A successful woman can be a threat to the average man. That was the point made by executive director of the Caribbean Export Development Agency, Pamela Coke-Hamilton to Soroptimist International Barbados at its 55th annual general meeting on Monday night at Accra Beach Hotel & Spa.
She said the challenges women faced in business were not separate from gender-based violence.
“A lot of men resent the fact that when women become more successful, they have a stronger voice, and it’s not an accident that when women become more independent; they are also subject to more violence. So we can’t separate the two,” said Coke-Hamiltonin her address entitled Challenges For Women In Economic Empowerment In The Caribbean.
Coke-Hamilton, who called for the names of the abused to be known, invoked the name of domestic violence victim Onica King, who died fatally last Saturday afternoon in The City.
“Her name was Onica King and her voice was silenced like so many others. The thought I had was, would it be possible for maybe Soroptimists here to get a list of the names of those women who’ve been silenced? . . . Publish it and [let] somebody with a beautiful voice read it, record it and give them a voice and let people know their names.
“They have names. They’re not just some other woman who got killed by some angry man that felt like he owned her,” she said to an audience that included Dame Maizie Barker-Welch, United States Ambassador Linda Taglialatela and patron of the Soroptimists, Dr Frances Chandler. (GBM)
