Peggy Antrobus Views

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I was also an emerging feminist, eager to become involved in the Jamaican women's movement. People told me about the impressive new Director of Women's Affairs in the socialist government of Michael Manley, Peggy Antrobus. I excitedly made an appointment to see her at the Women's Bureau in the Prime Minister's Office, bringing Canadian materials from our recent Royal Commission on the Status of Women.

In the last two world meetings, Third World women took the leadership, both moral and intellectual. Peggy Antrobus was one of the women in this group, which included Gita Sen, Vandana Shiva, Lucille Mair, Nita Barrow, Naris Sadik and Sonia Correia. As women from the South, they had a clear picture of the devastating effect of neo-liberal capitalism on their communities.

Peggy Antrobus’s initial response to the Millennium Development Goals was to dismiss them as ‘Major Distracting Gimmicks’. The women’s movement as a whole, she says, felt betrayed by them. Nevertheless, working with agencies (UN, governments and NGOs) in the Caribbean, she has modified her views. Given the right local conditions, she now feels, the MDGs can be used to advance agendas aimed at addressing poverty, HIV/AIDS, women’s health and gender equality. She tells Alliance how and why she has moved from rejection to at least partial acceptance.

Like Ezra Mbogori (see p17), Peggy Antrobus feels strongly that civil society is often hindered from working on the MDGs because of lack of resources. She cites two of the many reasons for this. First is the old problem of funding groups, not just projects. Funders, she argues, ‘have to find ways of supporting NGOs that are movement-oriented, that are grounded in a sense of social justice. They must include groups that are working on advocacy, not just service providers. Many donors will give money if you’re handing it out to people, if you’re building houses, planting crops – of course, there’s nothing wrong with that – but they don’t want to fund advocacy groups.’