Imaobong Umoren (London School of Economics and Political Science) presents “I don’t think I am a Feminist: Eugenia Charles’s Gender Politics in Postcolonial Dominica” on January 22, 2020, 5:30pm to 7:00pm at Lecture Room 103, UCL Institute of the Americas, 51 Gordon Square, Bloomsbury, London. (Organized by UCL Institute of the Americas.)

Description: In 1980, Eugenia Charles made history when she became the first female prime minister in the Caribbean following her victory in the Dominican election.

With conservative views and close alliances with Margaret Thatcher and Ronald Reagan as well as her own defiant personality, Charles gained the title of ‘Iron Lady of the Caribbean’. However, this moniker obscures more than it reveals, especially when it relates to Charles’s gender politics. This paper examines her speeches, interviews, and policies and stresses the paradoxes that lay at the centre of her views on gender, women and feminism.

Imaobong Umoren is Assistant Professor in International History of Gender at the LSE. Her research centres on Afro-Caribbean and African American women’s history in the twentieth century. She is the author of Race Women Internationalists: Activist-Intellectuals and Global Freedom Struggles (University of California Press, 2018).

[Many thanks to Peter Jordens for bringing this item to our attention.] Source: https://www.ucl.ac.uk/americas/events/2020/jan/i-dont-think-i-am-feminist-eugenia-charless-gender-politics-postcolonial-dominica