Smoke and Mirrors: The Illusion of CARICOM Women's Growing Economic Empowerment, Post-Beijing

• Author: Andaiye
• Pages: 73-107

Smoke and Mirrors 73

INTRODUCTION: THE RELATIONSHIP BETWEEN POVERTY

AND POWER

I write about poverty in CARICOM, and particularly about poverty among

CARICOM women, as a political activist. This means both that I gather

evidence in the course of this activism, and that any theories I develop or

adopt on the basis of this evidence must illuminate it. Thus I do not find

it useful to say, as academic researchers often do, ‘I see this piece of evidence

as valid because it was “scientifically” collected, although it is “counter-

intuitive” ’; when this happens, both the science and the intuition need to

be revisited to see which one went astray.

Why do I begin this way? One reason is that in relation to economic as

well as to social issues, there is a growing tendency in the region’s universities

and development institutions to claim evidence either that gender is not

significant in shaping our reality, or that its significance lies in the increasing

marginalisation of Caribbean males.1 Neither this view, nor the frequent

counter to it that Caribbean males are in no way marginalised, matches

our experience.

It has never been true, in our conditions, that unmediated by class and

race, men were at the centre of our economic and political decision-

making; and given our history of exploitation by the centres of global capital,

real power to shape our economies has never resided here. Today, more and

Smoke and Mirrors: The Illusion of CARICOM Women’s

Growing Economic Empowerment, Post-Beijing

Andaiye

THREE

74 Andaiye

more men in the region are being driven to the margins of economic life,

even if all we mean by participation in economic life, is involvement in

work for an adequate income. But men are not being displaced by women.

In part, what creates this appearance is that women’s continued responsibility

for the unwaged work of child-care and housework acts as an impetus for

us to show more commitment to the search for what the ‘literature’ calls –

with its usual ability to obscure the power relations underlying the surface

of things – coping mechanisms.

Among women of the region, rankings of gender empowerment in

CARICOM as it relates to economic and social issues provoke a sense of

distance from a lived experience. In August 1997, when a paper I wrote on

poverty was presented at a Post-Beijing Ministerial Conference held in

Georgetown,2 one participant was heard to complain that the paper had

eradicated poverty in her country; what I had done was to cite UN and

World Bank poverty rankings of CARICOM countries. The kind of indicators

we (and differently, the UN and World Bank) use and the methodologies

we apply necessarily produce findings that are ‘counter-intuitive’, because

they are not supported by any analysis of the interaction and motion of the

power relations of which they are only a kind of partial and static

representation.

PART I: WHERE WE ARE NOW

A: Globalisation and the Crisis of Small States

It comes closer to being just about the worst of times as we begin a new century. For

much of the Caribbean Community is confronted with quite considerable uncertainty,

and a tendency towards disorder in just about every sphere of political, social and

economic life.3

In his address to the 3rd Caribbean Media Conference from which the

excerpt above is taken, Prime Minister Arthur identified three elements of

what he calls a threat of ‘international marginalisation’ for CARICOM

member states: cultural absorption in a ‘monolithic process of globalisation

which promotes homogeneity’; the irrelevance of the Caribbean at the end

of the Cold War, except negatively, as a major transit point for illegal drugs;

and the inability to compete, or indeed survive, as separate states in the

globalised economy.

If the analysis were being made post-September 11, 2001 its warning

would no doubt have been even starker.

The net effect of globalisation, trade liberalisation, privatisation, and

market-driven policies on the small, open economies of CARICOM has

Smoke and Mirrors 75

been to create new tension and insecurity in the society. The promise of

increased jobs, improved market access, new technologies, and financial

and other resources to alleviate poverty has not materialised. In spite of

modest macro-economic growth in most of the region, there is a new class

of poor people in many countries. The gap between the relative few who

were poised to benefit from globalisation and those who were not has

increased divisions.4 The miniaturised state has a decreased capacity to

play a role in creating the economic and social conditions that could enable

poor people to advance. Some countries are also burdened by huge debt.

The increased use of the region as a transit point for illegal drugs; the rise

in violent crime related to the influx of deportees from the United States

penal system; the growth in hot money masking and deforming Caribbean

economies – all these contribute to what Prime Minister Arthur calls ‘the

most modern forms of social disintegration in a fragile region’.

WTO rules that have threatened preferential market access for the main,

often the only, export crops of some states, and depressed commodity prices

for rice, sugar, bauxite and gold, have led to new and increased insecurities

in the job market and the society as a whole, and raise the question of the

long-term viability of some of the smaller states. Financial services and

tourism are also being undermined in the name of trade liberalisation.5

Rum, rice, and the entertainment industry are under threat. The reduction

of government revenues posed by the push for a Common External Tariff

(CET) and for trade liberalisation, and the threat to services like health

and education if these sectors become liberalised, have enormous

implications for people’s well-being.

A brief comment in Dominica’s Beijing +5 country reports indicates

how the assault on the banana industry shakes the foundations of both

national and household economies. At the national level, the danger comes

from the fact that the banana sector in Dominica is reported to employ

more than 30 per cent of the workforce and contributes 60 per cent of

export earnings. At the level of the household, the danger is the strain on

households to provide for short-term needs, since it is from the weekly

harvesting of bananas that a regular and reliable source of income is normally

available to many of them.

Although there are wide differences in the per capita incomes, social and

physical infrastructure and basic services of member states, the countries of

the region share an underlying fragility which has given rise to the concept

of the ‘vulnerability index’. Using one such measure, the PSPH Index,7 the

figures at the end of the 1990s were USA, 97.0; Brazil, Canada, Mexico

and Argentina between 48.4 and 14.8; and the fourteen CARICOM