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by Kris Rampersad (Author)
Through the Political Glass Ceiling by Kris Rampersad captures the build-up to the election of Kamla Persad-Bissessar as the first woman Prime Minister of Trinidad & Tobago. It gives critical analytical historical and socio-cultural contexts that explore the roles of gender, culture, geo-location, petro-economics and other often overlooked factors in the politics of this developing country. It encapsulates the challenges of achieving gender equality and issues of women in leadership and seeking political office in post-colonial Independent small island Commonwealth Caribbean states. It documents the factors and forces that led to the whirlwind triumph of Kamla Persad-Bissessar to become Trinidad and Tobago's First Female Prime Minister, at the snap polls of May 2010.It includes Selected Speeches of Kamla Persad-Bissessar's, sorted, organised, ordered and compiled, with introduction, contexts and analyses by Dr Kris Rampersad. It surveys the polarisation in the political arena vis-a-vis more cohesive cultural forces at play in Trinidad and Tobago society. It presents such paradox of politics in post-colonial Trinidad and Tobago society in the contest for leadership between the country's longest standing political entity, the People's National Movement, and the first female leader of a political party, United National Congress' Kamla Persad-Bissessar. It sets the political career of Persad-Bissessar against the backdrop of multiculturalism, diversity, growing consciousness of gender and rural factors in politics with refreshing insights into interplay between minority and dominant political ideologies political and voting cultures. It gives radical insights to historical contexts of the political culture and voting habits, presenting the country's experiences with political parties from precolonial through Independence to self-government. It traces the voting culture and development paths from the colonial period to the first Prime Minister, Dr Eric Williams, through the landslide victory of the National Alliance for Reconstruction and the Prime Ministership of Arthur NR Robinson, into the voting deadlock at the turn of the century involving Prime Ministers Basdeo Panday and Patrick Manning.It so presents the situations and contexts of the first woman Kamla Persad-Bissessar's controversial political career towards contesting the election for Prime Ministership. It roadmaps her journey to T&T's highest political offices, through to the defining moments of the May 2010 snap election. These are expertly sorted and treated thematically, as well as biographically through her evolving roles from local government to Member of Parliament, Minister of Education, Minister of Legal Affairs towards shattering the political glass ceiling as first woman Attorney General and first woman leader of the Opposition in the House. Selected speeches of Mrs. Persad-Bissessar form the backdrop to these explorations. Speeches presented relate to Mrs. Persad-Bissessar's Stepping through the glass ceiling, Decisive moments in her political decision-making; Vision of National & Political Unity; the gender factor; To be woman and leader; engaging partner watchdogs. The speeches of Persad-Bissessar are set in contexts of the challenges in governing a diverse society as well as the global efforts at gender equality by the author and publisher, Dr Kris Rampersad, an award-winning journalist, researcher, educator and sustainable development gender equality advocate. Dr Rampersad's introduction, A Clash of Political Cultures - Cultural Diversity & Minority Politics in Trinidad & Tobago, traces the current political environment to the immediate pre- and post independent periods as post-Independent Trinidad and Tobago struggles for articulation and definition of an all-encompassing national identity to unite various migrant streams from 'mother cultures' of Europe, Africa, India, China, Syria, Lebanon who joined the islands' indigeneous peoples.
