Linnette Vassell, Contributor
IF SOCIAL transformation must come in Jamaica, (and it will), conscious women, supported by fair-minded men, willing to renounce male privilege, will have to take a stronger role in charting that course in different areas of political, social and economic life.
However, being a woman leader is not enough as we are learning from experience, and from within the heart of the political process itself. She has to be a conscious transformational leader, one who is caring, but who sees beyond welfare and reaches towards the empowerment of women as a first step towards the transformation of the whole community.
The upcoming conferences of the People's National Party in September and of the Jamaica Labour Party in November should reveal to us whether those national institutions and especially the women within them, are serious about moving towards social renewal and transformation, or whether it is a matter of keeping the basic structures in place with a few adjustments here and there.
MALE DOMINANCE
Commitment towards renewal and transformation are signalled by measures that seek to alter unequal power relationships within the society from the individual and person-to-person basis to the structural and institutional levels, as between men and women. Changes within the parties, beginning with, but not confined to, gender relations will be an important signal of commitment to party renewal. For these political parties are unquestionably patriarchal their structures and ethos preserve male dominance within the political system and serve to perpetuate some of the worst features of the political culture that we experience today.
For example, 1998 data show that the PNP's National Executive was composed of 78 per cent male and 22 per cent female; the JLP's Central Executive had 83 per cent male and 17 per cent female members. The situation has hardly changed over the years.
GENDER RELATIONS
It is time for the political parties to take action to transform the understanding and practice of power, and to bring forward fresh forces and new voices within the leadership at all level. At a very basic levels, they need to do research to more fully understand how gender relations differentially influence the political realities for men and women inside and outside the political parties. It is not good enough for influential leaders, male or female to assert that "there is nothing holding women back from leadership". Let us examine the facts and factors and take appropriate measures.
Policy measures could include a provision that neither men nor women should hold more than 50 per cent of positions in the various organs and structures of the parties from the base level to the National Executive Committee in the case of the PNP, and of the Central Executive of the JLP. Such a policy would require special measures to facilitate women's greater participation in leadership. This would ensure that the renewal of the parties is propelled through women's insight, energy and commitment - what with our comparatively higher levels of education and our greater involvement in the day-to-day base level organisational building of the parties.
Strengthening wo-men's leadership will influence how the parties operate in many aspects, ranging from criteria for selection of candidates and financing, to questions as to when and where meetings are held, and whether provisions are made for child care, and a host of other practical measures and issues in between.
LEADING ROLE
However, for this social transformation to begin and to take root, the women in the parties have to take the leading role, with the support of committed and fair-minded men, in putting forward their concerns and pressing action.
In 1998 the PNP's Women's Movement, then celebrating its 25th anniversary, expressed concerns "about the absence of the structured integration of the Women's Movement into party programmes and activities". It also lamented "the failure of the movement to increase its membership in any appreciable way and to activate and maintain its existing structures".
From what we see little has changed in the Movement over the last five years, and while we continue to hear criticisms, we do not hear of any bold initiative on the part of any PNP/WM member or leader to begin the process of change from inside the Movement itself, much less in the party.
WELL-TIMED NEWS RELEASE
One's does not really have a feel for the JLP's National Organisation of Women although every now and again there is the occasional well-timed news release, usually critical of the Government but hardly speaking to women as a specific constituency.
It seems to me that these "women's arms" have to start reaching out among their own sisters within the parties and be bold enough to talk about the difficulties, the hurts and to recognize that what unites us as women is greater than what divides us. It is on this basis that we all can push for a start to the transformation many of us envision in the parties and the society as a whole.
Linnette Vassell is a social development consultant.
