Politics, Poetry & Performance: Trinidad's Disabled Women Organize & Educate
By Laura Hershey (LauraHershey@compuserve.com)
All around the world, disabled women leaders and activists are working to expand rights and opportunities for women with disabilities. Tactics vary, based on the resources available to advocates, and on the political and cultural contexts within which they are working.
In the Caribbean nation of Trinidad, organizers have developed some particularly creative approaches to addressing the range of complex issues facing disabled women. The Disabled Women's Network of Trinidad and its national coordinator, Kathline Guy, have worked to improve education, self-respect, civic involvement, and safety for disabled women and girls.
Guy is the only disabled woman, and the only representative of women with disabilities, sitting on the Trinidad Women's Council, a body which advises the government about women's issues. She also works with a government disability unit. The Disabled Women's Network conducts and disseminates research to support its campaigns for equality.
Much of the Network's recent advocacy has centered on barriers to schooling. Many girls and young women with disabilities, says Guy, "have not had the opportunity to go school because of geography, how far they live from school, and also the fact that they do not have equipment like wheelchairs and tape recorders."
Endangered Species
Violence prevention is another crucial issue getting attention from the Disabled Women's Network. "Women with disabilities, and women in general, are an endangered species in Trinidad," says Guy. "There is no other way I can say it." Many women also become disabled as a result of severe domestic violence. "Every time a woman is abused," says Guy, "she joins the ranks of women with disabilities." Some women have been blinded by their abusers; others have been paralyzed. Still others, subjected to psychological and/or verbal abuse, develop mental illnesses.
Supports to combat domestic abuse are hard to come by in Trinidad, especially for disabled women. "Resources are spread thin for everybody," Guy explains. "We have very few shelters. Most of the shelters do not accept women with disabilities. So you find a lot of women with disabilities can't even leave their homes. That's why the abuse continues."
Dangers of institutionalization
Many of the problems facing Trinidadian girls and women with disabilities are interconnected. For example, family abuse is sometimes related to educational barriers. "We have a tradition of wanting to institutionalize children with disabilities," says Guy. "There's a traditional view that children with disabilities belong to the government. The government will provide them with schoolbooks and a place to stay until they become, to some parents, manageable. What happens is that when you institutionalize girls, they grow apart from their families. Some of them never become part of their families. When they go back to families, that's where a lot of the abuse does occur."
Building skills through the network
The Disabled Women's Network also facilitates connections among women with disabilities, who encourage, teach and learn from each other. In a culture which reveres ideal female beauty (two Miss Universe winners call this small country home), women with physical disabilities may feel disadvantaged. To counter the resulting feelings of inferiority, the Network of Trinidad holds classes in personal grooming and self-esteem. These groups involve participants in projects which heighten their self-presentation skills and confidence. "We share talents," says Kathline Guy. The women collaborate to "choose fabric, choose dress style," Guy explains, "and that's how they start, by getting involved in making clothes. A few months ago, we got a sewing machine. Everybody is learning. We help each other. We work a lot in pairs. People work together to do whatever they want to do."
In addition to sewing, the women learn cooking skills. Such activities, stereotypically expected of other women, are off-limits for some disabled women. "Traditionally, if you have a disability, they don't give you that kind of responsibility," says Guy. "People with disabilities are not supposed to light the stoves and work in the kitchen. So we have a little savings plan, and we teach people how to acquire small appliances like crock-pots and woks. And so people learn to cook."
Research, political advocacy, peer support and skills training are not the only strategies the Disabled Women's Network uses to promote change. In addition, the group has initiated several successful cultural arts projects.
Anthologies published, performing encouraged
Diane Dreidger, a Canadian writer, poet and advocate who has been a longtime supporter of disabled women's organizing in the Caribbean, has helped to edit two anthologies by women with disabilities in Trinidad. One came out of a poetry writing workshop that Dreidger taught in 1993. The other was a book that came out two years ago, called From Hibernation to Liberation: Women With Disabilities Speak Out. "It has poetry," says Dreidger. "It talks about a lot of the issues that face women with disabilities in Trinidad."
To instill pride among disabled women, and to educate others, the organization has encouraged members to do role-playing. Dreidger facilitated self-esteem and body image courses in Trinidad in 1998, and used performance as a training tool. Women began "acting out what was happening on the street as a person with a disability, and what's happening at home," she says. "It worked out really well; people really enjoyed it. The Trinidadians are very much a performing culture. They have a very large Carnival every February or March just before Easter. There's a lot of preparation for that: You don a costume and you become a character." The women formed the "Dawn Players,"adds Dreidger; they "started having gigs at conferences and different places, doing skits about attitudes, and portraying parts of their lives." The experience turns out to be "very affirming" for many participants. "It's in people's faces in an art form that people in that country really like."
Guy elaborates: "People need to express themselves." Art offers not only an outlet, but a purpose. Some of the Network members who have taken up a creative passion tell Guy: "When I start writing my stories or when I'm writing a poem, and they're planning a family activity and didn't think to include me, I can now say, "I'm busy. I'm doing this." You get a role of your own.'"
Writing and performing "really has boosted the self-esteem of the women," Dreidger agrees. She and Guy describe their friend Isabella, who is one of the principal performers in the Dawn Players. "She's gained a real sense of purpose," says Dreidger. "She can be humorous and project her voice.
"She's good," Dreidger says of Isabella, "and she knows it."
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