PROFESSOR Donna Hope on Wednesday urged Gender and Culture Minister Olivia Grange to take steps toward making the late Louise “Miss Lou” Bennett-Coverley a national heroine.

Hope made the appeal during her keynote address at an International Women’s Day-themed celebration of outstanding Jamaican females at the Jamaica Pegasus hotel in St Andrew.

The professor of culture, gender and society at the University of the West Indies, noting the negative impact of gender bias on women’s opportunities, stressed the importance of positive female role models before directly urging Grange to champion Miss Lou’s elevation to national heroine status.

Speaking with the Jamaica Observer after the event about her appeal, Hope said: “Miss Lou has worked in the fields of culture, particularly our national language, to make Jamaicans proud of their language, especially at a time when speaking in patois was seen as a mark of shame. We still have residues of that now, but during that time when she championed the cause, she was doing it against many odds.”

She added that although Miss Lou, who died on July 26, 2006 in Canada at age 87, has been recognised for her contributions, she believes the cultural icon deserves national heroine status for shaping Jamaica’s identity.

“She has been recognised significantly for her contribution, but as a woman in culture, as a woman who lived in a particular timeline, she is more than owed that as an important part of our cultural legacy, our cultural history, and what we have,” Hope said.

The professor also credited Miss Lou for paving the way for dancehall music.

“Dancehall is in Jamaican patois and slang. Miss Lou championed those areas on behalf of Jamaicans and people of colour, as a part of our own identity as Jamaicans,” Hope said, stressing that bestowing Bennett-Coverley with national heroine status was “long overdue”.

Fae Ellington, veteran broadcaster and lecturer, shared similar sentiments with the Observer while supporting the call for Bennett-Coverley to be made a national heroine, noting that Miss Lou was a trailblazer for her own career.

“Miss Lou legitimised the Jamaican language. I have been celebrated for my use of both the English and the Jamaican language. I worked as a dialect coach, a Jamaican language coach on the Bob Marley movie, on Black Cake, on Get Millie Black. So Miss Lou took our language and elevated it. What do I think? Give it to her now!” Ellington said.

There has been a long-running debate on whether Miss Lou and reggae king Bob Marley should be named national heroes on the basis that they epitomise what it means to be a hero. Both of them already carry the national honour of the Order of Merit, Jamaica’s fourth-highest honour. Last year, Prime Minister Andrew Holness announced that they are to become the first Jamaicans to be invested in the new Order of National Icon, which only reignited the debate.

The Opposition People’s National Party says it would make both Miss Lou and Marley national heroes if it forms the next Government, a promise repeated by PNP President Mark Golding during his budget debate presentation on Tuesday.

In the meantime, Grange and Speaker of the House of Representatives Juliet Holness defended the designation of Miss Lou as a national icon.

“There is a National Honours and Awards, which is being amended to include that category, as well as a couple of other categories, so that these awards can be bestowed on the individuals who have been nominated and approved. Miss Lou is our folk hero. Like Bob Marley. They have been an inspiration to generations and to the world and nothing is impossible,” Grange said.

Juliet Holness took a more measured stance, distinguishing between national icons and national heroes.

“I believe that national icons have excelled exceptionally in their field and are world-renowned for excelling at whatever talent they have, whether it be sports, music, culture, whatever that may be.

“However, for national heroes, I believe that they would have had an impact on civilisation. And when we look back at some of Jamaica’s national heroes, literally, they died in a struggle, taking us out of bondage, taking us out of slavery, literally reforming what has become a Jamaican society in which we are free,” Holness said.