Karen-Mae Hill

Interview

Q/ In your opinion, what are the main development achievements and the most urgent challenges facing the Caribbean region?

The Caribbean region has stood out as a zone of peace in the world. We are not plagued by some of the challenges that other parts of the world unfortunately face in terms of transition of governments and elections. We are not part of the world where you often hear about wars and those instabilities. And I think that is one of the most defining characteristics of the Caribbean: that we have evolved. A democratic system that is actually quite stable by almost any measure. I also think that, for the English-speaking Caribbean, we have achieved a degree of education that is quite remarkable. If I take Antigua and Barbuda as an example, our founding father, Silver Cornwall, insisted that there should be an elementary school within walking distance of every village.

The average Antiguan student is actually literate. That means we can get better jobs over time and we can see people move out of poverty from one generation to the next. And in the Antiguan context, up to the university level, degree, we have found a way to provide heavily subsidized government support for education. And that’s a great achievement that we’ve seen in many Caribbean islands, especially in the English-speaking Caribbean, which is the context that I’m most familiar with.

However, the Caribbean also faces challenges that people often overlook. The biggest one, in my opinion, is not one that everyone would agree with, but it relates to something called perception. We package, we market, we present the sea and the sun. People think of the Caribbean and they think of vacations, of something idyllic, perfect, something not as bad as other places. I’ve seen in my work as a diplomat someone say, «We’re going to the Caribbean on an exploratory mission» for whatever area of work they’re doing. And their colleagues always respond, «You’re going on a vacation, you’re going on vacation.» And that’s good in the sense that we’re seeing the Caribbean as a place where people want to go, but it’s also quite dangerous because we’re minimizing the realities of the challenges facing the Caribbean.

So the first problem is related to perception. The second one that we are concerned about is non-communicable diseases (NCDs). People have looked at what we are seeing across the Caribbean in terms of obesity, hypertension, diabetes, heart disease. We are disproportionately overrepresented in those numbers. And interestingly, the black diaspora. Even in countries like the U.K., we’re also seeing this disproportionate representation with respect to NCDs, and that’s affecting our systems. People are not living the quality and length of life that they should be living in the Caribbean. And that is a huge challenge for our health systems, for our social capital, for human policy development, and we need to do something about that as an urgent priority for the Caribbean.

A third problem that ties in with the first point I made about perception is the Caribbean’s position as small island developing states. For the most part, we have seen how climate change has wreaked havoc around the world, but especially in SIDS. The hurricanes we experience are bigger, fiercer and cause more damage than we could ever comprehend. I use the example of covid-19, for example. I remember saying to a member of Parliament, here in the UK, that I think, for the first time, they need to understand what we experience when we have a hurricane, where the whole country shuts down because of an event. And for the first time, I think maybe we had an argument that people could understand when they saw that transportation stopped and services came to a standstill. Airlines stopped flying because airports around the world shut down. That’s our reality.

When a hurricane hits, we don’t have a London to go to. If a hurricane hits Antigua, if it hits Birmingham, we’re a small island and the whole island shuts down. And yet when that happens, when you have 100 % or 200 % of GDP destroyed by a single weather event, then you’re told you’re not poor enough, you’re not eligible to access concessional funding, you don’t have access to a concessional loan, you don’t have access to ODA because you’re not eligible. So you have a $500 million or $700 million disaster in a few moments and they say, here’s $100,000, here’s $50,000 because you’re not poor enough to access that. And then we have to divert funds from health, from education, from infrastructure, to make up for the disasters that these things have caused. And the result is that we remain at a level of development that some people perceive as paradise if they are behind the gilded walls of hotels. But the reality is that it’s not entirely what it seems. So I think the perception has its levels of concern as to how we are treated with respect to the development agenda.

The other reality of being a small developing state is related to access to technical resources. My island, Antigua and Barbuda, has a population of 100,000. We have a larger diaspora overseas, but let’s use that population base: 100,000. Many countries in the world cannot imagine an entire population of 100,000. That’s one village, one street in some parts of the world. And it often means that you only have one person who is an expert in a particular thing, if you have the expertise at all. So if that person gets sick, goes on vacation, has bad work ethics, you’re literally stuck. And that means we can’t always participate in the areas we want to, in the ways we want to, because we don’t have the expertise.

Because we are small, we don’t have that military strength, we don’t have that economic power that makes people listen to us. If you are a rich country in the Middle East, a G7 country, if you are the U.S., North America, people listen to you, they invite you to the table, they invite you to Davos to talk. The biggest leaders in the world in technology, in finance, they bow down. There is deference to your governments and to your countries, but when you are a small island of 100,000 people, nobody invites you to the table easily. And, even if they do, no one has to listen. You really lack that weight in your voice that allows you to put forward what’s best for you in the way you would like to. So the challenge of being small is also directly proportional to the ability to be heard and have a voice. And when we’re told we’re too rich to be supported, which is nonsense, when we’re told we don’t really matter because we don’t contribute much to global GDP, we’re not a military power. We can’t send billions to any part of the world where there’s a conflict to make a difference in that situation. That makes you, in some contexts, feel lesser and be treated as such, despite the compliments that we are more. So for small island states in the Caribbean, there is this perennial reality about what size means, what power means, how you measure inclusion and how you manage it in a practical and real way. So I would say those are some of the biggest challenges we face in the Caribbean.

Q/ What makes the region’s situation unique when it comes to addressing the triple challenge?

The challenge of sustainable development, the uniqueness of the region, and I think that is something that could be unique to small island developing states. The Pacific island states would say the same thing. It’s really the question of who are the major victims of, for example, climate change. Who are the minor contributors to the problems and the reality of climate change? Let’s take the first part. We find ourselves, invariably, as some of the biggest, if not the biggest, victims of climate change. When a hurricane strikes, it’s us. There is nowhere to evacuate to. Your GDP is destroyed in fractions of a second, with multiplications of 100 percent, 200 percent, literally gone in a few hours, and very little can be done about it. This is really challenging for small states. We don’t have the resilience to go deep. We don’t have other industries.

Antigua, for example, is still 56 % dependent on tourism. And if there is a pandemic, a climatic event, you can see how that economy is immediately affected by that one event when the resources are simply not available. And so we find ourselves at the forefront of the fight against climate change. But I don’t want to paint us as hapless victims of fate. I want to paint small island states as resilient beings who have come together. We have the voice of small states in organizations like AOSIS at the United Nations level, within the Commonwealth, where we join with countries that are not small states, but who understand our challenges and want to lend their voice to amplify the message that we have a right to exist, a right to be heard, and unique and particular challenges that make us part of the world we live in. So, for me, for small island states and for the Caribbean in particular, our uniqueness is both a strength and a weakness. We are uniquely small, so we are nimble. We can make decisions quickly. I suspect that if someone wanted to see the prime minister, say, President Trump, the layers that you have to go through to get to the decision makers are much more bureaucratic than in small states, where we tend to be more relaxed, not inefficient, but more relaxed in how we deal with those things. So we have that agility to adjust and reinvent ourselves. But at the same time, the challenge is that because we’re small, we’re not often in the halls of power, and where we are invited, we don’t have the power to influence a lot of what happens there.

Q/ Crime has significant economic and social costs. Some countries in the region have a high incidence of crime, including high levels of international homicides and violent acts. How do you assess the crime problem in the Caribbean and how does it affect the economic and social development of the countries in the region?

The Caribbean is struggling, like other parts of the world, with problems related to the proliferation of crime and transgression. We cannot avoid it. We are seeing more and more, especially young people, choosing to adopt and embrace activities that are not healthy. And we are also seeing an increase in crime in some parts of our region that is of particular concern to us. In Antigua and Barbuda, we are particularly pleased that in many respects we have managed to contain that and it is not a big problem, as it is in other parts of the region. But we are not immune to the realities of crime, of murders. We have had our share of crimes that have even seeped into a very fragile and important tourism sector where people are affected by it. And, of course, there is a direct relationship between crime and economic performance. Because if people don’t feel safe to invest, they don’t invest. People are not going to feel safe to come and visit and spend their money. And so, the economy grinds to a halt. Nobody feels safe, nobody feels protected, nobody feels empowered to participate in a crime infested society.

Across the Caribbean, we are seeing increases in crime, especially in youth offending. And it is something that our governments are trying to address with many social program interventions. But what is happening in our homes and with the way we socialize our young people? What is causing our young people to choose these forms of involvement? Is it the music that they are listening to? Is it the absence of family values about identity and what it means to have a home that is loving, that is caring, that is embracing? What is driving this? Is it younger mothers? Is it single-parent homes where there is not much support for the children? Is it children raising other children? And I think the statistics show that there is an answer for all of this, that we’re seeing younger fathers, fractured homes, absentee father syndrome, young people feeling disillusioned and joining gangs looking for a sense of belonging. And we have to address the root causes of this. We have to look at how we are socializing and nurturing our young people.

And how do we do that? We have to look at our social programs, youth clubs, faith-based communities and civil society organizations, and challenge everyone to be part of the collective engagement with our youth in healthy activities. And our governments will have to deliberately, intentionally and strategically invest in programs that integrate young people, not just at a high level. We have to be really detailed.

How do we address mental health, do we have enough counselors in our schools, do we have enough trained counselors who can detect a problem and intervene? Or do we know that there are particular areas where there are pockets of transgression or there is a higher risk of this type of behavior developing and that we can focus social programs to support capacity building in those particular areas before it actually happens. And I think a lot of that will fall on our governments and our collaboration with faith-based communities, with our civil society groups, our NGOs, to identify and put in place consistent interventions to detect where it starts. We don’t want to build more or bigger prisons. We don’t want to have fancy spaces to incarcerate people. We want to prevent them from getting there in the first place. And I think our interventions need to focus on how we detect and mitigate before it happens.

Q/ What policies could address and minimize this problem?

The importance of policies to address the problems we see with youth transgression and violence in general throughout the Caribbean cannot be underestimated. But these policies must be informed. They cannot be someone’s idea or passion project about what they think might work. They must be informed through dialogue, through community engagement so that we can understand what is fueling these actions of our young people. Is it parenting? Is it the absence of programs that challenge young people? Is it drugs? Is it gangs? Is it simple feelings of inadequacy? We need to talk to social activists, to youth leaders, to faith-based organizations, to families, to try to understand what is fueling this. Even with people who are incarcerated to ask them what happened, what we could have done, how we failed as a society. And putting all of that together to inform policies that will help us address what’s happening with our people in general. But policy is only as useful as it is practical, as it is targeted and flexible enough to adjust to the realities of what needs to happen.

We can also learn from other parts of the world, where crime levels are particularly low, what they’re doing that we’re not, and what are some of the things that have worked in their context to help people feel engaged and not disillusioned to the point of choosing a life of crime over a life of healthy productivity. And I think if we are humble enough to learn, to interact with people within our own sectors, we will actually find solutions that work. I believe that every village in every country in the Caribbean should have a sports field where young people can go and play basketball, cricket and soccer in a sterilized, well-monitored environment. Every village should have a school that not only teaches reading, writing and arithmetic, but encourages music, dance and drama, that encourages them to think big. Really practical things. Not paying consultants a lot of money to tell us this, because sometimes I have a problem with that. But literally seeing things that touch people’s lives and show them a different path.

There are so many stories of young people who were discovered on the streets, playing music in parts of the world, and then, the next moment, they are international stars. That’s rare, but it happens. Examples of young people who were really good at cricket and someone saw them and gave them a chance. The next moment, that person became a Viv Richards. There are so many examples of footballers from Brazil, the Caribbean, all over the world, who were just boys and girls who had a vision, a passion and a talent, and somebody gave them that opportunity that changed their life forever. And we need to deliberately, intentionally, strategically create opportunities to expose our young people to other things. Music, the arts in general, careers, motivational activities that allow them to be more than they think they could be. And that has to be something that our policies deliver to our people.

Q/ The increase in the planet’s average temperature has caused an increase in the frequency and severity of extreme weather events that strongly affect the Caribbean. What are the main challenges of climate change for this region and what are the most promising policies to address them?

Climate change is the hot topic of the last decade and I believe it will continue to be. And in the Caribbean, it is an existential issue. For us, it’s not just sea level rise, which could literally make countries disappear. I mean, Barbuda, our sister island, is below sea level. It’s not just about the intensity of the hurricanes, it’s about the damage they cause and whether we have the capacity to rebuild. So, for us, it’s existential. We could be wiped off the map. In fact, we saw how Barbuda was virtually destroyed in 2017 by Hurricane Irma. We had to evacuate an entire island, which was unprecedented. And I think for us, the biggest challenges with climate change are two. One is what I call an elitist approach to climate change advocacy that is really not helping our cause. We have to find a way to engage the whole of society in climate discussions.

I am concerned to see more and more skepticism around the world from ordinary people who think that much of what we are saying is anti-human and a fraud. The zero emissions target is a fraud, it’s anti-human. And we’re not pausing to give voice and recognition to these growing concerns. And if we’re not careful, we’re going to end up alienating the central core of climate change and we’re going to end up with governments that don’t actually believe it’s real because people are increasingly skeptical about it. And we have to ask ourselves why.

We have to find a way to bring the climate change agenda to the people and tell them that it is real, that it is affecting people’s lives and that we can actually play a role in helping to protect our planet and, by extension, countries like mine. And we don’t have the luxury in Antigua of waiting for these problems to be adequately solved in parts of the world that are the biggest culprits in terms of emissions, because we don’t emit anything. A hundred thousand people, an insignificant number, nothing contributing to this in any way, but we are the ones who are seeing our economy wrecked by these climate events. So, the biggest challenge, I think, is how to make all the COP meetings feel more real and relevant to the masses, to the world, and not just talk in our echo chambers where everyone has already agreed on the issue. That’s a challenge that concerns me with respect to perceptions about climate change.

The other problem, of course, is that climate change costs, everything costs money. If you’re going to build more resilient houses, it’s going to cost more money. If you’re going to try to build more hurricane-resistant structures or drought-resistant structures or whatever, it’s going to cost money. And where is that money going to come from? Because we have to be realistic about it. There are competing priorities around the world. Right now, we have a number of wars in Europe and in the Middle East. There are other priorities that people are thinking about, even in terms of global defense. People are focusing on whether we need to beef up our security systems in case there is a World War III and diverting funds toward that. There are other crises within countries where there are social problems that people and governments feel they need to address as their populations become increasingly concerned about things like housing, infrastructure, hospital waiting lists, etc. There are realities that even rich countries face about what to do with limited fiscal funds. And if we have to show that climate change is real and that mitigating its effects costs money, even just to build the structures, but also to not mitigate it, it takes money, we are going to have a problem.

So, when it happens, and you have a hurricane like Antigua, or a prolonged drought like I know is happening in countries like Namibia, or you have these massive weather events, where is the money going to come from to rebuild? Who is going to give Antigua $250 million when the next hurricane hits us, or give Dominica $400 million when it is destroyed by a single hurricane? Who is going to write a check and give us that? It has never happened, and I would venture to say it will never happen. They’ll give you a check for $10 million and say, «Be happy with that,» and we’ll have to find the rest. So I’m again concerned about how we finance climate change.

How do we get to a stage where we are building weather-resistant structures, investing in the technology needed to produce the materials for these structures that are cheaper to manufacture, more resistant to events when they happen, so that when the next hurricane hits us, we don’t have to go back to the same donors and tell them we need more money because the house rebuilt from the last hurricane was destroyed again? I want us to move toward solutions that build the structures, that invest in the technologies that we need to make sure that our early warning systems are as strong as possible and that our systems for rebuilding and regrouping are as robust as possible.

But the structures we are also building are not going to be hit every time there is a hurricane or a flood. The same thing happens every time. And every five or ten years we come with our hand out for help to rebuild. So I hope we can find that balance between how the world is perceiving climate change and the challenges it poses without realizing how much it affects countries like ours, but also how we look at the funding needed to mitigate its effects and, if it happens, make sure that we can withstand the ravages much better than we are doing now.

Q/ What strategies do you consider most effective for developing resilient infrastructure in the Caribbean region that can adapt to the impacts of climate change?

How then do we confront the realities of climate change in the Caribbean context? I saw the situation in Dominica after they were devastated in 2017, and I heard the prime minister talk about building climate resilient structures, more steel and better architecture that was more responsive to the reality that we are in a hurricane zone. And I think policies that promote the use of technology, of building practices and codes that are more responsive to hurricanes, for example, are really the way to go. It may take longer, it may cost a lot more in the short and medium term. But I think in the long term, if we are investing in better structures, we will have better results.

I think of countries like Japan, which have earthquakes and, therefore, have found ways to build in a way that ensures the safety of their people. We need to make sure that our universities, engineers and architects develop structures and plans that respond to the reality of our countries. But we also have a responsibility in our own countries. We need to make sure that we are not destroying our mangroves and coral reefs. We also have to make sure that we are not building in areas where we should not be building, that there is logic and science dictating and guiding our development policies. It doesn’t make sense to build on a riverbed and then, because it’s dry, because it’s been dry for a while, you run the risk that, because of too much rain, there will be a flood and everything will be destroyed.

Let’s make sure we’re smart in the way we manage our development policies and programs, and that has to be our way forward. But building resilient structures that incorporate technology, the shape of the roof, the way we deal with drainage, the way we invest in our early warning systems, that’s important if we’re going to get serious about responding to climate change and its impact on our islands.

Q/ What policies or institutions are key to improving the impact of deepening financial markets on development, and what is the way forward for the Caribbean in this area?

I was very excited when CAF stepped forward and said, «Wait a minute, we are not doing a lot of work in the Caribbean per se, and we have access to resources, we have technical capacity that can help us. That can help our region. Let’s start getting more involved.»

There is a huge role for development banks in our region, who understand our vernacular and can help us access resources to support our development programs. I am also very interested in making sure that our programs are informed by information, by science. We don’t just invest in something that someone says might be good for our region, but we advance the feasibility studies to inform what our regional policies should be. One of the biggest challenges in our region is connectivity. We are islands, where you can’t exactly get in a car and drive to Barbados from Antigua like you can take the ferry from Dover and cross Europe, a two- or three-day trip but you can do it. We don’t. There is no way to drive anywhere. We can’t swim anywhere. We have to fly, we have to use boats.

Speaking of flights, we have had over the years a sort of love-hate relationship with them. Flying from Antigua to Barbados costs more on many occasions than flying from Antigua to New York. We have to find a way to make regional travel cheaper by air so that we can move people and goods more efficiently, market the Caribbean to Caribbean people and not just to the rest of the world. So I think that’s one area, but also by ship. There is no ferry connecting our islands. There have been a lot of discussions about a regional ferry. There have been some studies done and I want us to really work with organizations like CAF to accelerate those and see if there really is a viable basis to build a ferry that connects all of our islands or some of our islands, to give us more travel options for the region. If you can travel more, if you can move goods and people more cleanly and efficiently, then you can build industry, more trade. You can make it easier for companies to expand, hire more people and be more efficient in the way they develop their business model. And I want us to see policies that focus on building capacity, that study and inform our governments and our people about what might work and what might not work for practical, results-oriented reasons for our region.

Q/ The region remains poorly integrated, both internally and with the rest of the world. What opportunities do you see to promote regional integration in the Caribbean and how can the countries of the region better position themselves within global value chains?

The first challenge facing the Caribbean in terms of integration is its connectivity. We are poorly connected. Travel between islands is expensive, sporadic and not always very efficient. Travel by sea between islands is almost non-existent. I don’t think the average person in the Caribbean can get on a boat and go anywhere. It just doesn’t exist. So we have to address this problem of connectivity. We focus a lot on bringing people into our region from outside our region, but we don’t focus as much on moving our people within the region. We don’t even market our region to each other. There are spectacular music festivals on the islands, amazing cricket tours. I can’t remember seeing very often, for example, a tour outside the World Cup. There will be one between England and the West Indies, Australia and the West Indies, and there will be a Test match in Barbados. By the way, I’m a cricket purist, so I’ll say Test match and not T20, but there will be a Test match in Barbados and there’s a package for Antiguans to fly to Barbados. There isn’t. We do it here, but in the UK, not in our region.

We don’t market the region to each other. And that’s going to be a challenge for our integration if we don’t find ways to bring our people together as a natural practice. You go to Paris for a weekend all the time if you’re from the U.K.; people just go for a weekend in France. They drive, they take the train, the ferry, whatever. We are not seeing that trend in our region. We see a region that looks outward and defines tourism as something that is not us and not something within us. And I want to see how we can address that glaring gap in our development agenda. Can you remind me of the question again?

Q/ What opportunities do you see for promoting regional integration in the Caribbean and how can the countries of the region better position themselves within global value chains?

The other issue around our integration, our journey between the region is incredibly difficult, is that we see each other as competitors. Cricket West Indies is perhaps the best example of our integration efforts. We play cricket as a team, but in most respects we compete. We compete for the tourism dollar, for investment and FDI. And we don’t do many things in a way that is healthy. The work for the welfare of all. And I have said many times that the Caribbean should promote the idea of centers of excellence. We should promote the practice of identifying who is best placed to offer something.

Take the pandemic. We had a situation where we needed to be able to test quickly. A laboratory in Trinidad, to which we all had to send our samples from the eastern Caribbean islands, became saturated. We need to have a system where there is basic capacity in some areas in each country, but that we develop centers of excellence. So we could have one in the eastern Caribbean for a particular type of cancer. Another country might focus on endocrinology, another on something else. But we are not all trying to do the same things. A hundred thousand people trying, for example, to build capacity in all areas of medicine is crazy. We can’t do it. It’s just not possible. But if we were to develop and say, «St. Kitts and Nevis, you do this, and Barbados does this,» and then we create a system to get people moving with insurance and so on, we could probably do more than everybody saying we have to have the same thing.

Let’s take the ports. Our populations are small. We have 100,000 people, as I have said in this interview several times. And that means it’s a very small market. How much flour are we going to consume? How much oil and grain? And it’s not cost-effective to ship containers to a country of our size, with 100,000 people. But maybe we could create a logistics hub for the entire Eastern Caribbean, which is about 650,000 people, a hub where everything arrives and then is distributed more efficiently. But we are going to have to get to a point where we are kind enough to each other to say, «I can allow this other country to develop this while I develop that. We can’t hog it all for ourselves. As attractive as it is, we can’t try to pull everything to ourselves because it’s not always efficient.

So for me, our integration process needs to mature and needs some honest and cold reality checks. And again, I call on organizations like CAF and like the Commonwealth to help us with studies to tell us who is best placed to handle certain aspects of our development. Now, one thing about the Caribbean in particular is that we are proud to say that we are great ocean states. Everybody talks about the blue economy. That’s the fashion of the moment right now. Climate change, blue economy, those are the issues we talk about. We are ocean states, small land mass, big ocean territory. But for that ocean territory to do more than just attract tourists or have a nice swim in the ocean, we need to map what’s going on there. What’s happening to our fish stocks or coral reefs? What’s happening to the wave energy? What’s happening to the resources there? Is there untapped pharmaceutical research that can be done in our oceans? And I want us to work with the University of the West Indies and other educational institutions in the Caribbean to really develop that kind of knowledge about what resources our oceans have, hoping that we will take advantage of them beyond tourism and a little bit of fishing. Antigua and Barbuda is proud to be the home of the Center of Excellence in Oceanography and the Blue Economy, where we are focused on developing solutions to utilize our oceans as a resource for commerce and the creation of better jobs, more jobs for our people.

So, I think that around the question of how we engage, we need an honest look at defining national development within the prism of what regional development is. We need to be mature and humble enough to say, «I want to develop this because I think I have a natural competitive advantage to do it. And I will allow another part of the region to develop this because I think it’s better located for them geographically or economically, or in terms of geographic size and reach out to those areas.» And also, how do we look at what the Caribbean has at its fingertips, including our oceans, a large untapped resource, and unlock the benefit of that to feed the world? Our protein from the oceans could feed the world. We have hundreds of thousands of square kilometers of ocean space that we can develop within a zone of peace. But that makes it possible for businesses to operate within our region safely and efficiently.

Q/ Despite the great progress women have made in terms of education and labor market outcomes, gender gaps still exist. How do these gaps manifest themselves in the Caribbean? What are the implications of these gaps for development? What policies can be implemented to reduce them?

Gender gaps still exist in Caribbean societies. They are very traditional societies. We are seeing an increasing number of women embracing higher education. We see more women getting involved in higher levels of governance in our country in all kinds of areas. But some fundamental things persist that certainly concern me as a woman. We still see that gender-based violence by men towards women remains disproportionately high. The numbers are troubling in our region. And we need to address this and be realistic about how we socialize our young men and how they treat women.

We also observed trends in which women, despite the level of work they achieve, continue to be primarily the caregivers at home. It’s the woman who has to prepare dinner, pick up the child from school and make sure they do their homework. And our men are not always taking on those roles as they could and should. So professional women find it very difficult to often balance the demands of home and work at higher levels. If you have a job that requires a lot of travel as a woman with a family at home, there can be severe challenges about what happens with your children, how they develop and socialize within that context.

On the other hand, we see this phenomenon called the «glass ceiling». I think it is very much alive in the Caribbean: women are elevated to positions when there is a crisis and are not necessarily expected to do well, but so we check the box that we have put a woman there. And we don’t necessarily give them the support that our male colleagues would receive, nor do we give them the opportunities to make mistakes that they themselves may experience. And I’ve seen it personally, with my female colleagues in senior positions, that we are not, in subtle ways, receiving the same level of support as our male colleagues, but we are expected to perform without making mistakes, whereas they can fail. And I think the denominator that explains why this disparity exists is that we are women.

And I hope that our region will step up to the plate. I mean, the Caribbean woman is a phenomenon in herself. Think about those 400 years of slavery and the fact that many times households were single parent households and the matriarch was often the mother, the woman; she was the provider, the caregiver and she still managed to do all of that. The average Caribbean mother is an economist, nutritionist, chauffeur, all in one, and she still manages to maintain her composure and dignity and take care of her family and her job. And we need to challenge the men in our society that we are not there just to serve them or to check a box. The box-ticking exercise bothers me. I don’t want them to see me in my role as high commissioner and think I’m there because I’m a woman. I mean, she’s there because she’s a woman, and she’s very good at what she does. She’s earned her place around the table. And we need to remind our men in the Caribbean that we have really earned our place at the table and we are capable.

I know that our government has been at the forefront of putting women in high places. And there are quite a few areas in Antigua and Barbuda where you can see women. Our financial secretary is a woman. The head of our Citizenship by Investment unit, one of our major sources of revenue, is a woman. I am a woman high commissioner, and I came in as a young high commissioner. I have been here for several years. So, there is an understanding and a recognition that women can play these roles. But I want to see that matched with genuine support and not just set them adrift to manage it. And I think there’s still a disconnect between the two, in terms of policies on women in senior positions. I’m not necessarily an advocate of positive discrimination. I believe in equal opportunity, but also that we need to have programs and events that challenge girls and young women to know that they can play any role. Mentoring programs, things that say to young women, «Look on television at this woman, could this be you?»

We need to make sure that we encourage women to enter fields like politics. I mean, one of the areas that women stay away from because it can be so ugly is elected politics. It’s not easy. Look at how you’re attacked, how you’re mistreated, and you have to be strong to be in politics anyway. But I think it’s particularly difficult for women sometimes. And so, I want to insist on the gender issue to warn against the risk of allowing the patriarchal system to glorify itself by mentioning statistics. We have a woman here, we have a woman there. But when you look underneath that, there’s nothing to back them up, especially when you compare it to what men have done, many times delivering nothing, but what one woman trained to handle so many things at once has managed to do.