History This Week No. 40/2008

By Cecilia McAlmont

In the Annual Report Guyana 1958 is an excerpt on Work Among Women. It was interesting because the focus was on an organization that is hardly heard of these days: the Women’s Institutes. It stated:

Work among women is devoted in the main to promoting and developing Women’s Institutes throughout the rural areas of the Colony. The total number of registered Institutes increased to 60 and there were 3 others awaiting registration. The Executive Committee of the B.G. Women’s Institutes functioned efficiently during the year, meeting regularly and planning a number of activities for the benefit of the movement. It was given a grant of $500 from Government, which will be available annually in the future.

The Ninth Annual Meeting was held at Beterverwagting, East Coast Demarara. Over 200 delegates and observers attended. A special feature of the meeting was a Fashion Show which attracted a large crowd from the surrounding area. The outfits modeled at the Show were made by the Institutes.

In addition to their usual programmes, the Institutes participated in the B. G. Music Festival, the Rural Display and Agricultural Exhibition held on the occasion of the visit by H. R H .the Princess Margaret, and the League of Coloured People’s Exhibition and Fair. The Beterverwagting Institute secured second place at the Music Festival in the competition for Rural Women’s Choirs for which the B. G. Women’s Institutes donated a cup in 1957.At the Rural Display and Agricultural Exhibition most of the Institutes sent attractive exhibits and displayed a two-room model cottage complete with low-cost model furniture. For the L. C. P. Exhibition and Fair, the Social Welfare Division displayed in its booth various articles made by Institute members.

Courses were again conducted under the Rural Education Scheme. There was a greater demand for more of these courses. Community projects were on the increase this year. Many Institutes made outstanding contribution in this field and so helped to enhance life in the rural areas.

But fifty years on what has happened to the organization that did so much “to enhance life in the rural areas?” However before attempting to answer that question it might be useful to give the origins and development of the organization. The Institute was established under the umbrella of the god-mother organization, British Guiana Women’s League of Social Services in 1942. The specific objectives of the League were:
1.  To promote and encourage self-help especially among the rural women.
2.  To encourage women to be self-reliant and reduce the need for charity.
The general objectives of the Institutes were:

1. To bring women (rural and urban) together to learn skills which will help them in improving their homes.
2.  To stimulate interest in agricultural pursuits

3.  To give instructions and training in Home Economics, Civics, handicraft, straw work, ceramics, thread art, tye dyeing, drama and other cultural subjects
4.  To develop a spirit of cooperation, initiative and enterprise.

After 1942, Institutes were formed throughout the colony and by 1950 there were 75 Women’s Institutes with a membership of approximately 5,000 which functioned under the umbrella of the above mentioned League. One of the early aims of the Institutes was “to empower women so that they could know the joy of striving and the thrill of achieving” As a consequence, the League attempted to unite women country wide by bringing them together every year in an annual convention with a view to having the women share their experiences, identify areas for improvement and plan for the future. The year 1950 was also significant since government took over responsibility for the Institutes and although they were allowed to function as independent (of the League ) bodies. However, they were advised by a government appointed Women’s Welfare Officer and as can be seen in the excerpt quoted above, received a subvention from the government to carry out their activities. There in perhaps lay the many problems of the British Guiana later Guyana Federation of Women’s Institutes. This new modus operandi certainly was contrary to one of the main objectives of the League.

The Federation became an active member of the Association of Country Women of the world (ACWW) and has benefited from funding. Moreover one President, Mrs. Irma Payne served two terms as area representative of the organisation. With the new motto after independence of “Better Women for Home and Community” from about 1980  the activities of the Federation centred around straw-craft, needle-craft, leather –craft, hand embroidery and ceramics. Even today the few Institutes that are still active are engaged in traditional activities though they have attempted some diversification. For example, several computers have been acquired by several branches which are being used to train young women

Is it too little too late? Why has the organization lost the vibrancy that made it stand out fifty years ago? Perhaps the answer is to be in found in the purpose of its conception, growth and development. This idea is touched on in the initial pages of a report on the Institute done 15 years ago. In it Brouet noted that the Institute was established at a time when “women were still considered to be the weaker sex [and] were considered to lack the ability to effectively participate in public life [which] may have been as a direct result of the very strong patriarchal systems that persisted…”  In fact the general objectives of the Federation earlier listed were geared to enhance women especially rural women’s ability to function in that private sphere – the home as it aimed to bring women together to learn skills which will help them in improving their homes and to give them instructions in home economics, handicraft etc.

Later in the report , Brouet observed that by the end of the 1990’s “the major focus of the Institutes continued to be [the] traditional role considered to be women’s” and further posited that there seemed to be no definite strategy to acquaint members of the Institute with the new women’s movement. But how could there be? In the very decades when the Institute’s motto was to provide skills to train “Better Women for Home and Community” women nationally, regionally and internationally were waging a relentless battle – the UN Decade for Women to Beijing, CEDAW and other International Conventions to clear a space for women in the public sphere so that they can take their place with men, on equal terms, at the table of power and decision making. That battle still rages. Moreover the resurgence in local NGO activity from the beginning of the 90’s led to the creation of new women’s NGO’s and the reinvigoration of others which taught women the very skills they had learnt from the Institutes as part of an overall package to empower women economically and build their self esteem to help them deal with the continuing scourge of domestic violence.

Brouet  also identified other problems faced by the Federation – the perennial one of finance from its inception in the 1940’s to the present. She also pointed to the fact that the organization seemed unable to get consensus on important issues- the acquisition of a building being a case in point. It is still one of the main issues faced by the Federation. Ten years ago, this writer had a wide range of discussions with the then president on the Federation, its successes its problems and its future plans.  She identified a crisis in leadership stemming from the organisation’s inability to attract and retain younger members and the contention from her and other long established leaders’ that younger members were unwilling to take on responsibilities and were content to let them continue to take the lead. But no effort seemed to have been made by them to have identified, mentored and groomed younger women for leadership. Such a move might have helped the organization to identify the changing needs of women and to revamp the organization to cater for those needs.

The question is does the current relatively younger decision makers of the Federation have the ability to do so? Only time will tell.