Glenda Simms, Contributor
IN THE December 6, 2004 edition of The Gleaner, contributor Neisha Haniff gave 'witness and testimony' to her efforts in the earlier groupings that established 'the struggle for women's rights'.
This writer has assumed that Ms. Haniff is locating her contributions both in Jamaica and the wider Caribbean.
In highlighting her sterling contributions to the women's movement Ms. Haniff raises the question of who are the beneficiaries of the gains made on behalf of women. She says she is tired of the same old lines recycled in the same old stale speeches. She longs for passion, commitment and the sense of responsibility that privileged women should be shouldering.
Furthermore, Ms. Haniff reminds her middle class sisters that "it is not poor women but privileged women who must lead."
While I find Ms. Haniff's sentiments interesting, I was not particularly convinced that she has any new or creative approaches to the sisterhood. She, in fact, has merely reinforced the colonial, patriarchal and naive feminist perspectives that have not only created havoc in socio-political systems globally, but also fuelled the cynicism that textures the world view of many young women, indigenous communities and the majority of poor black women and men.
Perhaps all of us who purport to have the prescriptions to right the wrongs inflicted on women should stand back and reflect on the woman constructed highway to justice, peace and security for all.
STRUGGLES
In this reflective space we will be reminded that feminism, womanism and other related struggles on behalf of women in the east, west, north and south were all intended to dismantle patriarchy. This patriarchal system according to Chris Weedon's 1987 definition, "refers to power relations in which women's interests are subordinated to the interests of men. These power relations includes-sexual division of labour, social organisation of procreation and the internalised norms of femininity." In short, "patriarchal power rests on social meaning given to biological sexual difference."
It is within this broad understanding of the all-encompassing and debilitating consequences of patriarchy that women in the global village used a variety of approaches and strategies to push the burden of subordination, marginalisation and silencing from their shoulders, their heads and their loins.
RACIST MINDSET
It is also within this broad framework that writer Sue Thornham argued that black women writers such as Frances Beale clearly distinguished black women's life and death struggles to withstand the potential imperialist and racist mindset of middle class 'white women feminism'.
Yesterday and today black women, other women of colour, aboriginal women and the poor have experienced and are still experiencing the total impact of the white man's project to discover, capture, steal, appropriate and pillage the lands, territories and human capital of the entire world outside of Europe.
HISTORICAL SOCIAL LANDSCAPE
It is against this historical social landscape that women of colour made a conscious effort not to embrace all the issues that were important to white feminists during the second wave of feminism in the early 'seventies.
In the same way that middle class black feminists were not prepared to roll over and play dead in the face of white supremacy, poor women should not be expected to deny their leadership capacities and their ability to use their knowledge of life as it is lived to make a difference to themselves and their communities.
Yes, middle class and privileged women must begin to acknowledge that they benefited from the women's liberation movement and they are the main consumers of the social capital that has been generated by all the progressive political and economic movements within the country. But more fundamentally, middle class women must honestly admit that they have been unsuccessful in dismantling the pillars of patriarchy.
UNDER-EDUCATION
They have not dealt effectively with the hidden injuries of caste, class and the impact of pigmentation, under-education and miseducation of the poor, the men, the women, boys and girls of our society.
Perhaps Ms. Haniff would be more effective in her approach if she advocates that middle class and poor women find more spaces to get together, to learn from each other and to recreate the dynamism and the vision of a women's movement that should have resulted in justice, peace, equity and development for all men, women and children.
Dr. Glenda Simms is the executive director of the Bureau of Women's Affairs. You can send your comments to infocus@gleanerjm.com
