Conclusion: Beyond a Backlash - The Frontal Assault on Containing Caribbean Women in the Decade of the 1990s

• Author: Violet Eudine Barriteau
• Pages: 201-232

Conclusion 201

My preoccupations hinge on the tension point between philosophy and poetry, abstract

thought and concrete experience, culture and counter-culture, objective and subjective

force, domination and rebellion, and last but not at all least, masculine and feminine.

Some of these oppositions I mean to preserve, some to reconcile, some to dissolve and

some to break into fragments (Joan Cocks 1989: 1)

BACKGROUND AND CONTEXT

Between Philosophy and Poetry

The six chapters constituting the body of this publication capture the

situations confronting Caribbean women and the conditions they

experienced in the Caribbean at the end of the twentieth century. The

collective strength of these chapters is that they interrogate socioeconomic,

political, legal, and cultural developments in the CARICOM region. The

cumulative analysis provides a form of stocktaking to assess not only what

happened in the post Beijing period, 1995–2000, but to enable an

evaluation of how women as political, economic and social citizens have

fared throughout the decade of the 1990s. The latter is much more critical

than meeting the UN and by extension CARICOM requirements for

reporting, as relevant as these requirements are.

In their 1995 Report on the Status of Women in Sixteen Commonwealth

Caribbean Countries, Alicia Mondesire and Leith Dunn conclude with a

Conclusion

Beyond a Backlash: The Frontal Assault on Containing

Caribbean Women in the Decade of the 1990s

Violet Eudine Barriteau

SEVEN

202 Violet Eudine Barriteau

comprehensive list of strategic objectives and specific mechanisms to promote

women’s advancement in the region (Mondesire and Dunn 1995: 86-95).

Their study assessed what actions had been implemented from the Forward

Looking Strategies of the third World Conference on Women in Nairobi in

1985. It also constituted Commonwealth Caribbean countries’ input into

the document that would emerge as the Beijing Platform for Action in

September 1995. Reviewing these strategic objectives, it is clear that the

majority of these mechanisms have not been implemented nor attempted

by the majority of regional governments. More worrisome is that the political

will to do so seems to have evaporated. Some six years after this study was

published it seems brave to be able to spell out, ‘mechanisms to promote

women’s advancement’ or to recommend an action such as, ‘institute

measures to ensure women occupy at least 50 per cent of managerial

positions in government, and an equal number of ambassadorial posts by

the year 2000’ (Mondesire and Dunn 1995: 86).

There are embedded contradictions between women’s move along a

continuum of measures towards achieving gender equality and the climate

in which these incremental gains are received. There is no doubt that more

women are involved in senior managerial positions in government even as

they may face more verbalised disapproval by public commentators of their

elevation in political and bureaucratic decision making. Additionally, more

women seem to have taken seriously Mondesire and Dunn’s recommendation

to, ‘identify, encourage and groom women members of political parties,

[and] promote women in key positions within parties’ (Mondesire and

Dunn 1995: 86). In St Lucia the highest number of women, eight, contested

the general elections on December 3, 2001 as candidates of five political

parties, while the United Workers Party (UWP) is the first party there to

be led by a woman, retired educator, Dr Morella Joseph.1

At the beginning of the twenty-first century the situation Caribbean

women face is paradoxical. If we use standard indicators such as the Human

Development Index (HDI) the Gender Development Index (GDI) and

the Gender Empowerment Measure (GEM) we might conclude there is

not much cause for concern. In between the spaces and gaps uncovered by

these usefull indices, fundamental fault lines are apparent which suggest

that commitment to women’s political and economic well being has shifted

and is in a state of flux.

It is not yet certain the extent to which these contradictory conditions

in the Caribbean mirror developments for women in other regions of the

world. What Caribbean feminists do know is that we have a responsibility

Conclusion 203

to bring these realities to the attention of people, policy makers and the

international community. There is a widespread belief in the region that

women in the Caribbean have ‘made it’ and there needs to be a diminished

focus on addressing issues affecting women. The collective analysis in this

report proves that this is not quite the situation in the Caribbean. More

meaningfully, the analyses underscore how fragile and porous any gains

have been. This investigation of the situation in the Caribbean constitutes

case studies that can be used by academics, policy makers, and practitioners

to identify strategies to prevent the evaporation of equitable, just policy.

More importantly, as Jamaican\Caribbean poet Lorna Goodison has

remarked, if Caribbean leaders truly loved their publics, they would not

see Caribbean people, ‘as a walking vote or as a supply source of applause’

(Deyal 2001: 20A), instead they would use these analyses to create and

harness a political will to produce social and economic justice that turns

on the axis of gender justice.

Even though the main focus of this publication is on 1995 to 2000, the

Beijing +5 period, this chapter has two objectives. It provides an assessment

of how the analyses of the preceding chapters forces a rethinking of the

relatively high ranking assigned to or achieved by CARICOM countries on

the UNDP’s three major indices the HDI, the GDI, and the GEM. The

cumulative contributions of Linnette Vassell, Gaietry Pargass and Roberta

Clarke, Andaiye, Denise Noel-DeBique, Barbara Bailey, and Sonja Harris

reveal a less than panoramic sweep of the gender equality sweepstakes for

the Commonwealth Caribbean. In the process the chapter also critically

evaluates the decade of the 1990s and women’s overall experiences within

that decade. Consequently it is necessary to determine why the

developments of the decade unfolded in the way they did and attempt to

identify what is required to prevent the further attrition of the overdue

changes that have begun to produce benefits for women, their families and

Caribbean societies.

An informed review of the last decade of the twentieth century reveals a

set of conflicting conditions for women in the Anglophone Caribbean at

the local, national and regional levels. Cumulatively and comparatively,

the decade of the 1990s constituted the period of greatest vulnerability for

Caribbean women in the post independence era which began in the 1960s.

This is so even though structural indicators would suggest great

improvements in the material circumstances of women’s lives, that is,

noticeable improvements in economic and some social conditions.