Rawwida Baksh is a feminist activist, researcher, writer and policy adviser. She has over three decades of experience in the field of women’s rights and gender equality in Trinidad and Tobago, the Caribbean,the Commonwealth and internationally. She was the first Coordinator of the Caribbean Association for Feminist Research and Action (CAFRA) in the pre-Beijing decade of 1985-1995. As Head of the Gender Section at the Commonwealth Secretariat (London, UK) in the post-Beijing decade of 1996–2006, she led the Secretariat’s support to Commonwealth governments and civil society in areas including gender mainstreaming; gender-responsive budgets; gender and human rights; and gender, democracy, peace and conflict. She was also Programme Leader of Women’s Rights and Citizenship at the International Development Research Centre (Ottawa, Canada) from 2006–2011, where she led IDRC’s support to feminist academic and policy researchers across the global South in areas Including sexual and reproductive rights; women’s economic rights; decentralization and women’s rights; and gender and democratic governance.
Since her return to the Caribbean in 2011, Rawwida has been working independently with governments, NGOs, regional and international agencies on areas including national gender policies; gender and democracy; gender-based violence; LGBT discrimination; and gender and climate change mitigation/ adaptation/ resilience. She has been engaged in the publication of numerous books, manuals and reports in the field of women’s rights and gender equality over the past three decades, including the Oxford Handbook of Transnational Feminist Movements (a collection of essays on global feminist organizing since the 1970s). And she currently volunteers with two feminist NGOs – the Caribbean Association for Feminist Research and Action (CAFRA); and the Caribbean Institute for Women in Leadership (CIWiL).
