By EARYEL BOWLEG

Tribune Staff Reporter

ebowleg@tribunemedia.net

WOMEN’S rights advocate Marion Bethel rejects suggestions that Bahamian women lack urgency in confronting discriminatory citizenship laws.

“It’s been urgent on the ground,” she said, responding to recent comments by former Prime Minister Hubert Ingraham, who implied that the persistence of unequal citizenship laws is partly due to apathy from women and disinterest among male politicians. “Women who are in this particular position have been complaining for years now, decades. So it’s not a lack of urgency on our part.”

“It has been urgent for us for two referenda, and in between, we keep advocating for this.”

Mrs Bethel spoke on the sidelines of the Caribbean Women in Leadership Bahamas National Chapter’s tribute to Bahamian Dames, where Mr Ingraham also delivered remarks highlighting the continued gender disparities in the country’s legal framework.

“We are as a society still unwilling to remove all constitutional differences between male and female,” Mr Ingraham said. “We are still unwilling to do more than elect a token few members of the House of Assembly as females and we are not willing in this society to accept that all children have two parents, and they ought to have the nationality of both parents.”

“Too many of us appear to know the argument for women’s equality but not sufficiently brave or bold enough to fully embrace those things.”

Mrs Bethel said constitutional discrimination against women remains a fundamental issue that fuels broader legal inequalities.

“If the constitution, which is the pinnacle of our legal architecture, discriminates against us, then it follows that other legislation discriminates against us,” she said. “We’ve been on the ground, working, screaming, yelling, acting crazy. I don’t know who can’t see it.”

Children born abroad to a Bahamian woman and a foreign man are not automatically granted Bahamian citizenship. Nor do Bahamian women have the same legal rights as men to pass citizenship to a foreign spouse.

Under Mr Ingraham’s leadership, a 2002 referendum aimed at granting equal citizenship rights to women failed, partly due to opposition from the then-Progressive Liberal Party. A second referendum in 2016,

Spearheaded by the Christie administration, the initiative also failed amid a divisive and conservative-driven campaign.

In 2023, the UK-based Privy Council ruled that people born out of wedlock to Bahamian men are Bahamians at birth, regardless of their mother’s nationality, a landmark judgment highlighting the patchwork nature of current citizenship laws.

Mrs Bethel called on men to now show equal resolve.

“We have stood by men since the time of slavery, to move this country forward. It’s time for men to stand up and say this is the right thing to do,” she said.

“This is the morally just and right thing to do is to change the constitution, amend it to give women constitutional rights to pass on their citizenship. Not just legislative rights, but constitutional rights.”