Women Must Take a Stand Now or Die!

Several years ago, in the course of paying what has since proved to be lip service to the need for constitutional reform, then Premier John Compton told his William Peter Boulevard audience we were too small a nation to be capable every five years of delivering the caliber of man required to keep Saint Lucia moving in top gear.

Never famous as a promoter of women’s causes, Compton left the impression that moving the country forward was strictly a man’s job. In all the time he had led his United Workers Party, he’d had on his slate of election candidates just one female.  

Her name was Heraldine Rock. It was no secret that her relationship with her male party colleagues was, well, rocky. Often they let her know they considered her “too revolutionary for a woman.” It had not helped soften her image that her quiet admiration for Fidel Castro had led her to accept an invitation in 1975 to address women’s conference in Cuba. On her return home she had spoken to the press about the importance of a government and opposition united in the best interests of the people, a notion that immediately rendered her suspect in the eyes of her own organization as well as in the eyes of influential members of the St. Lucia Labour Party. Meanwhile, she warned the nation’s women that if they truly wanted equal status with their male counterparts they would have to quit praying for it and instead grab the bull by its horns. 

She seemed convinced there were female issues that men simply did not fully understand. Rape, for example. She was not alone. Prominent women’s rights activists elsewhere, in Britain and in the United States, seemed convinced that male judges did not fully appreciate the lasting effects on a female victim of rape.

To bolster her own observation Rock cited a recent issue of The New Statesman, wherein it was stated: “For the woman, rape is a life-threatening experience, sexual coercion aimed to humiliate and dominate rather than to give pleasure. Her main concern is to survive. In defining rape in terms of what men think violates women, that is, penetration, the judicial view obscures the whole context of the assault. The bullying, threats and forcible acts, the nature and location of the encounter, the woman’s terror and her strategies for survival. Because men believe that it is penetration that constitutes the basis for female pleasure in sex, rather than being part of a wider sexual intimacy, the man can argue that the victim has enjoyed penetration and he is believed—even if she has vehemently denied it and described a terrifying experience.”

Rock echoed other concerned females who believed “most male judges usually have some sympathy for the ways in which men symbolically prove their manhood: sexual prowess and violence. Judges often regard a man’s violence as regrettable and understandable and don’t find it easy to draw the line between rough wooing and downright coercion. The implication is that the man can’t help it.”

Finally Rock said: “If our laws must change to benefit women, count on it, women will have to make the changes. Lord knows there are enough women in Saint Lucia to bring about immediate reforms. All it will take is unity—and guts.”

She ended on this unforgettable note: “No point pretending the Mary Rackliffe matter was merely another instance of female abuse. It was murder!”

Editor’s note: The preceding first appeared in the March 10, 1990 edition of the STAR. In 1994 the male dominated Parliament enacted the Domestic Violence Act, but only after it had been adjourned four times by the Lower House—a member of which was himself personally embroiled in a case of domestic violence with a gun, brought against him by his estranged wife. Government senator Lorraine Williams, also attorney general and Minister of Women’s affairs, demonstrated uncommon courage when she unprecedentedly introduced the bill before the Upper House, where it received the full support of all members. The Lower House had little choice but to endorse the decision. Meanwhile the worst kind of domestic violence is commonplace, even as some continue to talk about constitutional reform. By the way, the Rackliffe murder remains unresolved!