The UWI Gender Journey

Abstract

“The UWI Gender Journey is a bold volume that carefully documents the visionary commitment and struggles for recognition and respect of a relatively small cohort of dedicated feminist scholars, each of them powerful academics and leaders, as they collaborated to institutionalize gender and development studies at the University of West Indies. We learn about the origins of the Institute for Gender and Development Studies and how it came to provide global academic leadership in the field of gender and development studies. “The story of the Institute for Gender and Development Studies and all its preceding phases deserves to be told both because of its significant impact on regional scholarship and also because it exemplifies commitment to the legitimation of a fundamentally interdisciplinary academic undertaking with great importance for Caribbean social well-being. The UWI Gender Journey records a uniquely regional project and its broader momentum, offering powerful lessons for advocates for gender studies internationally. The authors also make clear that gender and development studies is an essential component of the global struggle against gender inequalities. “The audience for this work is both regional and global. The detailed descriptive account of how women and gender studies came to be in the University of the West Indies provides much of scholarly interest for academics elsewhere. Historians will find the volume invaluable for its wealth of details about how various Caribbean feminist scholars and their supporters responded to global development initiatives.” —Pauline Barber, Professor and Chair, Department of Sociology and Social Anthropology, Dalhousie University