Not-so-live blogging the 12th Annual AWID forum

This month, representing both my day job and WHAN, I'm off to the AWID (Association for Women’s Rights in Development) International Forum on Women’s Rights and Development in Istanbul, Turkey to present as part of a panel with other Caribbean women. This year's theme is Transforming Economic Power to Advance Women's Rights and Justice, and my segment will look at enhancing opportunities for women's economic participation, particularly in emerging and own industries. Happily, the conference also brings together some of my homies from another network of which I'm a member, The International Working Group on Gender, Macroeconomics and International Economics, which will be presenting special, toolbox sessions on gender and economics. Reunions everywhere! A reuniopalooza. I just made that up.

So a few of us are blogging the 4-day meeting. I'm sure some of the others will be live-blogging. I can make no such commitment. But I will be covering the sessions I attend, and sharing some of the emerging research and ideas, as well as linking to the other blogs. I'm excited! Are you? Yes. Yes you are.

DKNYoop

The first time I read GOOP, I laughed like Mehcad Brooks was tickling me. It was for the same reason that I love to watch Barefoot Contessa. I enjoy people who are fabulous to the point of being preposterous. Ina Garten floats delicately through her Hampton home casually referencing (because we should all already know) the importance of using only "very good vanilla" or "the best truffle oil you can find". If you can't get your cardamom pods freshly fertilized by only the most discerning mountain goats in the hills of Nepal, you might as well just burn your kitchen to the ground now and allow yourself to perish in the blaze. There is no point in going on.

As a real person from the Third World, I regard these folks with glee, and not as much judgment as you might think. I love interesting recipes and fancy things, and am currently enduring a self-imposed shopping fast to arrest my acquisitive nature, but surely one does not absolutely need two pieces of perfectly snipped Spanish chervil to garnish the side of one's Sunday frittata. You could pluck a couple pieces of Aunt Rhoda's fern and we would be none the wiser. So I have once or twice found myself staring at a GOOP article saying out loud - apparently to Gwyneth Paltrow but really to no one - "Gwyneth Paltrow, A Perfect Murder is my guilty pleasure (in part because you just had to have your character speak in perfectly-lisped Castilian Spanish so we would know that even though you seem boringly American, you are in fact well-travelled and severely interesting.) But you are a ridiculous person."

Still, Ina and Gwyneth have and know their audience. There are similarly ridiculous people out there (actually, Ina is not that ridiculous in substance. I make her food all the time. One manages to overlook the condescension and just go ahead and throw in the very mediocre vanilla) and others who aspire to be similarly ridiculous. Presumably, all the fancy people congregate in these and other fancy places and barter very good vanilla, cardamom and chervil. But when I open a modest little Allure magazine and Donna Karan's "10 Things Every Woman Should Have" begins with "Haitian craft", not even Alfre Woodards's psychopathic son could inspire such chortles. Here's the entire list:

1. Haitian crafts. This turned out to be the least absurd of the list, although at first it seemed hilarious. It suggests that we should all try to make active, social choices through our consumption, and that one way to do so might be to support companies that invest in and help create markets for the products of artisans in developing countries. Noble, if oddly specific.

2. A bodysuit. Donna starts her day by wearing it to yoga and then "adds and subtracts layers as the day goes by." A bodysuit. They should have named this article "10 things Maybe Four Women should have if three of them are Beyonce".

3. Art to call your own. There is some text here about being married to a sculptor. I haven't met my sculptor yet. But I know a guy who carves fallen twigs on the beach and sells them to tourists.

4. A yoga mat. You can lay on it and consider how much you hate yoga.

5. A sanctuary. This I can agree with. Women tend to be disproportionately burdened with care responsibilities in addition to academic and professional commitments. Having the space to regroup is important, even if it's just alone time outdoors in the fresh air. Of course Donna Karan's sanctuary is Parrot Cay in Turks and Caicos, which she calls her "three-hour Bali". So...you know...fresh air or that.

6. Donna Karan Cashmere Mist Body Lotion. This one has her name in it. My. How curious.

7. Cashmere scarf cozy. For $2000 from Donna Karan stores. Curiouser still.

8. Essential oils. Ok.

9. Green juice. Ok. And no thanks.

10. A belt bag. It frees up her hands and she can feel it on her body. If I'm trying to feel anything on my body, Donna, it's not a $1695.00 glorified fanny pack from your store.

I know this is Allure - a glossy whose business is selling crap. But who is Every Woman? Reading this article prompts me to again wonder who magazines like this are writing for. Is it all aspirational? Are we all spending our bus pass money on the March Allure each believing that all the other women reading it have bodysuits on under their jackets and we are the only losers who don't own Haitian craft or cashmere scarf cozies? (Interestingly, the average woman in Haiti is clearly not even being counted as a woman. But at least if she were, she would probably already have item 1 covered.)

Of course, the simple answer is that the entire industry is absurd and built on hyperbole. A 'steal' would be a $500 feather for the hair if a 'splurge' is a $12 000 fascinator. And 'every woman' means 'every woman whose lifestyle can support our recommendations and whose interests mirror ours, or who wishes she fit into the latter categories'. Still, one can't help but chuckle at the earnest tone of the GOOPs and the Allures in their pretense that we're all in this together. Or at least we will be when some of us return from wintering in Bali.

Newsclips and quotes [Still working on that unexplained stigma]

(Emphasis mine.)

Chairman of the AIDS Foundation, Colin Brewer, said while the foundation was making progress in the fight, there was still much to do.

[...]

He added that although the foundation provided assistance to those living alternative lifestyles, it did not condone the behaviour.

He also urged those present to "rededicate" themselves to the challenge of eradicating any stigma associated with HIV.

Well. Wonder where that stigma comes from.

International Women's Day

Last year, on International Women's Day, I wrote in support of the work of activists addressing Haiti's high incidence of rape. Today, the survival and well-being of women in Haiti remains high on the agenda of activists in the region and allies all over the world, especially in the aftermath of the earthquake. The women I've spoken to there are more focused than ever on rebuilding their country and their lives, and on continuing to work on securing safe, dignified, productive lives and livelihoods for all people. They inspire me not only to join them where they are, but to intensify my own work in Barbados and the Caribbean.

I see a lot of young women in my neighbourhood, on the streets every day, out and about everywhere, engaged in the business of growing up and figuring life out. And every day I'm reminded of how much there is to navigate, as a girl, and how overwhelming it can become if no one is creating the space needed to get through it all. That involves listening and encouraging their creative efforts and all these great things. But it also involves more tangible support, that has to do with their health care, their sexual and reproductive rights, their education, their safety and economic security. I don't have children. And even though I may at some point, and though I love my friends' children, I need not look that far into the future for my motivation to make things better now. I'm looking all around me, out my window right this minute, at the girls and women who depend on all our support to make their lives better today.

Happy International Women's Day.

Myriam Merlet

We received news yesterday of the passing of Myriam Merlet in Tuesday's disaster in Haiti. Merlet, a women's rights activist and Head of the Ministry of Women in Haiti, helped to call international attention to the widespread rape of girls and women as a political weapon in the country, where rape was only made a criminal offence in 2005. Merlet's essay The More People Dream appeared in the popular 2001 publication Walking on Fire: Haitian Women's Stories of Survival and Resistance.

We are saddened by the passing of one of our colleagues and friends. I imagine that in the coming weeks, there will be many tributes to those we've lost, and I look forward to contributing to those, to remembering the Myriam I knew, and her work. I want to reaffirm our solidarity in assisting Haiti, and in working towards the peace and security of all its citizens as they work to recover and rebuild not only now, but for years to come. I believe we appreciate that the support needed goes way beyond 'fixing' the fallout from Tuesday's disaster, and I'm hopeful that as a region, we will listen to the needs of the Haitian people, and stay committed .

Has Caribbean feminism failed? Or did it just never exist?

Last week, I sat down with two of my favourite male people, over some Guinness(es?) and some wicked, fried pot fish, to catch up on the happenings. The conversation soon got around to feminism, because these two male people are actually interested, and don't just pretend to be in the hopes that when they ask me "how's work?" I'll just say "You know, it is what it is. Pass the pepper sauce."

So they had some issues, among them my confession that in my work, when I talk about my theories of economics to people who are presumably non-sympathetic - or who at least start out that way - I avoid the term 'feminist'. I do not call my work 'feminist economics' outside my group of colleagues or friends because:

1) It is irrelevant, almost so irrelevant as to be counter-productive. I'm suggesting that in the traditional conceptualization of the economy, there are missing markets, and missing actors. Some of women's work, and some of the consequences of economic policy and activity on women, are rendered invisible, and if we are to obtain a true picture of the economy, maximize its productivity and advance development goals, we need to start thinking about that economy in different ways. This argument hinges on the idea that mainstream economics is lacking, whereas 'my' economics is more complete. To then present my views as 'feminist', to qualify them in this way, only marginalizes them, which is the opposite of what I'm trying to do.

2) It is inflammatory. 'Feminist' is a bad word. This is a surprise to no one. Many people I encounter are eager to distance themselves from what they see as feminist ideology, and are in fact relieved to have that basis on which to reject your ideas. If advancing that ideology without using the F word is going to improve women's access to economic goods, then I'm prepared to use other words.

3) It is not true. Based on the first point, if I believe that an economic model that values women's work and counts it as an economic input is a truer model, then what I do is just Economics, only properly done. (One could argue that insofar as feminism is a belief in the right of women to have political, social, and economic equality with men, all economics should be feminist economics, which is also true. And so we could argue each of those points, and probably both be right.)

This is an age-old argument, and while I call myself a feminist, language is an important part of the political strategy that gets things done. So using language like 'women's rights' and 'equity', and employing methods like first establishing the existence of a problem and then revealing that the majority of those experiencing this problem are women or men or children is often more expedient.

But they thought that I was wrong to do this, and that if feminism was not at all problematic, as I was suggesting, then I should use my work to make it visible as a movement. Because, they said, the feminism that everyone knows, and that men in the Caribbean are so turned off by, has been imported from the US and UK, with all their bra-burning and armpit-hair growing. They suggested that the women's movement in the Caribbean has failed to adequately represent its cause, to refocus the business of feminism within the Caribbean context, and to disabuse people of the notion of feminism as a foreign, outdated ideology. They believed that rather than treat as separate issues like violence against women and sexual and reproductive rights, we should frame them within the larger context of women's human rights, showing the linkages, and in that way, it would all become clear to the masses and we, the feminists, would win. I explained that we had done this, and sometimes it works, sometimes it doesn't. They were not convinced. I suggested that they were considering the issue as already-feminist men, assuming a reasonable, blank-slate audience that does not always exist. Again, they were not convinced.

I had, and have, several responses to this, including the idea that 'feminist', both as a qualifier and a noun, is not strictly tied to 'feminism' as a movement. There's some merit in what they say, as well as some confusion, I think, about what the advancement of women's rights in the Caribbean has looked like, and what it looks like these days. But I wanted to ask you first, readers and lurkers and bears, what you think, before I address these ideas in a subsequent post.

Are Caribbean people really thirsting for feminist knowledge, and have we simply been doing it wrong all along?

Threats and abuse are not my culture

When I live elsewhere, one of the things that I never miss about Barbados is the cat-calling. Of course, there's cat-calling everywhere. But I think a variety of factors combine to influence the amount a Black woman experiences in countries where she exists as part of a minority: the fact that Black bodies are so often othered and invisible (although this sometimes works with opposite effect, because though othered, Black women's bodies are often only visible long enough to be used for sexual consumption; aren't we lucky?); the notion that Black women are angry and crazy so who knows how they'll respond if you piss them off; urban vs. suburban vs. rural location; and the habits of the groups and societies in which we operate.

In the American suburb where I lived, there was hardly any, but it increased as I got closer to the city. In London, there was slightly more. In Santo Domingo, most of the interaction with strange men involved them taking your hand to help you on and off the sidewalk and then continuing on their way, a habit which was at once charming and really bizarre. But once the paranoid Bajan in me was sure they weren't carrying anthrax or hidden razor blades, I deduced that this was times better than cat-calling any day of the week. Leaving the city and getting closer to the coast meant more unsolicited remarks, though. And in Suriname, I had a particularly scary experience where some young men who had been shouting me down for some time got angry that I didn't respond to their questions - apparently it never occurred to them that people might be hearing impaired or, you know, not speak Sranan - and started following me. At that point, I started yelling in English to no one in particular, and they seemed satisfied that I had a legitimate reason for ignoring them - the fact that they were strange men hanging around a street corner in the dark clearly would not suffice - and moved along.

But every time I come back home, it seems like we've taken cat-calling to new levels of misogyny and lewdness. Growing up, men hissed at women; it was some version of 'psst', although not quite that. That soon developed into a sucking noise, the way you might call a dog, although I've always thought my pets too good for generic, non-specific sounds (imagine that) and always used word and noises they would associate with only me. Then by high school we were hearing what sounded like random bird calls, real 'In the Jungle' types of noises, and by this time we're not even trying to pretend that this dynamic is not one of predator versus prey. Men seemed to find it funny because the idea of women as prey, you know, ha ha etc. Then there came all kinds of references to women - and to strange women in particular: 'meat', 'food', I'm sure you get where I'm going with this. There was even a song called "Looka (Look at) The Food", filled with lyrics describing how women's bodies are gratifying to men.

Throughout, there continues to be no limit to what a man will tell a strange woman. Nothing is too intimate or lewd. And I mean nothing. Think of the vilest utterance you can imagine from the lips of a man and I have probably heard it addressed to some woman on the street. And, in accordance with the formula, failure to respond brings a barrage of verbal abuse, and in some scenarios, assault.

It's the kind of thing we learn to live with, although I don't believe we should. We're relieved when all we get is a 'hi, beautiful', and even though we may not feel like responding, we do, because we know it could be much worse and a part of us is grateful that it's not. We go out of our way to say 'thanks' to 'that dress fits you real nice, sweetie', almost as a reward for the fact that no body parts were mentioned, even though we hear the lechery in every word uttered. And we learn to ignore the rest of it, carrying on stepping high, as we say, as we're pelted alternately with 'flattery' and insults, sometimes all at once by several men, so that even if we wanted to, we couldn't respond to this gang assault, organized to intimidate us.

But as accustomed as we get to it, we should remember this: cat-calling has a clear purpose; it is to establish in women's minds that we exist for men's consumption, and there's nothing we can do about it, lest we get too uppity. It is a way for men who feel inadequate and threatened by the collective success and independence of women to keep us in our place, and have us believe that no matter how many degrees or homes we have or how big our salaries are, we are the property of any and all men - even and especially the ones with whom we might not choose to associate - and are subject to their whim.

There is a new weapon in the cat-calling arsenal it seems, and I experienced it the other day. It is not a call, but a silent action. I was standing in the corridor of a shopping center with a friend of mine as we decided on our next stop. Three men came around the corner, all in varying stages of undress and/or general dishevelment. They said nothing, but instead came right up to me so that our faces were almost touching, and looked me up and down, slowly and deliberately, each in turn. I could tell they were waiting for a response, perhaps anger or outrage, so they could have a reason to manifest whatever latent criminal pathology was there lurking. I don't imagine they could expect me to be flattered by such an assault. It was clearly threatening behaviour, meant to convey the fact that they need not even talk to me if they don't want to; they can act in some way that forces me to talk to them, since if I wanted to get away, I would have had to ask them to move. I ignored them, wholly and completely. Any verbal response would have been what they wanted, so with their faces and bodies inches from mine, I carried on talking to my friend, who even in her dismay and confusion followed my lead, and they slithered off.

This is the type of behaviour that exists even as male activists and legislators contend that we do not have a problem with sexual harassment in the workplace or on the streets. This is the type of violation that they would have us believe is a harmless part of our culture, and instead of being so uptight, we should embrace. It is the reason women are physically attacked for having the temerity to refuse to have strangers grind up against them in a party. What's wrong with me, you ask? Do I think I'm too good for you? Why yes, as a matter of fact, I am, at least insofar as I understand boundaries and personal choice, and you appear to be on the verge of criminal behaviour. I am not going to embrace this appropriation of my body, my space and my sanity. The personal action that I take every day will be a rejection of this institutionalized abusiveness, and the professional action that I take as part of a policy-focused, activist network will be towards the enactment of legislation that makes this type of harassment a prosecutable offence. I have no problem being engaged by anyone as a human being and an equal, but I will not be threatened and cower in response. This is not a part of my culture.