Another year in the calendar of female political activism
Editorial
WITH so many women holding more and more offices and posts that formerly were the exclusive domain of men, little thought is given and less homage paid to those women who fifty years ago raised their voices in the councils of power for the total emancipation of women. Over the last week or so, there were a number of events to mark the 47th anniversary of the Women's Progressive Organisation (WPO), which organisation is the women's arm of the People's Progressive Party (PPP). The WPO has been led for decades by Former President of Guyana, Mrs Janet Janet, who, amazingly was a moving spirit and intellectual force in at least three remarkable organisations which emerged in this land between the mid-1940s and the early 1950s. The organisations were remarkable because two of them influenced the social and political history of this country, and one has been shaping developments from 1953 to the present time. The first remarkable grouping was the Women's Political and Economic Organisation (WPEO) founded in the mid-1940s by Mrs Janet Jagan, the youthful American wife of Guyanese dentist, Dr Cheddi Jagan. She was joined by Mrs Winifred Gaskin and together they initiated a number of activities aimed at sensitising women to the importance of getting themselves registered as voters so that they could have a say in the civic life of the country. They were soon joined by Mrs Frances Stafford and the WPEO held meetings at the then Town Hall and also moved around the country meeting women and urging them to take time out of the kitchen to consider the positive changes that could be made to improve the lives of citizens. The WPEO was extraordinary because it was the first all-female political organisation in Guyana and may be one of the earliest such organisations in the Caribbean. The Women's Political and Economic Organisation did not last much longer than a year, but during its short life, it rallied women and educated them about their electoral responsibilities. What was equally important, the WPEO in those pre-Independence days helped to inspire the formation of the Political Affairs Committee (PAC) and lent its considerable intellectual skills to that body's early work. As our history tells us, the People's Progressive Party grew out of the matrix of the Political Affairs Committee. Those early years of the PPP have to constitute the most satisfying period of Guyanese politics; for, headed by the fiery young dentist Cheddi Jagan and the brilliant young lawyer Forbes Burnham, the party ignited the flame of nationalism in the collective breast of the country. The cast of characters included men of such brilliance as Martin Carter, the Westmaas brothers, Eusi Kwayana (then Sydney King of "This confounded nonsense must stop" fame), Clinton Wong, Jocelyn Hubbard and others. The women, Janet Jagan, Jessie Burnham and Jane Phillips-Gay, were quickly dubbed the "Three J's" and today they remain an enduring collective symbol of feminist-politicians who were the intellectual equals of their male counterparts in the PPP. Nearly fifty years after the Three J's entered the Legislative Council, dressed in their white sharkskin skirt-suits and red inner blouses, there is much greater awareness of women's general contribution to political development. Gender issues now have the status of a formal academic discipline, yet women's activism and revolutionary advance appear to be less encompassing. There are more conferences, more studies, more papers written about women, still today's gender activities seem muted and tame when compared with the stirring, visceral movement of the past inhabited by the Janet Jagans, the Jessie Burnhams, the Jane Phillips-Gays, and later the Philomena `Fireball' Sahoyes.
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