The following statement is authored by Dr. Halimah DeShong, University Director, Institute for Gender and Development Studies at The University of the West Indies.
International Women’s Day (IWD) and Women’s Herstory Month (WHM) provide important platforms from which to celebrate women from all walks of life. Annually, during the month of March, we not only mark these commemorative anniversaries as symbolic, but we also call attention to enduring barriers to gender equity and justice. On behalf of the Institute for Gender and Development Studies at The University of the West Indies, I am delighted to wish women across the region, and the globe, a happy IWD and WHM!
As we reflect on women’s extraordinary contribution to families, communities, societies, economies, activism and politics, I am reminded of the question “can a dub poet be a woman?” Strategically posed by the late Jamaican Dub poet Jean “Binta” Breeze, this question serves as an entry point for celebrating the brilliance of Caribbean women; and as a caution that we must remain uncompromising in confronting enduring gender inequality.
In an interview with the artist, published in a 2003 edition of the Caribbean journal, Callaloo, Breeze remarked on the salience of this question:
“I think it was just the woman’s voice they did not like, because my early works like “Aid Travels with a Bomb” and “To Plant or Not to Plant,” and so on, were overtly political and not talking about women doing the laundry and bringing up the children. So once I started writing women’s domestic dub, it was considered too personal.”
Breeze reveals just how inseparable the experience of the personal and political remain, in all aspects of who we are, and what we do in the Caribbean, and across the globe. Many would even suggest that the question of whether a Dub Poet, a Prime Minister, a CEO, a Judge or a Heavy Machine Operator, can be a woman, has been asked and answered; since women have in fact occupied all of these positions. We celebrate women’s contribution to and leadership in a range of fields, where, historically, we have and have not appeared. However, what happens when women make visible the personal, in spaces demarcated as public or as sites of work, tells us something about what is at stake for many women in the global political economy, of which the Caribbean is a part. What is at stake for women when we spotlight the experiential and when we engage in community, collective and solidarity work? More importantly, what do we make possible through collaborative work, which comes with deep personal investments?
For this, we can turn to generations of Caribbean women organising on plantations, in trade unions, in political parties, in communities, and in women’s organisations. Even as this organising has never been without its tensions, we must continue to celebrate their work and their shared vision of a truly expansive and just Caribbean. Through the IGDS, The UWI remains connected to a legacy of pathbreaking women’s organisations in the region like the Caribbean Association of Feminist Research and Action (CAFRA), Red Thread, Sistren Theatre Collective, Productive Organisation for Women in Action (POWA) and several others. We celebrate their singular contribution to national and regional legislative and policy shifts, community organising and public education on gender equity and justice. We recognise the indivisibility of the personal and political dimensions of this work.
As beneficiaries and protectors of legacies of Caribbean women’s organising to shift race, gender and class inequalities, we must continue to make visible enduring systems and practices of inequality; and we must continue to organise to shift conditions of injustice, in our local, national, regional and global networks. Celebrating IWD and WHM embodies our collective commitment to accelerating progress for women. For us at The UWI, it means a commitment to the principles and actions enshrined in The UWI Gender Policy, and to collective actions which honour and build on a legacy of our women’s and our people’s unrelenting quest for just Caribbean livities.
Peace and blessings!
Dr. Halimah DeShong was appointed new University Director of the Institute for Gender and Development Studies (IGDS) in September 2024.