Are We There Yet? Contemporary Struggles for Gender Justice and the Legacy of Caribbean Feminisms

Abstract

This chapter is a reflective evaluation of the preexisting and emerging issues and challenges which mediate contemporary efforts to sustain gender justice in the Caribbean. I use the perspectives of undergraduate feminist theory students and online feminist activists to establish how contemporary Caribbean feminist advocacy is situated. I also evaluate this situatedness by considering the salience of perspectives and sentiments inherited from a legacy of collective consciousness raising through developed Caribbean feminist theorizing and vibrant women’s movements in the region. I assert that student responses reflect an awareness of this legacy with an understanding of self as inheriting a secure agency as a collective, particularly as a collective group of women, but at the same time expressing a preoccupation with the individualistic, particularly in terms of concerns over bodily autonomy. This suggests a turn from their legacy. In addition, online feminist activists lament that change is not as evident as needed; that they still live limits, are still subject to gendered structures of power, and that struggles over legitimacy and for freedom from gender-based violence continue to undermine the attainment of gender justice. Their sentiments suggest that the “there” has been engaged but by no means arrived at as a fixed end point; while some agency can be accessed, gender justice in the region continues to be a journey that is complex and requires response to an ever changing social, political and economic landscapes.

Citation

Barratt, S.A. (2021), "Are We There Yet? Contemporary Struggles for Gender Justice and the Legacy of Caribbean Feminisms", Adomako Ampofo, A. and Beoku-Betts, J. (Ed.) Producing Inclusive Feminist Knowledge: Positionalities and Discourses in the Global South (Advances in Gender Research, Vol. 31), Emerald Publishing Limited, Leeds, pp. 167-182. https://doi.org/10.1108/S1529-212620210000031009