1 Introduction: Mapping the Terrain

Notes 1 Introduction: Mapping the Terrain 1 For example, a recent sampling of newspaper headlines in Barbados include, ‘Men Fear Female Strides’, Barbados Advocate (30 June 1998): 2; ‘Men In Danger: Two Politicians Have Say on Gender Roles’, Barbados Advocate (25 September, 1998): 8; ‘Caribbean Boys In Crisis’, Sunday Sun (20 September, 1998): 14A; ‘Female Edge: Men Wasting Crucial Time’, Barbados Advocate (1 January, 1999): 8; ‘Concern For Boys: Single Sex Schools May Be Better, Says [Prime Minister] Arthur’, Daily Nation (24 June, 1999): 2; ‘PM: Schools Need Proper Male Figures’, Barbados Advocate (24 June, 1999): 4; ‘Women Taking Over’, Sunday Sun (17 August, 1997): 7A; ‘Males Crippled By Slavery’, Barbados Advocate (24 February, 1998): 7; ‘Men Say Law Courts Favour Women’, Barbados Advocate (17 February, 1998): 7. 2 Until recently, these were the only countries of the Caribbean Common Market, forming CARICOM. In 1998 Suriname was admitted to membership and Haiti in July 1999. They do not form part of this analysis. 3 With brief experiments with alternatives or modifications of the standard approach by Jamaica in the 1970s, Grenada 1979–83, and corrupted state intrusions by Guyana throughout the 1970s to 1985 when President Forbes Burnham died (Griffith 1997a; Emmanuel et al. 1986; Manley 1982). 4 With one woman of the ten a nineteenth-century religious leader. 5 Horatio Nelson is the nineteenth-century British naval hero whom the nineteenth-century, white, Barbadian Plantocracy regarded as saving them from French conquest. Some black Barbadians say he is not a hero and since their ancestors were enslaved at the time it did not matter whether Barbados was conquered by the French or remained a British colony. 6 The arguments of the ‘male marginalization thesis’ are now an article of faith in the Caribbean. In several Caribbean countries public commenta- tors are recommending the closure of women’s bureaux and the end of programs that focus on women. 7 Linda Carty’s study of women in senior administrative and academic positions in the University of the West Indies is a rare exception to this trend. It is the first study to examine unequal gender relations in higher education in the Anglophone Caribbean (Carty 1988). 8 This is an area that requires further attention. Many Caribbean women continue to provide reproductive and nurturing services for their adult, single children as a responsibility. This then becomes part of the myth of the wonderful mother, while the exploitative and dependency aspects of this are ignored. 179 180 Notes 2 Theorizing the State and Gender Systems in the Twentieth-Century Caribbean 01 ‘Fourth Boy: My father don’t live in the same house. … My father could- n’t hit me cause he don’t support me. An’ that’s why I alright. … First Boy: Mothers stupid, that’s why most of us without fathers. P’raps it’s because mothers stupid that fathers don’t turn up sometimes to see what’s happening. … I don’t see much of my father, but my second brother father is good. … How many fathers you got in yuh family?’ (Lamming 1986: 38–9). 02 The first line of the novel reads ‘… my mother put her head through the window to let the neighbour know I was nine’ (Lamming 1986: 1). 03 These are Jamaica, and Trinidad and Tobago 1962; Guyana and Barbados 1966; Grenada 1973; St Lucia and Dominica 1978; St Vincent and the Grenadines 1979; Antigua and Barbuda and Belize 1981; Bahamas 1973; St Christopher (St Kitts)-Nevis 1983. Suriname became a member of CARICOM in 1998 and Haiti was admitted to membership in July 1999. The analysis focuses on the Anglophone Caribbean. 04 These territories are Anguilla, Bermuda, the British Virgin Islands, Cayman Islands, Montserrat, and Turks and Caicos Islands. 05 Actually the words of the Barbados Constitution, Constitution of Barbados, schedule to the Barbados Independence Act (Bridgetown: Government Printing Office, 1966). 06 Most of the ideas and arguments presented in this section are condensed from my article, ‘Theorizing Gender Systems and the Project of Modernity in the Twentieth-Century Caribbean, Feminist Review, 59 (Summer 1998): 186–210. 07 See Chapter 4 for a full discussion of this. 08 Hawkesworth identifies the authors and texts that contribute to the different types of gender analysis, see Hawkesworth 1997: 650. 09 The arguments presented here are summarized from pp. 443–5 of my article, ‘Liberal Ideology and Contradictions in Caribbean Gender Systems’, see Barriteau 1998a. 10 The Caribbean has one of the highest ratios in the world of female headed households. In 1992, Jamaica, Barbados, Grenada and St Kitts- Nevis had 40 per cent or greater of female headed households. Of the remaining countries, six had female headship of 30 per cent or greater (Mondesire and Dunn 1995: 47). This is a phenomenon dating back to the post-emancipation, nineteenth-century Caribbean and exacerbated in the early twentieth century by broad waves of migration as Caribbean men sought jobs in Panama, the United States, Great Britain and Canada to support themselves and their families. 11 Liberalism’s construct of women as non-rational beings, the postmod- ernist feminist deconstruction of the concept of rationality, and its recurring theme in the Caribbean’s social, economic and political land- scape, prove problematic for Caribbean women. Notes 181 3 Women and Gender Relations in the Twentieth-Century Caribbean 1 I do not suggest that men do not suffer economic disadvantages. We need research to expose how developments in the national and the global political economy, coupled with men’s gender identities and their roles in divisions of labor, can also create vulnerabilities for specific groups of men (see Razavi 1999: 415). 2 The research project was proposed as Male Under-Achievement in the Regional Educational System. CGDS changed the title of the proposed research to reflect the fact that we do not yet know if boys and men are under-achieving or, indeed, all the issues and variables to be uncovered by this research. 3 Jamaican women had a limited franchise based on property qualifications in 1919. Women had the right to vote and to stand for elections in St Lucia in 1924, in Jamaica in 1944 and Trinidad and Tobago in 1946. Women gained universal adult suffrage in the majority of British Caribbean colonies in the 1950s starting with Barbados in 1950. The Bahamas was last in 1961 with all restrictions to political participation removed in 1964. (See Inter-parliamentary Union 1997: 28; Henry-Wilson 1989). 4 This is borne out in Table 1.1, Chapter 1. 4 Constructing Gender Containing Women: Promoting Gender Equity in Caribbean States 1 Information obtained during a field visit to Tortola, British Virgin Islands, March 8–13th, 1999. 2 In Chapter 5 I explore how women have always been incorporated in development planning by outlining the strategies pursued by successive Barbadian governments in doing so. 3 At the famous 1976 Women in Development Conference at Wellesley University, Massachusetts, scholars, senior university and government officials from the South were horrified to find out they had been invited to hear misinformed research presentations on women in Asia, Africa, Latin America and the Caribbean with no opportunity for them to counter what was offered. According to Joycelin Massiah this experience gave birth to the WICP project, at the UWI, to prevent the ongoing dis- tortions of the lives of Caribbean women (Massiah 7 September 1999). 4 No case is being made for academic altruism. If it exists at all it is a by- product. Careers have been built and scholastic dynasties founded in the WID field by both Northern Atlantic experts and southern scholars, primar- ily but not exclusively located in northern countries (see Barriteau 1986). 5 Gender as an analytical framework was not established at the beginning of the WID field. However, the criticisms should be noted since the 182 Notes programs and policies linger in the South long after they have been aban- doned in the North. 5 Gender Systems in an Independent Caribbean State: the Barbadian Case 1 I do not deny the contributions of this school. However, I maintain that government planners focus on specific contributions which they want from women. 2 The plans examined were produced between 1960 and 1993. They cov- ered the periods: 1960–65; 1962–65; 1965–68; 1968–72; 1973–77; 1979–83; 1983–88; 1989–93 and 1993–2000. 3 There is an ironic shift that occurs when the BLP succeeds the DLP in forming the government. The DLP paid no specific attention to women in their development plans. However, this government introduced and maintained the post-colonial welfare state over a fifteen-year period. The welfare state has provided many benefits for women but in narrowly defined roles as mothers and dependent clients. The BLP was the first government to plan systematically for women, but it also began the process of dismantling the welfare state. None of these two governments recognized asymmetric relations of gender. 4 For a fuller treatment of this see Hanniff 1987; Errol Barrow was the founder and leader of the DLP. He was Premier and Prime Minister of Barbados from 1961 to 1976, and from 1986 to 1987. 5 However, the Barbados Progressive League, the forerunner of the BLP, advocated egalitarian measures in its 1944 manifesto. It advocated the appointment of women to the colonial hospital board, and the provision of special university scholarships for girls. (see the Barbados Progressive League 1944). 6 These reforms were introduced over a nine-year period. 7 In 1970 47.5 per cent of all households were headed by women, in 1990 it was 45 per cent.

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