Negotiating Gender, Policy and Politics in the Caribbean

Feminist Strategies, Masculinist Resistance and Transformational Possibilities

Gabrielle Hosein, Jane Parpart

• Publisher: Rowman & Littlefield International
• Year: 2016
• ISBN:
  9781783487523
• Edition: 1
• Topic: Politics & International Relations
• Subtopic: Political Corruption & Misconduct
• Index: Politics & International Relations

Have efforts to advance women’s and men’s commitments to democratic governance, women’s rights and gender equality been successful in the Caribbean? Do they reflect local as well as international concerns and visions of gender equality? This edited collection answers these questions by focusing on women’s political leadership, electoral quota systems, national gender policies and transformational leadership as four feminist strategies that aim to engender democracy and citizenship. It offers a rich historical, comparative and ethnographic
perspective on the lived experience of these strategies through case studies of Trinidad and Tobago, Guyana, Dominica, Jamaica and St. Lucia. Drawing on national policy debates, election campaigns, state officials’ solidarities, men’s gender consciousness and women leaders’ life histories across these five
Caribbean countries, the collection assesses the successes of transnational feminist efforts, the resilience of masculinist resistances, the limits of gender mainstreaming and the possibilities for gender justice in and beyond the Caribbean today.

Chapter 1

Feminist Strategies, Masculinist Resistances and Gendered Transformations in Caribbean Perspective

Gabrielle Jamela Hosein and Jane Parpart

INTRODUCTION

While women’s political representation and state commitment to gender mainstreaming have been increasing around the world steadily, albeit marginally, since the Fourth World Conference on Women in 1995, they have only produced mixed results. This highlights the need for further research into the relationship between strengthening democracy and struggles for women’s rights and gender equality. For example, to what extent has women’s participation in democratic governance changed inequitable and undemocratic practices within governmental bodies and civil society? Have quota systems helped to increase women’s leadership and effective representation of women’s interests in democratic processes? Has the turn to policy solutions been productive for gender mainstreaming? Has feminist advocacy empowered women leaders and transformed power relations? And have these practices challenged the influence of colonial perceptions and practices of democracy and governance in postcolonies, translating into gender justice for women and marginalized men in public life?

A substantial body of Caribbean feminist scholarship has examined women’s political leadership, gender and citizenship, constitution making and various issues characterizing mainstreaming gender in policy and planning. However, very little of this work has pulled these different areas together, seeing them as complementary parts of feminist activism for gender justice, and the opportunities and resistances it negotiates. Taken individually, each area elucidates one aspect of how policy and politics are gendered. Taken together, a series of pictures emerge which attend to governance structures, campaign discourses, state machineries, policy text analysis, men’s gender consciousness and individual women’s narratives which, layered onto each other, show the depth of the multiple levels of feminist strategizing, success, refusal and containment.

This collection is such an integrated project, drawing on decades of Caribbean feminist analysis, while uniquely interconnecting disparate areas of focus into one picture of more than a century of feminist struggle to promote democratic governance, women’s rights and gender equality in the Anglophone Caribbean. Four feminist strategies to advance gender justice are explored here. First, women’s political leadership is examined for the extent to which women have been able to enter representative politics, and challenge masculinism while there. Second, electoral quotas are assessed for their impact on effective women’s participation and leadership in representative government. Third, the capacity of national gender policy documents to promote gender equality is evaluated, both from a policymaking and from a policy implementation perspective. Finally, the impact of feminist organizing around a vision of transformational leadership, in and out of the state, is investigated. As is now well established, getting numerical parity in representative politics is only one step towards securing a space within representative politics for women and men to make decisions which transform inequities in public life.

Each of these strategies expands spaces for women and men to alter gender relations and to shift the gender ideologies that limit women’s effective political participation and leadership. Together, they reflect a core set of historical struggles waged across the Anglophone Caribbean. This collection documents this history as it has been experienced in five Caribbean countries, focusing specifically and ethnographically on countries where these struggles appeared to have been won. The five-year administration of Kamla Persad-Bissessar, Trinidad and Tobago’s first woman prime minister, is therefore the subject of the national case study on women’s political leadership. A focus on Guyana follows, as this is the only Anglophone Caribbean country to adopt an electoral quota system. From here, the collection turns to Dominica and Jamaica to explore gender policymaking and implementation. Dominica was one of the first countries to approve of such a policy and Jamaica is one of the most recent. Finally, the collection stays within the Eastern Caribbean for the national case study on transformational leadership, as two women, trained by the Caribbean Institute for Women in Leadership (CIWiL), who have been involved in public life, were willing to share their life histories. Together, these five in-depth case studies of four feminist strategies provide insights into transnational, regional and national alliances between states, international organizations, non-governmental organizations (NGOs) and feminist movements, and demonstrate the lived experiences of feminist activists, and women and men both enacting and confronting masculinist resistances in the region.

For example, while the structural and political resistances to women’s transformational leadership are explored in regard to the constitutional change in Guyana, the individual, in-depth narratives from St. Lucia provide nuances of women’s experience, and their feelings and dilemmas that help to explain the limitations facing advocates of Guyana’s quota system. While the draft national gender policy process was partially explored in relation to Kamla Persad-Bissessar’s manoeuvring of femininity discourses in Trinidad and Tobago, the case studies of Jamaica and Dominica provide greater insight into the way masculinism influences policy politics from the perspective of feminist bureaucrats and those in civil society. Thus, the project’s comparative approach demonstrates how a broad Anglophone Caribbean effort, led by feminists in civil society and the state, took different forms at different times and through different networks across the region. It is a multifaceted story focusing on parts of a whole, showing their interrelatedness while giving constituent elements, from discourses to bureaucratic processes, and from policy texts and laws to individual narratives, more or less focus in each chapter.

The significance of the collection’s historical approach is its acknowledgement of many decades of women’s organizing, which emerged in response to the hierarchical conditions of colonial, Caribbean plantation economies, in which women and men were both adversaries and allies. It was this experience which would lead intellectuals like Trinidadian-born Claudia Jones to theorize the multiple interlocking jeopardies of gender, race and class as early as the 1930s, and it is to this activist-intellectual legacy of globally connected praxis that the collection traces its genealogy. More to the present, the Caribbean has been the area outside of North America, par excellence, for an early and ‘frontal’ masculinist backlash in the form of an overwhelmingly popular concern about male marginalization. Thus, it contributes to the scholarship on contemporary masculinism and the limits of gender mainstreaming by analysing gender relations, negotiations and transformations from the perspective of a transnational feminist movement, which, over three decades, has explicitly engaged male allies and questions of masculinities while destabilizing the homogenous category ‘woman’ on the basis of race, class and sexuality. Indeed, given its ethnic and religious heterogeneity and uneven development as well as long experience of women’s educational and occupational advancement and autonomy, the Caribbean provides an ideal site for detailing the contradictions of women and men’s reproduction of and challenge to hetero-patriarchal norms as well as both the uptake and containment of a language of women’s rights and equality by state and society. Essentially, tracking and qualifying ‘successes’ are another beginning for stories about the tensions, limits, challenges and transformations experienced by feminist advocacy in public life.

The chapters therefore take different angles to regional feminist strategies to engender democracy and governance, but are propelled by three central questions:

1.How are the twenty-first century shifts in gender ideologies, stimulated by women’s movements, shaping access to, exercise and redistributions of rights and power among groups of Caribbean women and men?

2.Have feminist strategies to engender democracy and good governance, with particular attention to women’s political leadership, electoral quota systems, national gender policies and transformational leadership, effectively advanced gender justice in the Anglophone Caribbean?

3.What are the lessons for feminist analysis and advocacy with regard to feminist institutionalization and feminist movement-building?

These questions emerged as an entry for our engagement with the international feminist literature on women’s political power in the state, the role of quotas in women’s political advancement, the role of national gender policies and gender mainstreaming, and the potential of transformational leadership to foster gender equality.

CARIBBEAN FEMINIST STRATEGIES IN GLOBAL PERSPECTIVE

The three questions explored in this book are situated in and speak to international debates on women’s political participation, the role of female quotas in women’s political participation and activism and the impact of national gender plans and women’s activism around political issues, including gender justice. The research in this book thus not only speaks to issues of women, gender justice, political power and transformational leadership in the Anglophone Caribbean, but also contributes to ongoing debates around the world. These debates not only reflect the growing concern with global trends, forces and perspectives, but also are deeply affected by scholarship on postcolonial and decolonial realities, global governance and the impact of cultural differences in a complex globalizing world.

Women’s low levels of participation in political institutions have been an ongoing feminist concern. Quotas have been seen as a key mechanism for ensuring greater female participation in parliaments and political parties everywhere. First introduced in the 1970s in Western Europe to influence political selection processes (Dahlerup 1998), by 2006 around 40 countries had introduced quotas for women in elections to national political institutions. Many major political parties have voluntarily created party quotas to encourage women’s participation in political elections and institutions (Tadros 2011, 1; Squires 2007). Quotas have played a role in improving gender ratios in many national parliaments, and have highlighted the importance of greater gender balance in political parties and institutions. At the same time, the quota systems have often been disappointing. In India, improvement in women’s participation in local elections and parliaments has failed to address the reluctance to apply this strategy to women’s entry into national political institutions (Jayal 2006). Moreover, the literature on quotas for women suggests that no technical formula, including the use of quotas, can ensure significant participation in national political institutions. Quotas have often been used to improve the gender balance of political candidates with little concern for how many women are actually elected to serve in national legislatures and parliaments. Indeed, global research suggests that quotas have often been used as a proxy for a genuine commitment to gender justice. They also do not guarantee elections of women who are committed to gender equality and gender justice rather than simply providing places for supporters of local political parties and their leaders, who may or may not be concerned with gender issues (Squires 2007; Franceschet, Krook and Piscopo 2012). Thus quotas remain a contested vehicle for change around the world, suggesting the need for a more in-depth analysis of the way they work or do not work in specific contexts. The chapter on quotas in Guyana contributes to this body of literature, and provides evidence of the limits of quotas as vehicles for social change and gender justice.

Feminists around the world have also been concerned with increasing the number of women in positions of political power at the national level. The number of women who have been heads of state remains relatively small, so their impact continues to be an ongoing concern that calls for further research. Many of the most well-known female political leaders, such as Margaret Thatcher of the United Kingdom and Indira Gandhi of India, have displayed little concern for or commitment to gender issues. They have achieved power by being ‘the best man in the cabinet’, fitting in with the masculinist culture of power politics. These leaders have done little to challenge that culture, and may have even strengthened it (Squires 2007; Genovese and Steckenrider, 2013). Sometimes women have been placed in political leadership positions when a party is in decline. Witness the election of a female head of the Canadian state just as her party was about to lose its grip on power. Considerable interest has been focused on the rise of female presidents in Latin America, particularly in Brazil, Argentina, Costa Rica and Chile. A number of these leaders have experienced considerable pushback, have not been re-elected or have been ejected from power, such as the recent case of Rousseff in Brazil (Jalalzai 2016; Franceschet, Krook and Piscopo 2012; Tadros 2014; Schmidt-Bayer 2012; Thomas 2011).

The Anglophone Caribbean provides an interesting case study as it has experienced a number of very powerful women political leaders who have managed to rule and survive within the masculinist political cultures of their political parties. Eugenia Charles, who led Dominica from 1980 to 1995, is one of a number of such leaders in the region (Barriteau and Cobley 2006). Trinidad and Tobago’s previous president, Kamla Persad-Bissessar, provides a recent example along with the past woman prime minister of Jamaica. The number of female leaders in the Anglophone Caribbean makes it a particularly interesting site for exploring the possibilities, and challenges, facing female political leadership in the region. The chapters on political leadership contribute to the vibrant discussions on female political leadership in Latin America and the Caribbean, as well as global debates on this very complicated and important issue.

Gender equality and gender justice have also been sought through policy instruments, particularly a concern with mainstreaming gender into all institutions and practices around the world. This effort was influenced by the Beijing Platform for Action that emerged from the 1995 United Nations World Conference on Women in Beijing and called for a global approach to gender inequality. Gender mainstreaming was quickly taken up by supranational institutions, international development agencies and national governments (Walby 2005; Squires 2007). While sometimes criticized as too ambitious and optimistic about the possibilities for fundamental change (Parpart 2014), gender mainstreaming remains a fundamental mechanism for encouraging social change and gender equality (Squires 2007). Supranational institutions and international development agencies continue to be key players in this process. The UN has been particularly influential, encouraging development initiatives globally but also seeking national solutions to gender equality challenges. One of the UN’s key strategies has centred on encouraging the adoption of national gender policies around the world. These policies are seen as key instruments for encouraging national commitment to gender equality and for establishing legal structures that will define and shape national governance processes aimed at improving it. National gender policies have emerged in many parts of the world, but critical scholarly attention to their impact is still developing. Efforts to address these issues through case studies in Africa continue to be an important challenge (Chauraya 2012). Clearly a global discussion is needed. The three chapters on national gender policies in the Anglophone Caribbean provide important overviews and case studies to analyse this important legal effort to l...

Table of contents

• Cover-Page
• Halftitle
• 1 Feminist Strategies, Masculinist Resistances and Gendered Transformations in Caribbean Perspective
• 2 A Will to Power: The Anglophone Caribbean Struggle to Advance Women’s Political Leadership
• 3 Women’s Political Leadership in Trinidad and Tobago: Understandings, Experiences and Negotiations
• 4 Arriving at 33%: Guyana’s Road to Quota Adoption
• 5 Inclusion without Influence: Women, Power and the Quota System in Guyana
• 6 Narratives, the State and National Gender Policies in the Anglophone Caribbean: Dominica and Trinidad and Tobago
• 7 Masculinities and the Practice of Dominica’s National Gender Policy
• 8 The National Policy on Gender Equality of Jamaica: (En)Gendering Equity in Neo-liberal Times
• 9 Feminist/Womanist Advocacy for Transformational Leadership in the Anglophone Caribbean: Individual and Collective Agency
• 10 Feminist Strategies, Masculinist Resistances and the Limits of Transformational Leadership
• Index
• About the Author