Defying, producing, and overlooking stereotypes? The complexities of mobilizing “grandmotherhood” as political strategy

ABSTRACT

This article explores the Canadian Grandmothers to Grandmothers Campaign, a mobilization of older women responding to the effects of HIV/AIDS in sub-Saharan Africa. Based on interviews, participant observation, and archival work, this article looks at how and to what effect “grandmotherhood,” as discourse, was mobilized and deployed, in fluid and fractured ways, in order to increase members’ credibility as global social justice actors and build their solidarity with African women. These mobilizations functioned to uphold essentialist notions of what being a grandmother means, while also challenging stereotypes of older women as frail and disengaged.

KEYWORDS:

• Activism
• grandmother
• grandmotherhood
• mobilization
• older women
• stereotypes

Notes

1. Our analysis focuses explicitly on why, how, and to what effect the Canadian dimension of this mobilization was taking place; it is beyond the scope of this article to examine the southern African mobilizations or the transnational dynamics associated with this Campaign, although such analyses are available elsewhere (see Chazan 2013, 2015). Within the larger project, which sought to understand why and how older women were mobilizing and linking up in Canada and South Africa, the first author was responsible for designing and conducting the research, while the second author engaged in the Canadian component by transcribing interviews and assisting with a survey analysis.

2. While advocacy was part of the Campaign from the start, after 2010 it gained prominence. In 2011, the SLF initiated a split between its Grandmothers Campaign and NAC. NAC went on to form its own organization focused squarely on advocacy, the Grandmothers Advocacy Network (GRAN). GRAN has since been highly recognized for the strength and tenacity of its advocacy work. After GRAN formed, the SLF decreed that advocacy within the Canadian context could not be part of the Campaign’s mandate, for a variety of reasons. Nevertheless, because this article deals with the years before this happened, we include advocacy as one of its central activities.

3. To the dismay of many, the bill subsequently did not make it through the Canadian Senate to be passed into law. With the split off of GRAN from the SLF, the fight to fix Canada’s Access to Medicines Regime continued to be a central point of work for many Canadian grandmothers.