Becoming Red Thread Women: Alternative Visions of Gendered Politics in Post-independence Guyana

Shifting the Ground Beneath Us

“…1 Formed in 1986 by a small group of middle-class women who were then members of the multi-racial Working People's Alliance (WPA), from its inception Red Thread defined itself as an autonomous organization located firmly outside of party structures. This non-negotiable commitment was a local response to the racialized Á African-Guyanese and Indian-Guyanese Á constituencies that formed the membership and compromised the independence of the women's arms of the two main political parties, and was put into a regional context for several members by the collapse of the women's arm of the People's Revolutionary Government of Grenada in 1983 (Andaiye 2000;Nettles 2007). …”

Moving toward Theory for the 21st Century: The Centrality of Nonwestern Semiperipheries to World Ethnic/Racial Inequality

“…Furthermore, semiperipheral ethnic minorities have been excluded from "democratizing" states just as they were marginalized from the previous regimes (e.g., Noonan 1995;Kadouf 2001;Nettles 2007). Indeed, many democratizing states have continued to marginalize and repress ethnic minorities and indigenous people (e.g., Gurowitz 2000;Kadouf 2001;Munoz 2006;Nam 2006;Krøvel 2011).…”

Introduction

“…This led to legislation proposals and passage of a law guaranteeing the right to family planning information and contraception in public hospitals. Another example in Argentina highlighted female laypersons conducting neighborhood health surveys 30 . In Chile, contestations revolving around symbolic meanings of citizenship resulted in poor, workingclass, rural, and indigenous women creating formal networks "to contribute to improving the situation of discrimination, both gender and class, that women of the popular sector suffer …to promote a more substantive and inclusive citizenship"…”