be a mother. And to have somebody just, because all of that, if I were to get my husband tomorrow and he's able to match those three P's, Sister Jeanne, I do expect to see Sister Jeanne fly even more. But not all men can do that. Not all men can accept. But it has an impact on relationships and you see what relationships are like today. But Dr. Malfrey, I was telling Mrs. Eugene earlier that there are men who tell you, I do not want a wife to submit to me. Yeah, because again, there are boundaries for that context. And if they're outside of that boundary, then it does not make sense to them. We leave it at that. But what I wanted to say is that it's not even so much transitioning from head into a wife when you get home. I'm a teacher, by profession. Teachers, we handle classes no matter what level. When you get home, my tone. I know about that. When I met my husband in the first few years, we had an agreement that when I spoke to him, the tone. So we had a cue for each other. Simply because it was not necessarily headship or leadership or whatnot. It was because of the profession that I was in and that ability that we have as teachers to command the attention of people. When I spoke, I spoke in a tone. But at the same time I'm addressing my husband and there's no, we're not in that relationship. Therefore, it means I needed to recognize it and I needed to make the adjustment. And that is part of submission because I could have held my own and say, you know, oh, I'm just telling you what I'm telling you and what not. And I'm not mindful of how it's affecting him, how it's impacting his integrity as a man and that type of thing. But the environment of work is quite different to environment at home. And for me, that was an immediate switch over. And the environment of work came with its turnness, etc. And the environment of home came with a loving, a relaxing, a different kind of environment. All the world is a stage where we are in outside. We are in outside. All the men and women are clear. I recognize we run out of time. I want to say something. Earlier you said a lot of women, I want women to understand they have choice. That's important. Okay. And you need to understand the context within which you are going to make the particular choice that you are making. The scripture does not say to submit to a man who is abusive, who is controlling, who is disrespectful. The scripture connotes that being in the Lord would cause him to have a level of humility and balance. And therefore, if your husband is leading you in a direction that goes contrary to the will of God, how do you submit? We have to recognize that there are boundaries around the marriage relationship that foster the gift of submission. Thank you. I think that is a good way to end. Do you agree, Dr. Maafra? Anything you want to say? I think so. No, I'm quite happy to say that. I liked when Tracy said protection, that the man, that all peace, one of the peace protection. And what came to mind is a certain ad that there's an ad wouldn't mention in the name that says, God, you covered guarantee. That's what that one should say. That you covered guarantee. Ladies, it's been a pleasure. I really had fun chit-chatting with you. And you have made history. This is our first ever tea talk, SLT Women's Committee Tea Talk. So maybe next year, we can invite you again to be part of Tea Talk. I would like to say a big thank you to NTN for making this possible. And also, I would like to thank Enchanted Kettle, a local tea making company. And of course, we support local health. It never tasted this good, right? It was nice, right? Yes, it was nice. So thank you for tuning in to our first ever tea talk. Stay tuned for another episode of Tea Talk, which will be released soon. Thank you. See you later.