Counting Crime, Discounting Women

Let’s begin with a little Caribbean feminist history: Schoolgirls in uniform in St. Vincent and the Grenadines took to the streets in 1985 to protest the murder of one of their colleagues.  The following year Barbadian women marched in the capital to protest against rape and the police (lack of )response.  They marched despite being denied police permission to march initially and being accused by the then Deputy Commissioner of Police of making public nuisances of themselves. Just last month, hotel workers in Jamaica marched against domestic violence. Go back or forward in the historical record and there is overwhelming evidence of Caribbean women struggling against every injustice meted out to them.

Women have spoken up, out and against violence.

Yet the specific gendered harms which women face are often trivialized or dismissed. In Barbados, like everywhere else in the Caribbean, people are panicked about increased crime.  We were reassured via press conference recently that there is no  crime wave in Barbados since of the 22 murders so far for the year half of them were “domestic”.  Let me do the math for you: 22 murders minus 11 “domestic” violence murders =11 real murders= no crime wave.

What to do to ensure that it would not even be thinkable for a high-ranking public servant to even suggest that the murder of women by their intimate partners is not real crime?

Is it that we believe that women count for nothing so the murder of women can be discounted as real crime? Or that intimate partner violence is considered private (even when it takes place in the most public of places), acceptable and unavoidable?

A friend messaged me last night to say she was concerned about sexual violence and murders of women in St. Vincent and the Grenadines and felt that something should be done to address it.

Abeni of St. Vincent and the Grenadines of the And Still I Rise blog also expressed frustration with the murder of women and the victim-blaming and shaming public discourse which follows:



So my question to you is the same one my Vincy friend asked of me, what to do?


5 thoughts on “Counting Crime, Discounting Women

  1. I really want to give an answer but like Abeni, I too feel sickened and depressed about the victim-blaming and general dismissal of the murder of women by intimate partners or just men in general.

    A large part of the reason I started WomenSpeak was because I felt that there was so much desensitization about issues of rape, domestic violence and other forms of discrimination women face. There was no sense of justice or empathy even from other women. I felt that in order to change that mindset, that we needed to really delve into women’s lived experiences and regard them as more than just another statistic, but real people.

    My hope is that individuals and communities will become empowered enough to stand up against discrimination in every aspect of their lives. That a sense of justice in small things will engender a quest for justice with regard to larger, more institutionalized issues/attitudes.


  2. groundationgrenada says:

    I think that one step is to bring women together to heal, grow and share. Once we can find safe spaces to pool our resources and become empowered together whether it is through art therapy, yoga, book clubs whatever… we can find the love, the insight and support we need to stand up in our individual lives and collectively.


  3. Abeni says:

    Continuous education that empowers and educates women on what is acceptable. Women need to support one another too but too often we are our worst enemy.

    Thanks for the link


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