Joanne Massiah, attorney at law and president of the Democratic National Alliance (DNA), has called for more women to be elected to parliament to ensure female voices are heard in the policy and laws.

Massiah made the brief remark during a panel discussion on the role of the law in supporting the family, hosted by the University of the West Indies Five Islands Campus in observance of International Women’s Day 2026 under the theme ‘Give to Gain.’

The former parliamentarian was responding to a question from a first year law student about the continued marital rape exemption in the Sexual Offences Act of 1995, which the student described as among the worst in the region for the protection of persons.

“My short answer is that we have to put more women in parliament,” Massiah said. “He who feels it knows it.

And we still live in a very patriarchal society that has a lot of religious traditions that help to subjugate women.”

The student, who attends the University of the West Indies Cave Hill, told the panel that Caribbean classmates had approached her for answers about Antigua’s legislative position, explaining she couldn’t respond, adding that Barbados, Trinidad, Dominica and several other Caribbean nations have already moved to remove marital rape exemptions, and called on Antigua and Barbuda to do the same.

Attorney Annetta Jackson, a Chevening Scholar and gender policy advisor, acknowledged the exemption as a serious legislative concern rooted in colonial constructs of marriage and bodily autonomy.

“If as an unmarried person I have my autonomy to say who I want as a partner, when sex becomes non-consensual, the same thing should translate into marriage,” Jackson said. “So, if today I wake up and I’m not comfortable and my husband wants to press the issue, if you breach my boundaries and my respect of my personal space, that is non-consensual and it should be treated as such.”

Jackson linked the persistence of the exemption to a broader colonial legacy that has historically treated marriage as a separate and private sphere beyond the reach of the law.

She argued that the same logic which the courts have progressively dismantled in domestic violence jurisprudence must be applied to marital rape.