Introduction: Mapping the Terrain

In this book I investigate the construct and operations of relations of gender in the political economy of the modernizing, twentieth-century Caribbean. My analysis centres on women and Caribbean states but it is situated in the post-war, post-independent Caribbean on the brink of the twenty-first century. My investigation is located at the juncture where regional experiences with the rapid changes in the global political economy intersect with fundamental developments in the social relations of gender. Caribbean governments are wedded to the politics of neoliberalism and are fumbling through its self-sustaining economic maze of globalization. Our governments are finally connecting the implosions and upheavals in Caribbean social systems with the vicious havoc wreaked by hegemonic and exclusionary trade regimes masquerading as fair trade agreements (Barbados Advocate, 4 December 1999). Within that economic maelstrom, Caribbean women straddle the crossroads of production and reproduction. Within this cauldron of political and economic turmoil we enjoy unprecedented credit for all that is wrong for Caribbean men1 and, often, all that is adverse about Caribbean society.