Women and Gender Relations in the Twentieth-Century Caribbean

At the end of the twentieth century, commentators often typecast Caribbean women as the witches of medieval Europe. Women are responsible for the destruction of families (but not crops as yet), high rates of divorce, male economic and social marginalization, and the comparatively poorer performance of boys and men at every educational level (Barriteau 1998a: 437). Newspaper articles and editorials warn of the damage being done to boys by being raised in female-headed households, attending co-educational schools and being taught primarily by female teachers (Barriteau 1994: 283): Recent symposia dealing with the status of men cannot be faulted for their exploratory purpose… Discussions confirmed a growing suspicion that males in our society, as elsewhere, were increasingly being disadvantaged, particularly within the educational and legal system. (Barbados Advocate, 1 January 1999) According to this type of analysis Caribbean countries are in danger of slowly but surely becoming matriarchal societies: ‘women outnumber men, make up most of the work force, own most of the homes’ (Barbados Advocate, 6 March 1996).