Redefining Masculinities Welcomes the Introduction of Paternity Leave in Barbados’ 2025 Budget Speech

FOR IMMEDIATE RELEASE

March 11th, 2025

Bridgetown, Barbados – Redefining Masculinities commends the Mottley Administration for its commitment to gender equality and family well-being through the introduction of three weeks of statutory paternity leave for men, as announced in the 2025 Budget Speech. This landmark policy, slated to take effect on June 1, 2025, marks a significant step toward fostering greater gender equality, strengthening family bonds, and cultivating a more inclusive and supportive approach to parenting—benefiting children, mothers, and fathers alike.

The inclusion of paternity leave recognizes the invaluable role fathers play in the early stages of a child’s life, allowing them to bond with their newborns, provide emotional and physical support to mothers, and share in caregiving responsibilities. Research has consistently shown that involved fathers positively impact a child’s emotional, cognitive, and social development, leading to stronger families and healthier communities.

Beyond its immediate benefits to families, this policy also challenges traditional gender norms that have long placed childcare responsibilities disproportionately on women. By encouraging shared parental responsibility, Barbados is taking an important step toward redefining outdated societal expectations around fatherhood, promoting work-life balance, and advancing gender equity both in the home and the workplace. Furthermore, the removal of the requirement that both parents must live together to access these benefits ensures that all fathers, regardless of their living arrangements, can be present for their children.

While this initiative is a commendable first step, Redefining Masculinities encourages the government to continue expanding paternity leave in the future. Many countries that have implemented longer periods of paid paternity leave have seen significant improvements in gender equality, parental well-being, workplace productivity, and child development outcomes. As the policy evolves, we urge the government to continue engaging civil society organizations in meaningful consultation to ensure that future expansions effectively meet the needs of families.

We celebrate this historic policy shift and look forward to continued efforts to support fathers, mothers, and families across Barbados.

Media Contact:

Ronelle King
Project Manager
Redefining Masculinities
Email: Redefiningmasc@gmail.com | info@lifeinleggings.org 

Website: www.lifeinleggings.org
Phone: +1 (246) 830-9574

About Redefining Masculinities

Redefining Masculinities is an initiative of Life In Leggings: Caribbean Alliance Against Gender-Based Violence (Registered Charity #1602) that is committed to challenging restrictive gender norms, promoting positive masculinity, and advocating for policies that support gender equality and family well-being in Barbados and the Caribbean.

Its goal is to end male-perpetrated gender-based violence and create a gender-just region by working with men and boys to transform Caribbean masculinities. Through education, advocacy, and community engagement, Redefining Masculinities fosters a culture where men and boys are empowered to embrace healthier expressions of masculinity and play active, equitable roles in their families and communities.

Pink Parliament: Registration For Cohort 4 Is Open!

Photoshoot Day: Cohort 2’s Pink Parliamentarians taking a group photo.

Are you interested in applying for Pink Parliament’s Class of 2022-2023?

Here’s what you need to know!

Pink Parliament is an initiative by Life In Leggings: Caribbean Alliance Against Gender-based Violence (Registered Charity #1602).

The initiative seeks to inspire and encourage girls and young women between the ages 14-20 to pursue careers in politics and to lead unapologetically. Pink Parliament equips participants with the tools to be bold and effective advocates through professional training, mentorship, and networking sessions with political leaders.

Our vision is to increase the participation of women in politics by raising consciousness and cultivating in this generation, young feminist leaders who are ready to champion the issues that they are passionate about and/or affect them. Young feminist leaders who have a desire to redefine male-dominated political and decision-making spaces.

So how do you apply?

Applications for our fourth cohort opened on June 1st, 2022 and will close on July 31st, 2022.

To register click here and to learn more about the initiative click here.

Pink Parliament Initiative Wins CIVICUS Nelson Mandela-Graça Machel Innovation Award

Media Release

A Celebration of People Power

Winners of the 2021 Nelson Mandela-Graça Machel Innovation Awards reflect the power of collective action.

The Awards, named for human rights icon Nelson Mandela and former First Lady of South Africa and Mozambique, humanitarian Graça Machel, honour the power of people to demand change for a more just, inclusive and sustainable world.

The 2021 Innovation Awards recognise groups that stand out for their innovative work building people power in support of human rights and social justice for everyone.  Through a public open call, submissions were accepted under the topics explored during the 2020 ICSW/virtual events. After receiving an impressive 5,334 endorsements during the public support campaign for finalists, an external committee of civil society leaders and activists with thematic expertise reviewed and selected seven winners.

The winner in the category, Democratising governance systems and processes, is Life In Leggings: Caribbean Alliance Against Gender-based Violence. (Barbados)

“We’re thrilled to have been selected as a Nelson Mandela – Graca Machel Innovation Award winner. This award provides us with the opportunity to maximize the Pink Parliament initiative’s impact locally as well as expand its reach throughout the region. We wish to express our appreciation to the selection team for seeing our vision and believing in our mission. We also wish to express our gratitude to our partners and everyone who supported us, especially those individuals who have been there since the project’s inception. Most importantly, we dedicate this award to our phenomenal Pink Parliamentarians, both past and present, because we do this work for them and without them, our vision would not be possible.” – Ronelle King, Director of Life In Leggings & Project Manager of Pink Parliament.

The winners in the other six categories are:

Building and sustaining movements for social justice:

amandla.mobi (South Africa)

Creating positive narratives for people power:

HIVE Pakistan’s Campaign AIK Better Together (Pakistan)

Enhancing diversity and inclusion through artivism:

Together! Civil Society Organization (Ethiopia)

Protecting and promoting digital civic space:

Hashtag Generation (Sri Lanka)

Resourcing youth-led groups and movements:

Noble Missions for Change Initiative (Nigeria)

Sustaining people power through self- and community-care:          

Let’s Walk Uganda  

We would also like to provide special (non-financial) recognition for the initiative that received the most endorsements on the Innovation Zone platform: Asociación de comunidades negras del Cesar Ku Suto (Colombia). The overwhelming public support received is an important indicator of the value their community places in their work. 

The winners were selected from a pool of more than 350 inspiring applicants from over 70 countries that participated in the open call. Each winner will receive US$5000 in recognition of their work in promoting people power, human rights and social justice.

The Nelson Mandela-Graça Machel Innovation Awards are led by global civil society alliance, CIVICUS and seek to celebrate, promote, and defend a worldwide community of informed and inspired citizens engaged in confronting the challenges facing humanity.

For more information, contact:

Info@lifeinleggings.org

END

Pink Parliament: Registration For Cohort 3 Is Open!

Incubator Day 1: Cohort 2’s Pink Parliamentarians Rashana (left) & Aasiyah (right) taking a photo.

Are you interested in applying for Pink Parliament’s Class of 2021-2022?

Here’s what you need to know!

Pink Parliament is an initiative by Life In Leggings: Caribbean Alliance Against Gender-based Violence in collaboration with The Barbados Youth Development Council and in partnership with the The University of the West Indies, Open Campus – Women & Development Unit.

The initiative seeks to inspire and encourage girls and young women between the ages 14-20 to pursue careers in politics and to lead unapologetically. Pink Parliament equips participants with the tools to be bold and effective advocates through professional training, mentorship and networking sessions with political leaders.

Our vision is to increase the participation of women in politics by raising consciousness and cultivate in this generation, young feminist leaders who are ready to champion the issues that they are passionate about and/or affect them. Young feminist leaders who have a desire to redefine male-dominated political and decision-making spaces.

So how do you apply?

Applications for our third cohort opened on June 1st, 2021 and will close on July 31st, 2021.

To register click here and to learn more about the initiative click here.

Caribbean Regional Dialogue: Call for Submissions

We are interested in your contributions!

In preparation for the RVK Dialogue in August, The Caribbean Regional Dialogue is seeking to connect with activists, survivors, and organisers from the Caribbean.

The Regional Dialogue will involve organisations working from an intersectional feminist perspective across the many forms of violence against women and girls that prioritise and amplify voices of survivors. We seek to move from a focus on risk or vulnerability to focus on resistance, coping and what we know makes a difference for survivors.

To this end, we invite you to contribute to the discussion by responding to these 4 questions below:

These questions are to ensure that the voices of Caribbean women activists, practitioners and survivors are included in this cross regional dialogue and ultimately, the RVK dialogue.

We seek to gather as many country specific perspectives as widely as possible and across many languages on ending violence against women and girls (VAWG) in the Caribbean.

To contribute, simply respond to the question in the comment section below (and remember to include your country/nationality in your response). It is that simple!

If you prefer to share your response anonymously, click here to utilize our form.

We look forward to hearing your stories, wisdom, challenges encountered and expectations for the future.

Finally, we encourage you to submit photos and videos of activists and advocates who have done and are doing work to end Gender-based Violence to our ‘Honouring Activism’ web page. Submit here.

We will keep adding to this collection until the meeting takes place in August 2021.