Caribbean Feminism at the Turn of the Century

This round-table is part of a larger project of the Centre for Gender and Development Studies of the University of the West Indies entitled The Making of Feminisms in the Caribbean. This project and this round-table come at a very important juncture in the history of the women’s movement internationally and in this region. In defining feminism, I use the simple definition, which I have always used and which has been adapted and adopted by CAFRA - The Awareness of the subordination of women and the conscious action to change the situation. By extension there could be different ways of understanding the problem and as a result different solutions proposed.

For students of the women’s movement we note that although individual feminists pursue their ideas, dreams and struggles and have done so throughout history, there are times in history when these individual actions become collective and these are the periods when we can say that we have a movement in existence.

Scholars have also found that women’s movements in particular tend to emerge out of the bosom of other social movements. In the 19th century for example, what is popularly known as the first feminist wave was closely associated with a number of other social movements often contradictorily so. Movements such as the anti-slavery movement, the international workers movement and, in the then colonial world, the anti-colonial movements and in the Caribbean with anarcho-syndicalism in Puerto Rico and early Pan-Africanist groups in the Anglophone Caribbean. In the 1960s and 1970s, what is known as the 2nd feminist wave, grew out of the bosom of the civil rights and black power movements, peace and anti-war movements and here in the Caribbean the left, socialist and anti-imperialist movements of the 1970s.

During the period of the 1970s and 1980s, the women’s movement in the region grew and blossomed in many ways. This process was supported by the climate of an international movement and the work of the United Nations and its declaration of 1975 as international Women’s Year and the decade 1975 - 1985 as the Decade of Women. The Caribbean also contributed to this international process. Lucille Mathurin-Mair, Jamaican historian, diplomat and public servant, served as Secretary-General for the Mid-Decade Conference on Women in Copenhagen, while the late Barbadian, Dame Nita Barrow, served as Coordinator of the End of Decade Conference in Nairobi.

In 1974, Jamaica became one of the first countries in the world to establish national machinery for the advancement of women, even prior to the declaration of international women’s year. Peggy Antrobus attended the IWY conference as Head of the Jamaica Women’s Bureau. In 1977, the regional conference to prepare a regional plan of action for the Caribbean took place in Jamaica and among the outcomes of its recommendations was the establishment of the Women in Development Unit in the Extra-Mural Department of the University of the West Indies, the establishment of a Women’s Desk in the UN/ECLAC and CARICOM Secretariat.

While the traditional women’s movement was revitalised, younger generations of women, many of them emerging out of the left and anti-imperialist movement of the 1970s begun to reflect on the situation of women within these organisations. This gave rise to a number of small feminist-oriented groups throughout the region. Examples include -SISTREN Women’s Theatre Collective in Jamaica started in 1977, Concerned Women for Progress in Trinidad, Belize Rural Woman’s Association and BOWAND in Belize. Workingwomen in Trinidad and Tobago and the Committee for the Development of Women in St. Vincent and the Grenadines and the Barbados Women’s Forum in the 1980s.

Additionally in 1982, Women and Development Studies Groups and a Women’s Studies Group were established on all three campuses of the University of the West Indies and the University of Guyana. Leading to the emergence of the Centre for Gender and Development Studies at the UWI and the Women Studies Unit in Guyana prior to that. At this same time women’s studies programmes were emerging tentatively in Cuba and much more strongly in Puerto Rico and the Dominican Republic. In the latter cases first outside of the universities but eventually within them. Alongside all of this was the establishment in 1985 of the Caribbean Association for Feminist Research and Action - a regional network of feminists, women activists, individuals and organisations from the entire Caribbean - Dutch, English, French, Spanish and American-speaking Caribbean. This network brought together members from the entire region including the Federation of Cuban Women.

By the late 1980s and early 1990s, working relations were established among the various branches of the movement - the official governmental arms - regional and national, the academic arms and the activist organisations. Collaborations, critical support, eventually with some of the activists taking up positions in regional and international organisations related to women’s and gender issues.

Culminating in a Caribbean participation in the Fourth World Conference of Women in a Beijing, China , one of the regional movements finest hours. The period of the 1980s and 1990 therefore was one of increasing visibility of women’s concerns, women’s issues in the media and in all areas of life. This presented serious challenges to traditional concepts of manhood, masculinity and men’s place, serving to decentre the men from the Caribbean landscape. There have been a myriad of responses both positive and negative. On the one hand there has been the emergence of men’s groups seeking to re-interpret masculinities to work with boys and men on issues such as violence. But on the other hand the movement faces a major backlash as individual men seek to re-establish their position using any means available to them. This is a subject that is now squarely on the agenda of the women’s movement in this region.

Today the movement is at a crossroad, a generational crossroad, an ideological crossroad, political crossroad and organisational crossroad. This round-table sought to bring together some of the diversity of the region in terms geography, language and nationality and age to reflect on this situation and to indicat possible ways for ward for the movement in the future.