Negotiating Gender Policy and Politics in the Caribbean

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.

Gabrielle Hosein is a Lecturer in the Institute for Gender and Development Studies at the University of the West Indies, St. Augustine Campus. She has published in Feminist Review and contributed chapters to edited collections.

Jane Parpart is Research Professor in the Department of Conflict Resolution, Human Security, and Global Governance at McCormack Graduate School in the University of Massachusetts, Boston. She is coeditor with Marysia Zalewski of Rethinking the Man Question: Sex, Gender and Violence in International
Relations (2008), and co-author of Women, Employment and the Family in the International Division of Labour (2013)