Young women ‘going astray’

There is a worrying trend that more young women are being channelled into deviant activities, and there are a number of contributing factors, says executive director of the Caribbean Policy Development Centre (CPDC), Cecilia Babb.
Babb was addressing a special CPDC forum at the Pan American Health Organization (PAHO) offices yesterday.
The forum saw the coming together of a number of civil society members to discuss the building and strengthening of partnerships with Government to further develop the country socially and economically.
Babb said that despite some developmental gains over the years there were still some challenges that confronted us as a country and as a region.
“If we do a careful analysis, we see a proliferation in that population of those who are engaged in what we call deviant activities, what we recognise as socially not beneficial.
“A large number of our young people are involved, and it is both women and men. The newspaper shows the faces of the young men more, but we are recognizing that more and more young women are being channelled into that,” said Babb.
She said growing unemployment, issues of food sovereignty and nutrition insecurity, climate change and natural disasters coupled with the ongoing economic crisis were some of the contributing factors to the region not being as socially developed as it should.
“It is the reality that we are facing right now . . . . Also not enough is said about the auto immune diseases such as sickle cell, lupus and arthritis and so on . . . HIV/AIDS as a developmental concern, has been central to us.
“So while our human development report shows us as spending much more of our budgets on our healthcare systems and health infrastructure, at the same time, we have a health profile of individuals which is worrying.” (MM)