What Does Feminism Mean to Young Women?

Generational difference and the ‘generation gap’ are important considerations when trying to understand and analyse the state of the feminist movement among young women. Where are the young feminists? What are our generational differences? What strategies do we have to build consciousness and activism among young people and at the same time to manage power dynamics that may arise? What do young women bring to the table and where can collaboration across generations happen?

Growing up with feminism

For some young women, feminism is still a matter of survival and standing up for oneself as a woman. Young women talked about being "feminist” before knowing that the word had meaning for them, because of their awareness of female discrimination in their lives, because of the gender issues that they encountered in their personal, family and work relationships, and also because they had begun to make their own connections between race, class, sexuality and gender. Other young women were questioning. Remember that different, and at times conflicting, ideological currents are weaving together at the same time and we grew up seeing how much has changed for women, while also seeing where we were still being left out. Academic, activist and professional mothers, aunts and grandmothers had made too much of an impact to leave us unquestioning of the ‘facts’ taught by religion and school.

I am not sure though that we know that we do not have to reinvent the wheel. I feel as a younger generation we need to know more about the struggles that feminists waged – not just against inequity, exclusion, discrimination and the range of ways that patriarchal power is exercised – but also in getting women’s issues to the table in unions, community organisations and universities, the supposedly progressive centres. A great deal of knowledge has been gained through organising marches, rallies and international women’s day events, designing legislation and policy, forming regional and global networks, formulating platforms for action, undertaking research and teaching, educating media and governments, strategizing for international women’s fora and generating critical statements, from a feminist perspective, that need to be heard in debates on public issues. I would greatly like to see that knowledge passed down. I think that my generation of young women know very little about the history of women’s and feminist organizing in the Caribbean. We don’t know how we have reached where we are today.

The other significant outcome of our lack of knowledge as a generation of young women is that we take our opportunities and liberties for granted. I feel that, among other factors, that lack of knowledge is directly linked to the low numbers of young women involved in the feminist movement in Trinidad. Many young women do not know how many changes have resulted from Caribbean feminism over the last 30-40 years. I think we understand that a generation ago women had less freedom and fewer opportunities but I do not think we know why things have changed or what efforts those changes required. Certainly, the feminist leadership and contribution is generally unrecognised and the gains are taken for granted by those who can now benefit.

The impact of feminist activism on a younger generation

I know many young women who believe strongly that women are equal and should have equal rights and will stand up for those beliefs, but do not acknowledge feminism in their beliefs or in the foundation for the struggle for women’s rights. “I believe in equality, but not in feminism”, “feminists always blame or hate men”, “feminists are biased” “I think feminists go too far” are statements that I have heard young women make. Maybe feminism will always be treated as either peripheral or dangerous, but these statements say to us that this is a starting point that we are still at despite a generation of feminist activism. It reflects the misperceptions that many young women have about feminism, the force of the backlash against feminist organising (and the myth of male marginalisation), misunderstanding of the range of issues and approaches with which feminists (around the world) are involved, the way white western feminism dominates popular perception of feminist organising and, ironically, the gains that have been made.

Young women have a very clear understanding of th eway that their lives are different from young men’s, the double standards and more sever jedgements taht women face. But how do we take that knowledge and trasform it into a consciousness about the need for action? Is there anything that can be done?

I believe that young women of my generation have a very strong sense of equality – that women deserve to be treated equally. But we still have to break that down and make some of the necessary links between ‘equality’ and partisan politics, sexual and physical violence, educational curricula and the messages that in popular culture. There can be a kind of cognitive dissonance when young women do not make these links or do not imagine doing so because of the constraints they still face. Feminism has no doubt made a substantial difference to Trinidadian women’s lives, but still needs to touch young women in a way we have not yet identified. There are few young feminist women at marches, in organisations, at the head of campaigns at this time in Trinidad. There are some, but they are a handful and are working within already defined agendas.

Young women’s non-feminist activism

One of your tasks as young women is to figure out how to capitalise on the intersections of gender and generation. Young women are active but do not necessarily play a defining role or represent female experience and feminist perspectives. I have been active in youth organising in Trinidad for about three years now. Youth organising is not just in community groups and youth clubs of, for example, the police service. I also see very powerful youth perspectives in the media. Two of the daily papers – the Express and the Guardian – produce weekly youth magazines that bring up a range of critical perspectives on race, gender, employment, sexuality, drug use as well as, of course, parties, concerts and music. There are definitely youth subcultures and perspectives, but not much is being said by young women about female experiences and perspectives. There is some of that, but mostly in the areas of sexuality and relationships, dress and appearance. Nonetheless, it is a place where many young women are involved and can find a space to write critically.

Youth perspectives also come out of the music, poetry and ‘rapso’ sub-cultures that are very expressive and very much alive. Many people complain about how much foreign music is played by Trinidad radio stations and about the rap and dub that appeal to young people. But there is also a strong and growing population of young people performing poetry, singing, rapso-ing and coming out with their own syncretic versions of soca, dub, hip hop and rhythm and blues tunes. Young women definitely represent their perspectives in this arena. Again, this is a very powerful, organised aspect of youth culture where many young women get stage time and respect but we have to think deeper about how to use media and performance spaces in the interest of young women. Also, there is still a sexual politics going on behind the scenes in terms of the types of music and lyrics that men and women produce, the different ways women and men are marketed and the strong male culture that dominates this and the media scenes.

Young people are also active in politics. About six months before the general election held last year, young people got together to work on the Voice of the Electorate Campaign (VOTE) intended to promote youth participation and leadership in the political arena. Many of these youth were young women. They took to platforms and spoke out – delivering what I thought was party propaganda – and organised youth rallies all over the country which brought popular culture, politics and youth together. In fact, young people who were involved with one political party or another were extremely passionate about their contribution. I was impressed, but I was also disappointed. Largely, the participation of youth was just that. Again, there was much regurgitation of the political leader’s and political party’s position on issues. On radio and television panels, there was really no youth politics from these groups, but many young politicians who were defending and attacking along party lines. VOTE attempted to be different and to mobilise young people to think with our generational experience and needs as a starting point. We were concerned with the absence of any well-known youth leaders who could grab the national imagination, the lack of questioning about hierarchies that kept young people defending political party positions that they had no participation in making, and the absence of any sense of generational politics to help us past the rut we’ve been in for forty years.

In Trinidad, there is a very strong feminist commitment to a different politics. Critiques of partisan politics and the way that they tribalise different groups have come out of organisations such as Women Working for Social Progress. The already mentioned Network of NGO’s has been working (over the two elections in which I have been eligible to vote) to bring together women from different political parties, to empower women at the local government level, to lobby for 50/50 representation in parliament and to create a women’s manifesto as a critique of the limited vision in political party propaganda. I have found feminist activists to be very open to young women’s involvement and representation on their agenda. In the women’s manifesto created for the last election, there was a section addressing some of young women’s issues. The Network also prioritised a young women’s meeting in the midst of a larger meeting of Caribbean women who were involved in politics.

The youth movement is growing and becoming more active. Young women play very central roles in youth organisations, and outh have begun to identify the issues that are considered highest priority. However, there are problems. The executive of the National Youth Council is very male and there is no gender analysis to speak of behind the activism of the youth movement. Gender issues are not foregrounded, partly because of the inexperience of both young men and young women, but also because youth tends to be understood as a homogenous body. I think there is an understanding of what ‘women’s issues’ are, but not necessarily ‘gender issues’. Although many young men are very open to fighting a range of oppressions, some tend to feel marginalised when gender is on the table and can quickly retreat to very conservative positions. A defensive air suddenly rises and young men and women are suddenly split by sex where before they were united by age.

Gender training for youth activists can go a long way to both keeping feminist issues alive in youth people’s minds and mainstreaming a gender analysis in youth organising. I think that young female activists would benefit greatly from learning what power dynamics to be aware of, how to make links between gender and other issues, how to explain and address concerns that they may have about male leadership and a kind of ’gender-neutral’ definition of ’youth issues’.
Finally, educating and further empowering the young women (and also young men) in media, music, political arms and NGOs can go a long way to building the capacity of this generation to critically examine and change itself, and to clearly define what kind of critical change can be made in the larger organisations in which youth are active. Among the community of young women, we need to do plenty work to examine how ’differnece’ affects our ability to come to consensus as a constituency...