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“[…] Our reality is that: women still make up only 23% of members of Parliament; the unemployment rate for women remains higher than for men, especially among young women aged 15-24 (CSO, 2022); and one in three women in Trinidad and Tobago has experienced intimate partner violence (UN Women Caribbean, 2023).
“[…] The late Hazel Brown, one of Trinidad and Tobago’s foremost advocates for women’s rights, recognised that political talk was not enough [and] championed gender-responsive budgeting, ensuring that national budgets prioritise women’s real needs…”
The following Letter to the Editor on women’s issues in politics was submitted to Wired868 by Dennise Demming, MSc, MBA, wellness therapist, communications coach and speaker:
Photo: Daniel Prentice/ Wired868.
There was time in our country when women mattered. As we head into the 2025 general elections, one thing is clear: women’s issues are missing from the national conversation.
According to the (EBC, 2020) women making up over 50% of the population and more than half of registered voters. Why then have political parties sidelined serious discussion about women’s rights, opportunities, and safety?
There was a time when women’s political power was actively courted. The People’s National Movement (PNM) held massive women’s meetings—none more famous than the gathering at Bournes Road and Western Main Road in St James, where thousands of women turned out.
Photo: PNM.
It was a stirring reminder that women mattered, not just as voters but as a force capable of shaping governments. As we move toward the 2025 polls, such large, dedicated mobilisations are absent today.
Political parties no longer view women as an organised constituency requiring meaningful engagement. The days when women rallied publicly, demanding to be heard, seem like a distant memory.
Even more concerning is the minimisation of women’s struggles by some of the very leaders who once broke glass ceilings. On International Women’s Day 2025, Opposition Leader Kamla Persad-Bissessar, the first woman to serve as prime minister, stated: “we can proudly say that there is no gender domination in Trinidad and Tobago today.”
I wonder what she meant by that. Was she suggesting that the fight for equality is over?
(Copyright Office of the Parliament 2020.)
Our reality is that: women still make up only 23% of members of Parliament; the unemployment rate for women remains higher than for men, especially among young women aged 15-24 (CSO, 2022); and one in three women in Trinidad and Tobago has experienced intimate partner violence (UN Women Caribbean, 2023).
There is a lot of work to be done to minimise gender domination in our country.
The late Hazel Brown, one of Trinidad and Tobago’s foremost advocates for women’s rights, recognised that political talk was not enough.
She championed gender-responsive budgeting, ensuring that national budgets prioritise women’s real needs. More funding for childcare, healthcare, small businesses, and protection services could lift thousands of women and families toward greater security and prosperity.
Hazel taught us that a country’s budget shows what it truly values.
Today, those lessons seem forgotten. Women’s issues are no longer front and centre, and political parties seem to treat women as an afterthought rather than a powerful voting bloc.
Women must organise, demand clear commitments, and vote strategically. We must remember the spirit of those mass meetings at Bournes Road, when women knew their power and used it.
In 2025, we must refuse to be silent. Our future depends on it.
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Dennise Demming grew up in East Dry River, Port of Spain and has more than 30 years experience as a communication strategist, political commentator and event planner. She has 15 years experience lecturing business communications at UWI and is the co-licensee for TEDxPortofSpain. Dennise is a member of the HOPE political party.
Silence Is Not Strength: The Dangerous Delusion of Women’s Empowerment in 2025
As Trinidad and Tobago edges closer to the 2025 general election, the political silence surrounding women’s issues is deafening. In a recent article, Denise Demming laments this neglect, pointing to a time when women’s political mobilisation was visible, spirited, and supposedly effective. But while she touches on valid concerns, her argument collapses under the weight of selective memory, fuzzy logic, and a refusal to name the real culprits behind this erasure. Her piece reads less like a call to action and more like a eulogy for a movement she cannot—or will not—critically examine.
Let us be clear: the marginalisation of women in national politics is not a passive act. It is the result of active complicity—often by women themselves, particularly those ensconced in political parties and power structures that benefit from the status quo.
Take the PNM Women’s League, for instance. This is not a silent group. It is among the most visible, organised, and vociferous political machines in the country. Yet it has offered unwavering public support to a Prime Minister who has repeatedly belittled women with crude, objectifying remarks—including likening women’s grooming to golf courses and trivialising issues of domestic abuse. That support is not accidental. It is strategic. And it is dangerous.
This raises the uncomfortable truth that Demming sidesteps entirely: many women are not just sidelined but are complicit in propping up misogyny for political gain. Mobilisation without integrity becomes mere performance. And nostalgia for the days of packed women’s meetings in St James means little when those meetings were used to cheerlead male-dominated parties that failed to deliver systemic change.
Even Demming’s critiques of opposition leader Kamla Persad-Bissessar are muddled. On one hand, she praises Persad-Bissessar for championing gender-responsive budgeting. On the other, she questions her baffling recent claim that “there is no gender domination in Trinidad and Tobago today.” Both statements can’t stand together. Either gender inequality remains a structural reality, or the battle is won. Demming won’t say which—and in doing so, she avoids holding anyone fully to account.
And that’s the core problem with her argument: it substitutes platitudes for clarity. “We must organise,” she urges. But how? Around whom? To what end? There’s no call for specific reforms, no strategy for coalition-building, no challenge to institutional structures. It’s a speech to a crowd that’s already dispersed.
Worst of all, the commentary reflects a broader failure within our political discourse: a refusal to name where power lives and how it is protected. There is no honest reckoning with how women’s organisations—many aligned with major parties—have become echo chambers for the very patriarchal ideologies they claim to resist. There is no systems analysis of how institutional inertia, party discipline, and media complicity conspire to keep women’s real needs off the political agenda.
Trinidad and Tobago doesn’t need more sentimental editorials about the past. It needs accountability in the present. If women are still underrepresented in Parliament, if they are still more likely to be unemployed, if one in three still suffers violence at the hands of partners—then we must name the politicians, parties, and institutions responsible for that ongoing injustice. And yes, we must name the women who defend them too.
Women’s silence is not inevitable. It is often a strategy for survival in toxic spaces. But when women with platforms and influence choose to use them to deflect criticism, suppress dissent, or romanticise failed political traditions, they become part of the problem.
In 2025, the stakes are too high for polite evasions. If we want meaningful change, we must stop romanticising mobilisation and start demanding transformation. That begins by telling the truth—even when it’s uncomfortable.