Women and power

Robert Buddan, Contributor

Between 2006 and 2010, CARICOM countries saw women rising to powerful political positions in three of the 'Big Four' countries in CARICOM, plus another in Haiti. Portia Simpson Miller (Jamaica), Mia Mottley (Barbados) and Kamla Persad-Bissessar (Trinidad and Tobago) became heads of their respective political parties and leaders of their parliamentary Opposition.

Simpson Miller, of course, served as prime minister between 2006 and 2007; and Persad-Bissessar became her country's prime minister in 2010. In Haiti, Michelle Pierre-Louis became prime minister in 2008. Mottley has since lost her positions as party leader and leader of the opposition and Pierre-Louis lost her difficult job as prime minister in 2009.

There might be another powerful political woman soon. On March 20, Haiti is to hold second-round presidential elections between the two run-off candidates, Mirlande Manigat and Michel Martelly. Manigat received the most votes last November, but not enough for an outright majority. If Haiti can hold credible second-round elections, Manigat might emerge as CARICOM's third politically powerful woman and second head of government. Polls in Jamaica show that Simpson Miller might return to power in a year's time.

Power Structure

Women do have some power in Caribbean politics. They are party leaders, members of parliament, ministers, senators, presidents and speakers of the House, and leaders of government and opposition business. One of these is very much in the news in Jamaica. Dorothy Lightbourne is minister of justice and attorney general. She is also leader of government business in the Senate. The Manatt enquiry will tell us if she is using her power to support the present power structure or for some more just cause.

As we reflect on last week's commemoration of International Women's Day, we must ask why it is that there is no popular women's political manifesto appealing to women's issues; and why there are no women's caucuses or movements in the forefront of Caribbean politics.

A distinction must be made between women being in power and the power of feminist politics. Just as religion and the Church exist within a structure of capitalism and seem powerless to transform politics into a moral mission more consistent with their values and philosophy, women's movements exist within a structure of male domination and seem powerless to transform politics along the lines of more matriarchal values of caretaking, nurturing and mothering.

Power over Food

Take the power over food. Women feed the children. But the Food and Agriculture Organisation of the United Nations (FAO) said in its annual report, The State of Food and Agriculture, 2010-2011 that women farmers have unequal access to and use of a wide range of agricultural resources, including land, livestock and mechanical tools and inputs such as fertilisers, pesticides and improved seeds. They had unequal access to financial and extension services such as agricultural credits and technical know-how and training.

The report found that this imbalance existed in every region of the world and under different national, cultural, political and religious conditions. Yet, several studies also say that women farmers are not intrinsically less productive than male farmers.

The FAO estimates that if women had the same access to agricultural assets, inputs, and services as men do, they could increase yields on their farms, and this increase could raise total agricultural output in developing countries by roughly 2.5 to 4.0 per cent a year. Such a growth could bring 100-150 million people out of hunger each year. This is about 12-17 per cent of the 925 million undernourished people that exist in the world.

However, the old power structure in which men dominate agriculture still prevails. It says something when most countries have never had a female minister of agriculture. It would not make a difference if women ministers continued to support the existing power structure. But it would signify something if there were female ministers in charge of food and nutrition.

Underperformance

The FAO report says that commercial farming and new technology in agriculture have still not stopped the sector from underperforming. It underperforms because women do not have the access to opportunities that they should. Women make up 43 per cent of the agricultural labour force worldwide but the evidence is the same everywhere. They face constraints that limit their capacity to contribute to agricultural production.

The prevailing inequalities in agriculture have caused women to leave the countryside to find work in the cities. Many have abandoned unpaid domestic work and family farming as well. They have entered the industrial workforce. This has contributed to food insecurity and rural underdevelopment.

This transformation, though, has changed many rural households by empowering women with a greater say in decision-making. It has improved family welfare. As women have come to have greater say in decision-making in the home and family, nutrition and education have improved. Women have earned better incomes and have more discretionary power in how this income is spent. Women, in other words, have come to have greater control over household budgets. They have then spent a significantly larger share of this budget on food, health, and education.

This welcome change, reports say, has improved the well-being of women, their children, and their homes, and caused nations to make better use of their human resources, both male and female. This indicates that should women have greater power in a power structure that allows them more discretion they are likely to spend more of a country's budget on the family, nutrition, food, health and education. In doing so, they are more likely to improve the country's human resources, which is the key precondition for development. Healthier, better-fed and more educated people make more productive people.

Closing the gender gap

There is much to be done. It is in everyone's interest to close the gender gap in agriculture. This is the point of the FAO report. There is near-universal agreement that all forms of legal discrimination should be eliminated and government, judicial and law enforcement officers should be trained to deal with gender differences. Gender-specific obstacles faced by women such as those relating to extension services and credit should be exposed. Women are also at a natural disadvantage because they play many roles as workers, producers and heads of households. There must be creative ways to assist them.

Reports tell us that only 11 of the world's 192 heads of state are women; one in three women in the world will experience rape or sexual assault in her lifetime; and while performing two-thirds of the world's work, women own a mere one per cent of the means of production. Maybe Caribbean women in politics, business and civil society can transform power relations to address these inequities through greater food security and by attacking rural poverty.

One Kenyan female politician said: "We have a global crisis in terms of financial institutions, we have a global ecological crisis, we have a crisis of ongoing conflicts all over the world - I think everyone agrees that something is fundamentally broken." Only a new more gender-sensitive kind of politics can fix it. International Women's Day helps to raise consciousness of the importance of this new politics.

Robert Buddan lectures in the Department of Government, UWI, Mona. Email: Robert.Buddan@uwimona.edu.jm.