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She has led a women’s movement in tiny Trinidad &
Tobago that has sent waves far beyond the little islands with
a population of about 1.5 million or so.
In 1996 there were 26 elected women members in a local government
council of 124. Three years later in 1999 42 women were elected.
Hazel Brown has been moving to empower women for the last
40 years, about all of her working life that is. Women’s
presence in elected councils was just about nothing when she
began. And she will not be satisfied until she has got to
at least 50 percent representation for women.
That makes sense, since she is an active member of the 50:50
worldwide campaign to put women into positions of power. That
campaign includes many Commonwealth countries and Commonwealth
organizations.
Brown has been remarkable for the way she has succeeded.
The result is that women across the Commonwealth look to her
to see how she did it.
No secret, that. She has it all in a book she has just written
on empowering women. “It is about telling women what
to do and how to do it,” Brown says. The book has found
many interested women readers, naturally.
Empowering women to enter politics has been the thrust of
her campaign, but that is not all. She has been working to
promote maternal and child health, and on legislative reforms.
“We have identified ten bits of legislation in Trinidad
& Tobago that potentially discriminate against women,”
she says. Domestic women workers are for instance not considered
‘proper’ workers, and are not given the rights
that other workers have.
Trinidad & Tobago is not the only country with such legal
loopholes. Her campaign has gone as a message to many other
women’s groups on how to fight such legislation.
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