The organiser of the recent 1 Billion Rising Cayman event says shining a spotlight on gender-based violence must be a yearlong effort that continues after the 8 March commemoration of International Women’s Day.
“If we can achieve just as little as a sexual harassment law [being] passed I would be very, very happy,” Renata Kecskes said of the event at the National Gallery.
Her goal was to provide a platform for women in Cayman to feel supported and safe in dealing with the challenge of gender-based violence.
“My vision was to create a platform for local artists to be seen, for dancers to participate in a global initiative that aims to shed light on gender-based violence. Also, my aim was to create a platform for women to get together and unite in our efforts to influence social change,” she said.
Last year on International Women’s Day, Kecskes released her book ‘Running for Safety’ and this year, after having worked with teens from the Cayman Islands Further Education Centre through a situational awareness/self-defence workshop, she opted to do a wider event.
The students, she said, learned the signature song/dance of the 1 Billion Rising global campaign which they performed at the event.
Support and safety a must
The 1 Billion Rising campaign is a global initiative launched in 2012. It started “as a call to action based on the staggering statistic that 1 in 3 women on the planet will be beaten or raped during her lifetime. With the world population at 7 billion, this adds up to more than one billion women and girls,” the official website stated.
Kecskes’s event showcased local artists and inspirational speeches.
Among those speaking was Oddy Grullon, the female jogger who was assaulted back in January while running in South Sound.
Speaking with the Cayman Compass at the event, Grullon said she wanted to share her experience to empower women and while it was a bad memory for her, she felt good opening up about it.
“It is good to share with other woman how you can fight back and how you can fight off and get out from that… with more power,” she said, adding that “we need to support each other and… then we can reach other people, other institutions, other companies, and then we can come together”.
Kecskes said celebrating International Women’s Day has special meaning this year while the women in Ukraine battle for their freedom and their homeland.
“As a trained bodyguard, protecting women is my duty. As a self-defence instructor, empowering women with situational awareness… that’s something that I do with a passion, especially with what is going on in the world between Ukraine and Russia. This event was also inspired by the courage and strength of the women of Ukraine. So we stand in solidarity with our sisters in Ukraine,” she said.
Grullon, in her message to women, urged others to speak out.
“I was attacked while I was doing my [morning] run. I would like to put out there [to others] to speak out, to not be afraid to and to have power. If you’ll come out and you speak about your experience more women won’t be afraid to speak and then we can put the awareness in their community and help each other… Women just be strong, that’s all we need,” she added.
Attorney and Anti-Corruption Commission chairman Sophia Harris, who also spoke at the event, said Cayman has a long history of strong women who have led the country and it was only natural to recognise the female contribution.
She said she sees a shift in the local culture.
The community, Harris said, is “a little bit more accommodating to the many hats that women [wear]… being a mother, a wife, as well as a manager. And so it’s great that we have the concept of flexi-time, when we’ve gone through the whole COVID [experience] and it taught us that you can function from home and do it perhaps even more effectively than working from an office on a full-time basis. I think the ground is well laid for the flexibility that women do need to have, perhaps more so than men.”
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