From left: Pauline Allen-Dean, Social Development Minister Loretta Butler-Turner and retired Assistant Commissioner of the Royal Bahamas Police Force Juanita Colebrooke (BIS Photo/Patrick Hanna)

Bahamian Prime Minister Hubert Ingraham is working to support women’s empowerment in the country, with a series of initiatives aimed at cementing equality. “It appears that many in our society, both male and female, are not yet convinced that women are equal,” Ingraham said at an event honoring the 30th anniversary of the establishment of the Bahamas’ Bureau of Women’s Affairs. “Instead [they are] stubbornly holding on to outmoded and long-discredited 19th-century social mores and laws which regarded women as chattel, incapable of making their own decisions and unqualified to vote, own property or defend themselves against the decisions of male relatives.” The event at Nassau’s British Colonial Hilton on Thursday honored several women, including Pauline Allen-Dean, the first female manager of a commercial bank in the Bahamas.

–Bahamas Information Service