Dr. Lucille Mathurin Mair (née Walrond), born in Jamaica in 1924, is remembered as one of many Caribbean’s most excellent daughters. A pioneering feminist historian, tireless girls’s rights advocate, and groundbreaking diplomat, she spent her life championing justice, equality and the empowerment of ladies—each at dwelling and overseas.
She was a insurgent girl in each sense of the phrase, unafraid to problem norms and forge new paths for others to comply with.
Breaking Obstacles in Training and Analysis
A proud alumna of Wolmer’s Excessive College for Ladies, Mair went on to make educational historical past by changing into the primary girl to analysis and write about Jamaican girls’s historical past. Her doctoral thesis, accomplished in 1974 beneath the supervision of Elsa Goveia on the College of the West Indies (UWI), was titled “The Insurgent Girl within the British West Indies Throughout Slavery.” Although unpublished throughout her lifetime, it later turned a seminal textual content in Caribbean feminist scholarship.
Mair’s dedication to schooling and ladies’s growth prolonged past analysis. She was a co-founder of the Centre for Gender and Improvement Research at UWI and served as the primary feminine warden of Mary Seacole Corridor on the Mona Campus, mentoring numerous younger girls throughout their college years.
Diplomacy on the International Stage
Dr. Mair additionally made her mark on the worldwide stage, blazing a path in diplomacy and growth. In 1979, she turned Assistant Secretary-Normal within the Workplace of the United Nations Secretariat. A 12 months later, she was appointed Secretary-Normal of the World Convention on the UN Decade for Girls, held in Copenhagen in 1980. From 1981 to 1982, she served because the Secretary-Normal’s Advisor to UNICEF on Girls’s Improvement.
In 1982, Dr. Mair made historical past once more—changing into the primary girl ever to be appointed Underneath-Secretary-Normal of the United Nations. Between 1982 and 1987, she additionally served as Secretary-Normal of the United Nations Convention on Palestine.
Her work with the UN was rooted in a agency perception that girls of the International South needs to be positioned on the centre of growth conversations. She was Jamaica’s delegate to the Worldwide Girls’s Convention in Mexico in 1975, the place she helped to draft the landmark Mexico Declaration and the Regional Plan of Motion for Girls of Latin America (1977), each of which aimed to dismantle the systemic discrimination girls confronted within the labour market.
Serving Jamaica at Dwelling and Overseas
Earlier than her diplomatic profession overseas, Dr. Mair had already held a number of high-profile positions in Jamaica. She was appointed the primary Advisor on Girls’s Affairs and Head of the Jamaica Data Service (JIS) in 1974. She then served as Deputy Head of Jamaica’s Everlasting Mission to the United Nations in 1975 and was later appointed Ambassador to Cuba.
Returning dwelling, she was known as to serve once more—this time as Senator and Minister of State within the Ministry of Overseas Affairs. In 1992, she was appointed Jamaica’s Everlasting Consultant to the United Nations, capping off a distinguished diplomatic profession.
Legacy of a Insurgent Girl
Dr. Lucille Mathurin Mair’s lifelong advocacy didn’t go unrecognised. In 1996, she turned the fifth recipient of the distinguished CARICOM Triennial Award for Girls, an honour reserved for Caribbean girls who’ve made vital contributions to the development of gender equality and the event of the area.
Her story has been preserved and celebrated within the biography “Lucille Mathurin Mair: A Insurgent Girl,” written by Professor Verene Shepherd and revealed by UWI Press. By way of interviews, private papers, and reflections from colleagues and pals, Shepherd captures the exceptional scope of Mair’s contributions—as a historian, spouse, mom, diplomat, legislator and mentor.
She handed away on January 29, 2009, on the age of 85, abandoning a proud legacy and a household devoted to public service. Her youngsters embody Ambassador Gail Mathurin and sons David and Adrian.
Dr. Mair was typically described as a girl of “grace, appeal, wit, steely willpower, independence and open-mindedness.” However maybe most memorably, she was a real trailblazer—a girl who went the place nobody had gone earlier than and paved the way in which for others to do the identical.
Cowl picture supply : Centre for Reparations Research UWI
