News Releases

International Women’s Day and Herstory Month Message “Celebrate & Accelerate”

For Release Upon Receipt - March 12, 2025

UWI


 Dr. Halimah DeShong was appointed new University Director of the Institute for Gender and Development Studies (IGDS) in September 2024.

The UWI Regional Headquarters Jamaica. Wednesday March 12, 2025. The following statement is authored by Dr. Halimah DeShong, University Director, Institute for Gender and Development Studies at The University of the West Indies.

 International Women’s Day (IWD) and Women’s Herstory Month (WHM) provide important platforms from which to celebrate women from all walks of life. Annually, during the month of March, we not only mark these commemorative anniversaries as symbolic, but we also call attention to enduring barriers to gender equity and justice. On behalf of the Institute for Gender and Development Studies at The University of the West Indies, I am delighted to wish women across the region, and the globe, a happy IWD and WHM!

 As we reflect on women’s extraordinary contribution to families, communities, societies, economies, activism and politics, I am reminded of the question “can a dub poet be a woman?” Strategically posed by the late Jamaican Dub poet Jean “Binta” Breeze, this question serves as an entry point for celebrating the brilliance of Caribbean women; and as a caution that we must remain uncompromising in confronting enduring gender inequality. 

 In an interview with the artist, published in a 2003 edition of the Caribbean journal, Callaloo, Breeze remarked on the salience of this question:

“I think it was just the woman's voice they did not like, because my early works like “Aid Travels with a Bomb” and “To Plant or Not to Plant,” and so on, were overtly political and not talking about women doing the laundry and bringing up the children. So once I started writing women’s domestic dub, it was considered too personal.”

 Breeze reveals just how inseparable the experience of the personal and political remain, in all aspects of who we are, and what we do in the Caribbean, and across the globe. Many would even suggest that the question of whether a Dub Poet, a Prime Minister, a CEO, a Judge or a Heavy Machine Operator, can be a woman, has been asked and answered; since women have in fact occupied all of these positions. We celebrate women’s contribution to and leadership in a range of fields, where, historically, we have and have not appeared. However, what happens when women make visible the personal, in spaces demarcated as public or as sites of work, tells us something about what is at stake for many women in the global political economy, of which the Caribbean is a part. What is at stake for women when we spotlight the experiential and when we engage in community, collective and solidarity work? More importantly, what do we make possible through collaborative work, which comes with deep personal investments?

 For this, we can turn to generations of Caribbean women organising on plantations, in trade unions, in political parties, in communities, and in women’s organisations. Even as this organising has never been without its tensions, we must continue to celebrate their work and their shared vision of a truly expansive and just Caribbean. Through the IGDS, The UWI remains connected to a legacy of pathbreaking women’s organisations in the region like the Caribbean Association of Feminist Research and Action (CAFRA), Red Thread, Sistren Theatre Collective, Productive Organisation for Women in Action (POWA) and several others. We celebrate their singular contribution to national and regional legislative and policy shifts, community organising and public education on gender equity and justice. We recognise the indivisibility of the personal and political dimensions of this work.

 As beneficiaries and protectors of legacies of Caribbean women’s organising to shift race, gender and class inequalities, we must continue to make visible enduring systems and practices of inequality; and we must continue to organise to shift conditions of injustice, in our local, national, regional and global networks. Celebrating IWD and WHM embodies our collective commitment to accelerating progress for women. For us at The UWI, it means a commitment to the principles and actions enshrined in The UWI Gender Policy, and to collective actions which honour and build on a legacy of our women’s and our people’s unrelenting quest for just Caribbean livities.

 Peace and blessings!

-End-

 About The University of the West Indies

The UWI has been and continues to be a pivotal force in every aspect of Caribbean development, residing at the centre of all efforts to improve the well-being of people across the region for over 75 years.

 From a university college of London in Jamaica with 33 medical students in 1948, The UWI is today an internationally respected, global university with nearly 50,000 students and five campuses: Mona in Jamaica, St. Augustine in Trinidad and Tobago, Cave Hill in Barbados, Five Islands in Antigua and Barbuda and its Global Campus, and global centres in partnership with universities in North America, Latin America, Asia, Africa, and Europe.

 The UWI offers over 1000 certificate, diploma, undergraduate and postgraduate degree options in Culture, Creative and Performing Arts, Food and Agriculture, Engineering, Humanities and Education, Law, Medical Sciences, Science and Technology, Social Sciences, and Sport. As the Caribbean’s leading university, it possesses the largest pool of Caribbean intellect and expertise committed to confronting the critical issues of our region and the wider world.

 The UWI has been consistently ranked among the best in the world by the most reputable ranking agency, Times Higher Education (THE). Since The UWI’s 2018 debut in THE’s rankings, it has performed well in multiple schemes—among them including World University Rankings, Golden Age University Rankings (between 50 and 80 years old), Latin America Rankings, and the Impact Rankings for its response to the world’s biggest concerns, outlined in the 17 United Nations Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs), including Good Health and Well-being; Gender Equality and Climate Action.

 Learn more at www.uwi.edu 

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