HOW SILENCE AND SOLIDARITY KILLED FEMINISM

I also noticed that government agencies and women’s organisations define gender as the relationship between men and women. The focus is that women cannot live without men and that women should work together with men. The inequality division of power between men and women is not the issue anymore and feminism has nothing to do with gender. Now feminism is something of the past!

The world is moving to the political right (conservative and the non-feminists have integrated in the women’s movement. As we never had any criteria we were all very happy when our sisters united the movement. The effect is that women with different visions and streams joined the movement and of course lots of fights occurred. We accepted that as part of the struggle.

But, after some evaluation we also saw that some of them joined the women’s movement with a specific purpose. (For example to keep us nice and under control and own agenda reaching the top without changing the top). It gives them an easier access to go to the top. We all encounter these negative forces within the women’s movement. We already encountered them out of the movement. But what we see now is that within the movement we are being combat.

Now, how do we deal with this? How long shall we keep silence just for the sake of solidarity while we see that feminism is being destroyed? We will not break a sister but they don’t care to break us. Our young women see the battles among the older women they see their pain and their frustration. How on earth can we show them that the struggle we are fighting for, is for a society for equality and equity? How can we show them that we are fighting for a peaceful world while they see us (their mothers, aunts, sisters, friends) fighting all the time?

I know that there are also fights within political parties, religious organisations, I know that these fights are not only in the women’s movement. But I do see that it has more effect in the women’s movement and that lots of sisters are withdrawing themselves from the movement.

We expect solidarity and sisterhood. We ourselves step into the gender trap! We expect women (biologically!) who join the women’s movement to have an agenda of women’s rights. We allow ourselves to become disappointed and hurt.

How do we deal with the negative forces within, without doing harm to feminism? Where do we go from here? What strategies do we have to develop? How can we get feminism and gender back on the political agenda? I am really worried about feminism, as it is not also being killed from within.

We have a history of fighting the battle against the outside, although I must tell you that nowadays these forces become stronger and stronger. But we do not know how to deal with it when it comes from within our own movement. The battle gets more and more demanding. We need to form alliances, but can only take a strong position within an alliance (against poverty, injustice, trade relations) if our position is clear and outspoken to ourselves!

When we talk about directions for feminist research and action I would like us to define what feminism is and what the relation is between feminism and gender! Let us keep this in mind that it is a serious development, which takes us back to the seventies. Dilemma of inclusiveness versus quality – demand some kind of pledge or proof.

When we talk about mainstreaming gender into policy, what do we mean? Do we mean that the feminist ideology will be mainstreamed? And who is going to mainstream gender into policy when they do not know the concept of gender and when they are anti feminists? And what is the difference between gender and feminism? When we talk about feminist research can we talk about gender research?

I would like us to do research in the Caribbean on what people define as feminism and gender. It is for us the feminist movement is important to evaluate and see where we are.

For us research should lead to action so feminist research should lead to feminist action. And what kind of action? How did we promote feminism over the years? Was it positive was it aggressive? What have we achieved? Did we show the world our achievements? Did we mobilise young women and maybe also young men? What strategies have we undertaken and what is the impact. I plead for research on what the impact of feminism has been. We should know where se sand, and what is our feminist position.