gender inequality in the caribbean essay

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A 30-year reflection on gender in the Caribbean

“I have always been an avid reader , attracted to the power of the word,” says Professor Patricia Mohammed. “I have never felt comfortable in front of a microphone or a large group. From childhood, the written word has spoken to me across centuries and societies.”

Mohammed, Emerita Professor of Gender and Cultural Studies at UWI St Augustine and a celebrated Caribbean feminist, has had an academic career heavily influenced by her love of reading, writing, history, and the visual arts. Her latest book, Writing Gender into the Caribbean: Selected Essays 1988 to 2020, spans three decades of research and ideas. Writing Gender, published by Hansib Publications, is a collection of 21 essays selected from Professor Mohammed’s writing and publishing. Most, she says, “were to be found in disparate journals or as chapters in books”.

The book is very much a personal reflection on her work:

“In 2019, I retired as Professor of Gender and Cultural Studies from The University of the West Indies, St Augustine. One of the first things one does after retirement is to evaluate what you have spent a lifetime doing – at least I did. The primary reason for bringing together this body of essays was to follow the trails of my own thoughts and to map the genealogy of my own writing on gender in the Caribbean.”

The essays selected are distributed over five different sections, each of which address a different theme. Section 1, “Originary Narratives and a Political Grammar for Caribbean Feminism”, progresses from early concerns with Caribbean feminism to a consideration of current questions that the movement and concepts now raise globally. Section 2, “Indo-Caribbean Feminist Intersections”, examines the symbolism of gender identities and performance of gender roles among the Indo-Caribbean descended populations, arguing that these establish different definitions of Caribbean womanhood and manhood.

“Section 3, ‘Inviting Masculinity’,” Professor Mohammed explains, “speaks to the ongoing dialogue with masculinity and men which Caribbean feminism engaged in from the outset of the second wave feminist moment. Two of the essays, ‘Sketches in a Biography of Eric Williams’, on the first Prime Minister of Trinidad and Tobago, and ‘Drafting Gender Equality Frameworks’ a comparative reading of the films The Harder They Come and Brokeback Mountain, straddle disciplinary enquiry in order to allow a contemplation of the mind of the masculine rather than an attempt to prescribe masculinity.”

Section 4 includes essays that reflect on her fairly extensive work on gender policy in the Caribbean, including a chapter that provides a practical guide for those involved in creating gender equity policies or programmes. The final section, ‘Gender and Cultural Storytelling’, draws on music and the visual image, demonstrating, she says, “that our gender identities are inevitably and consistently bargained in and through culture”.

Professor Mohammed has been a feminist activist since 1979 and a professor since 2005. However, Writing Gender is more than a retrospective of her scholarly pursuits. It is also built on the interests that have driven her since childhood.

“I had a passion for history as a subject,” she recalls, “and had also read the novels of the Bronte sisters and Jane Austen for leisure and the earliest fiction writers from the Caribbean. I grew up devouring comic books before television took over from reading. Photography – writing with light – and the power of the visual to convey messages presented eloquent ways to generate ideas and information.”

For the book’s cover she chose an 18th century painting by Agostino Brunias entitled Free Women of Colour with Their Children and Servants in a Landscape.

“The act of ‘writing’ for me has never been restricted to the alphabet. Starting from secondary education and continuing on to an academic career, writing and visual representation began to surface as a preferred method of communication. The academic space of knowledge-making and feminist activism were the prime gateways through which I would negotiate the politics of location, class, gender, ethnicity, and culture to find a voice,” she explains.

Writing and scholarship has been crucial to the rise of gender studies in the region, Prof Mohammed says. When she began writing her masters’ thesis on Women and Education in Trinidad and Tobago for The UWI over four decades ago, the disciplinary area of gender studies did not exist. The last three decades of the 20th century, however, marked a founding moment for gender scholarship in the Caribbean.

“The act of writing and publishing was both a political strategy and a dire necessity for us to produce theory and data that was rooted in Caribbean soil,” she recounts. “My earliest colleagues in this fellowship, among them Jocelyn Massiah, Peggy Antrobus, Eudine Barriteau, Elsa Leo Rhynie, Rhoda Reddock, Barbara Bailey, Bridget Brereton, and many others, all knew that we had to lay claim to our home grown knowledge. We had been weaned on authors like Germaine Greer, Juliet Mitchell, Sheila Rowbotham, Simone De Beauvoir, bell hooks, Audrey Lorde, Toni Morrison – the list is long – who had inspired a generation of second wave feminists.”

Images from the new book focusing on Dr Eric Williams.

She recalls meeting British feminist Sheila Rowbotham while studying for her PhD in 1989 in the Netherlands and telling her that her book Woman’s Consciousness, Man’s World had been inspirational and had encouraged her to process and write about the experience of the Caribbean women’s movement from a first person perspective.

“She was a very approachable woman,” Professor Mohammed says. “She was delighted to find someone younger, from the other side of the world, who could relate to what she had written and said to me, ‘this is why I write, this makes my life and work worthwhile’. I have received such comments myself from many readers and it makes the often arduous act of writing an honourable one.”

Of her latest work, the Caribbean feminist says she wanted to produce an accessible text so that the interested reader throughout the region and the diaspora could easily grasp the etymology of concepts and ideas that shaped the discipline, and thus could continue to expand its scope.

Writing Gender into the Caribbean: Selected Essays 1988 to 2020 is available in Trinidad and Tobago at the UWI Bookshop and the Paper Based Bookshop at Normandie the Hotel, as well as online at https://www.hansibpublications.com/ and as an eBook at Amazon.com.

Gender Inequality Remains Persistent in the Caribbean - CDB Report

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Caribbean Development Trends

The hard facts about gender equality in the Caribbean

March 13, 2020 by Therese Turner-Jones Leave a Comment

Trici a loves math  and science .  She has always excelled at them too.   She is  now  completing her last  semester  a t The University of the West Indies  where she majors  in   Computer Science  with a focus on cybersecurity.  Because of her  position  as a top student, at  least two of the region’s  premiere   financial institutions  are hoping  to hire her  as a  Security Software Develope r . As she navigat es  the transition  to the world of work , Tricia  is confident in herself and her abilities. She is ready  to tak e on the challenges  of a  young Caribbean   woman working in  tech .   

But in  many countries of the Anglophone Caribbean, the li fe  of  a woman  like Tricia  holds a singular paradox :   Women have more years of secondary school  education   and enroll in tertiary education institutes more than men , y et once outside the gilded doors of academia  women are confronted by  challenges such as   lower pay ,  lack of parental support ,  insufficient  protection from violence and harassment ,  and  other  obstacles to  career progression.   

Data from the University of the West Indies for at least the past 3 years, puts the number of female students at more than 65%  but  Caribbean women make 60 to 70 cents for every dollar made by men .   And the protect ions  against pay discrimination var y   widely across the region . According to the   WB Women, Business and the Law 20 20  report,  scores for the Caribbean range from 7 to 75 out of 100 ; Guyana is the exception,  with a score   of  100 ,   with a legal framework that establishes  equal pay for women and men   and no constraints on  a woman’s decision to work where she chooses .      

Tricia is likely to have 2 children, the average fertility rate in the Anglophone Caribbean.    Maternity leave alone  (and not parental leave which is available to both parents)  means the burden of caring for children falls mainly to women .  Tricia will take the maximum maternity leave  allowed and  coupled with the vacation time she has saved (about 3 weeks tops in the  Caribbean ), she is likely to return to work in 3 months.   Tricia’s husband  has  made use of his vacatio n time t o be with his family for 3 weeks. Sleep-deprived and  stressed , Tricia  relies  on her mother’s support since her husband will not benefit from paternity leave.      

Few  workplaces  in the Caribbean are legally bound to provide at least 14 weeks of maternal leave and even less ,  paid  maternal leave .  Paternity leave has been shown to increase fathers’ participation in child-caring duties, participating in their children’s most influential developmental years.  Yet, most Caribbean  countries  have  not  enacted pa ternity  leave . T he longest maternity leave benefit in the Caribbean  is  14 weeks  and is  offered in Trinidad and Tobago and Belize .  Compare this  with parental leave of up  to 33 weeks in the UK and 30 weeks in Canada .   

The company where Tricia wor ks   hires  a substitute to complete the last phase of the software development  during her maternity leave. And  upon her return to work, Tricia hear s  grumbles about how much she costs them.  Only in Barbados, Belize and Guyana d oes  government pay 100% of maternal leave.  When government does not reimburse 100% of maternity leave, it makes it more expensive for firms to hire women. This has the potential to impact a firm’s hiring practices to  the  disadvantage  of  women.   But that’s not all , it  may  also  have the negative effect of obstructing women’s career path and decreasing their income, which in turn may lower their pensions upon retiring.   

Working in male-dominate d  environment, Tricia  is likely to encounter  sexual harassment, that will impact  her emotional wellbeing, career options and, ultimately the success of the companies where she will work.   According to  National Women’s Health Surveys,  25% of women in  Suriname  and 24% of women in  Jamaica  have experienced sexual harassment  (the highest prevalence in the region among the countries for which data is available) .  Research has shown that b oth domestic  violence and sexual harassment are  associated with high turnover and absenteeism of women, increasing firms’   costs.   To date, Guyana and Barbados are amongst the few Caribbean countries with specific legal protections against sexual harassment in the workplace; Belize and the Bahamas have enacted legislation against sexual harassment in general .   

Trici a’s  fictive story will resonate  with  ma n y women, full of talent and promise , but  who have found  themselves   unprotected by the absence of a legal framework.   Our social policies and laws have propelled us to the rank of countries with high  human development indices , just about 50 years after gaining our independence , but  more  needs to be done to achieve equality among our citizens.  Pol icy  makers must take  a  stand to reduce the gender gap in the workplace. They should legislate and encourage parental leave for both men and women and offer protection against gender -based violence and sexual harassment  at work.  But  while  legal protections   are  crucial, they are not enough .  We all have an  important  role to play.  We must  be prepared to   c halleng e   ou r  personal ideas  on issues related to gender equality .   This is the only way to fully support women like Tricia and help them  to  reach their full potential.   

Therese Turner-Jones

Born in The Bahamas, Therese Turner-Jones is the general manager of the Caribbean Country Group of the Country Department (CCB), which oversees the Bank's operations in Barbados, Guyana, Jamaica, Suriname, Bahamas and Trinidad and Tobago. While in this role, she continues to serve as country representative for Jamaica. Turner-Jones joined the IDB in 2013 as a country representative in Jamaica. She has more than 20 years of experience in the areas of macroeconomics and economic development, with an emphasis on the Caribbean. She has held key positions at the International Monetary Fund (IMF) including the role of Deputy Head of Division for the Caribbean II Division, Western Hemisphere Department, and previously as Advisor to the Executive Director for Canada, Ireland and the Caribbean. Prior to his job at the IMF, she was Deputy Manager of the Research Department of the Central Bank of the Bahamas. Turner-Jones is an economist from the University of Toronto and has a master's degree in economics from the University of East Anglia, UK. He graduated from United World Colleges (Lester Pearson College).

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The Time Is Now for Gender Equality in the Caribbean

Building a strong and resilient Caribbean demands the equal involvement of women and men. The Caribbean has made significant progress in gender equality in recent years, particularly in women’s education and their participation in the labor force. But more remains to be done to push the frontier to equal opportunity.

Meet three women who are breaking the glass ceiling in their own way, promising a brighter future for the Caribbean:

"I am ready to help rebuild Haiti"

In the aftermath of Hurricane Matthew, 32-year-old Marie Carine François lost her business to the floods that devastated the south of Haiti, where she lives with her six-year-old daughter and two brothers. She was helping to clear the debris in her neighborhood, when she caught the attention of local authorities on a post-disaster assessment mission. They recruited her for training in construction to help rebuild resilient infrastructure after the disaster.

“At the end of the workshop, I can go to any building site and offer my skills to earn a living,” says Marie. “I feel more fulfilled now because I am actively involved in repairing my home, where a wall was destroyed by the hurricane. I am also proud to be directly involved in the rebuilding of our municipality."

The workshop Marie attended is part of a World Bank-financed project to support sustainable mobility for all in Haiti by building climate resilient roads and infrastructure.

In Latin America and the Caribbean, the participation of women in the labor force rose by 33 percent between 1990 and 2014, which contrasts sharply with the global trend of a slight decline. This increased labor force participation has helped reduce extreme poverty in the region.  In Haiti, 63 percent of women participate in the labor force, higher than the regional average. However, on average, women in Haiti earn 30 percent less than men.

“We are the stories that we tell ourselves”

Jamaican Kenia Mattis has always had a great passion for social entrepreneurship and education. “We are the stories that we tell ourselves,” says Kenia. Her company builds online platforms that help children develop strong language skills, find inspiration, and cultivate creativity. In 2017, Kenia launched a spin-off company specializing in learning games. “ We are truly excited about making learning fun and accessible to all,” says Kenia.

Latin America and the Caribbean has the second-highest rate of female entrepreneurship in the world: 40 percent of firms have female participation in ownership. The highest rates in the region are found in Caribbean countries, including St. Vincent and the Grenadines, and in Grenada. In Jamaica, 78 percent of women have accounts at a formal financial institution, the highest number in the region. However, women entrepreneurs tend to be concentrated in small- and medium-sized enterprises, partly due to gender-based inequalities in ownership of land and capital.

Last year, Kenia attended an acceleration program for women entrepreneurs through the Women Innovators Network in the Caribbean (WINC) program, funded by the government of Canada and implemented by the World Bank Group’s InfoDev program. Designed to jump-start women-led enterprises across the region, the program provided local entrepreneurs with mentorship, training, and networking opportunities.

94% of girls go to school in the Caribbean

At a school in western Santo Domingo, in the Dominican Republic, Mikeilis wants to become a dentist like her cousin when she grows up. Driven by her mother’s story, who had to drop out of high school when she became pregnant with Mikeilis, the 8-year-old student is determined to go to college to pursue her career goals.

Over the last 30 years, more women than men get an education in many countries, and female enrollment in education in the Caribbean has steadily improved to reach 94 percent. Girls also tend to outperform boys in standardized tests. However, high levels of teenage pregnancy and a low quality of education have become the main causes of school dropout.

The Dominican Republic’s government recently passed a  National Pact for Education  which prioritizes learning and improvements in the quality of education. The World Bank is supporting this reform by helping recruit and train primary and secondary school teachers, assess student learning and early childhood development services, and decentralize public school management.

Caribbean women like Marie Carine, Kenia and Mikeilis have emerged as a force for change in the region. No country can achieve its potential until all of its citizens are able to achieve theirs.

Gender Inequality in Latin America and the Caribbean

This paper examines gender inequality focusing on two critical spheres in which gender inequality is generated: education and work. Our objective is to provide a current snapshot of gender inequality across key indicators as well as a dynamic perspective that highlights successes and failures. We facilitate a cross-country comparison as well by grouping countries within Latin America by their level of economics development and drawing comparisons with countries outside the region. Finally, we reflect on differences in the ways that gender inequalities play out across different socio-economic groups, particularly those that highlight other sources of inequality.

We are grateful to seminar participants at the LACIR workshop for helpful discussion and to our discussant Florencia Torche for her suggestions. We thank Jessica Bracco, Florencia Pinto, and Juli an Pedrazzi for excellent research assistance. The views expressed herein are those of the authors and do not necessarily reflect the views of the National Bureau of Economic Research.

MARC RIS BibTeΧ

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In This Article Expand or collapse the "in this article" section Gender in the Caribbean

Introduction, general overviews.

• Slavery and Servitude
• Kinship, Family Formation, and Creolization
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• Political Action, Emancipation, and Citizenship
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• Atlantic Slavery
• Barbados in the Atlantic World
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• European, Javanese, and African and Indentured Servitude in the Caribbean
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• Gender in Iberian America
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• Interracial Marriage in the Atlantic World
• Jamaica in the Atlantic World to 1838
• Marriage and Family in the Atlantic World
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Gender in the Caribbean by Christine Walker LAST REVIEWED: 18 November 2022 LAST MODIFIED: 28 April 2016 DOI: 10.1093/obo/9780199730414-0267

European contact initiated centuries of colonialism and slavery in the Caribbean, and also transformed the region’s islands, coasts, and waterways into one of the most polyglot regions in the world. Imperial powers jostled for control of the coastal territory that borders the Caribbean Sea, from Florida and Louisiana to Guatemala, Guyana, and Suriname. Beginning in the 17th century, the arc of islands nestled in the heart of the Caribbean Sea—from the vast and rugged territories of Cuba, Jamaica, and Haiti to the stamp-sized islands of Barbados, St. Thomas, and Guadeloupe—became the “jewels” of European empires in America. Waves of Spanish, Portuguese, Dutch, Danish, French, and English colonists flooded to the Caribbean Basin, lured by the promise of fantastic riches. After decimating and enslaving indigenous Amerindians, they forcibly transported millions of Africans to labor as chattel slaves. The region’s ethnic, racial, and religious diversity was born out of these free and forced migrations. Feminist scholars have long recognized slavery’s indelible mark on Caribbean history. For decades, they have studied enslaved women from a variety of angles. While work produced in the 1970s and 1980s sought to recover women’s lived experiences, the 1990s marked a pivotal turning point when gender replaced women. Using gender as a lens to study the power dynamics between men and women has broadened our understanding of how cultural beliefs about the sexed body shaped colonial regimes. Scholars of the Caribbean were among the first to employ an intersectional approach in their analyses by considering how evolving definitions of racial difference were mapped onto the gendered and sexualized bodies of women of African descent. As their work shows, conceptions of race, gender, and sexuality were mutually constitutive. However, this rich body of scholarship has also demonstrated that efforts by imperial and colonial officials, as well as colonists, to affix rigid gendered and racialized identities onto the Caribbean’s diverse populations were contested. These “modern” categories of identity proved to be unstable signifiers of power. Enslaved people exhibited their own understandings of gender and challenged their status as bonded laborers. Coercive and consensual interracial sex created large heterogeneous populations that resisted fixed racial and gender hierarchies. Since the 1980s, scholars of women and gender, in particular, have attended to this complex interplay among gender, race, ethnicity, legal status, and religion. Yet, on the whole, the field continues to implicitly equate “gender” with femininity: only recently have a handful of scholars begun to consider the constructions of masculinity. Further studies of masculinity would allow for a more comparative approach to gender. Similarly, work on sexuality assumes sexual desires, behaviors, and intimacies to be heteronormative. In the future, queer theory could be employed to disrupt and challenge implicit assumptions about sexual orientation and desire. In conclusion, opportunities abound for new work, which melds a longstanding interest in women, race, and slavery with newer theoretical and methodological approaches to gender, sexuality, and colonialism.

Since 2005 several collections of work on gender in the Caribbean have been published: each approaches the topic from a different angle. Whereas the essays in Scully and Paton 2005 explore the post-emancipation experiences of freed people, Gaspar and Hine 2004 focuses specifically on free women of color. The geographic coverage of both collections, which include essays on British, Spanish, and French colonies, makes them useful for comparative research. Together, Byfield, et al. 2010 and the second volume of Campbell, et al. 2007 on women and slavery cover Africa and the Americas, but these works also include essays on the Caribbean. Other surveys focus specifically on the anglophone Caribbean, including Brereton 2013 , which provides an overview of the past thirty years of research on women and gender. An older work, Shepherd, et al. 1995 , is one of the first to explicitly publish pieces that use gender as a methodological approach and also focuses on anglophone colonies. Mair 2006 , an influential dissertation on women in Jamaica, was originally written in the 1970s. While lacking a more analytical treatment of gender, it still provides an important outline of the topic. The majority of these collections focus on women: few consider the operation of masculinity in constructing gendered power dynamics. As noted elsewhere, the analytical/methodological approaches of queer studies have yet to appear in collected works, which treat sexuality as heteronormative.

Brereton, Bridget. “Women and Gender in Caribbean (English-Speaking) Historiography: Sources and Methods.” Caribbean Review of Gender Studies 7 (2013): 1–18.

An overview of scholarship that has been produced on the British West Indies, including Jamaica, Trinidad, Tobago, Barbados, and Guyana, over the past thirty years. Anyone interested in conducting historical research on women and gender will find descriptions of the variety of archival sources to be useful.

Byfield, Judith A., LaRay Denzer, and Anthea Morrison. Gendering the African Diaspora: Women, Culture, and Historical Change in the Caribbean and Nigerian Hinterland . Bloomington: Indiana University Press, 2010.

This collection uses gender as a lens to explore the connections among the Caribbean, Africa, and Britain. The essays in Section 2 are of particular use for studying the operation of gender and race in women’s lived experiences as well as discursively in fictional accounts of the Caribbean.

Campbell, Gwyn, Suzanne Miers, and Joseph Miller, eds. Women and Slavery . Vol. 2, The Modern Atlantic . Athens, OH: Ohio University Press, 2007.

Described as the first edited volumes that focus solely on female slaves. The majority of the essays in Volume 2 study enslaved and freed women in the anglophone and francophone Caribbean and cover a range of topics, including reproduction, emancipation, and citizenship. For more detailed overviews of a few essays from the volume, see Follett 2007 (cited under Slavery and Servitude ) as well as Moitt 2007 (cited under Political Action, Emancipation, and Citizenship ).

Gaspar, David Barry, and Darlene Clark Hine, eds. Beyond Bondage: Free Women of Color in the Americas . Urbana: University of Illinois Press, 2004.

Collection explores how race and gender shaped the lives of free women of color who lived throughout the Americas. The wide-ranging geographic focus, from Cuba and Jamaica to Brazil and Martinique allow for a comparative overview of the topic.

Mair, Lucille Mathurin, Hilary Beckles, and Verene Shepherd, eds. A Historical Study of Women in Jamaica, 1655–1844 . Kingston, Jamaica: University of the West Indies Press, 2006.

One of the first major studies of free and enslaved women in colonial Jamaica, this groundbreaking work existed only in dissertation form for decades. Situates women in a developing creole society that was increasingly defined by race, class, and status. Highlights enslaved women’s acts of resistance and their enduring ties to Africa.

Scully, Pamela, and Diana Paton. Gender and Slave Emancipation in the Atlantic World . Durham, NC: Duke University Press, 2005.

DOI: 10.1215/9780822387466

A collection of essays representing a broad geographic area that ties Africa to the Caribbean and Brazil and covering a wide range of topics, including masculinity, citizenship, family life, and labor.

Shepherd, Verene. Women in Caribbean History: The British-Colonised Territories . Kingston, Jamaica: Ian Randle, 1999.

An introductory guide for using gender analysis to reframe women’s history in the anglophone Caribbean. Focuses on enslaved women of African descent but also includes European, Indian, and Chinese women.

Shepherd, Verene A., Bridget Brereton, and Barbara Bailey, eds. Engendering History: Caribbean Women in Historical Perspective . New York: St. Martin’s, 1995.

Covers a broad range of topics, including articles on how to use gender analysis as a methodological approach. Other essays study the lives of women of African descent during slavery and the post-emancipation period. Includes miscellaneous essays on France and Nigeria.

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Gender, Sexuality and Feminism in the Caribbean: Transdisciplinary Engagements

2017, Journal of Eastern Caribbean Studies

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Kamala Kempadoo

C R G S - I G D S - UWI

Introduction It is an incredible honour to have been invited to share this twentieth birthday of the Institute for Gender and Development Studies. I would like to thank the faculty, staff and students for their amazing warmth and hospitality. Let me take this opportunity to also recognize Professor Barbara Bailey, whose commitment to gender equality is manifested not just in her contribution as Regional Coordinator of the IGDS, but in the work she has accomplished nationally, regionally and internationally. In particular, Professor Bailey’s commitment to education and the foundational texts in Caribbean Gender Studies that she has co-authored/coedited are an amazing legacy for generations of scholars to come. We know that the IGDS was a dimension of women’s and feminist activism in the Caribbean, from WAND to CAFRA, from Sistren to NUDE. We had taken our struggle to the academy, making these institutional spaces the site of our demands for recognition. Today the IGDS boasts a regional programme with a superb publication record, training undergraduate and graduate students, initiating collaborations with academic partners and communities. It extends itself to wider communities, whether it is the open access feminist journal at St Augustine, the work at Mona with Haitian colleagues after the earthquake to develop a certificate programme in Gender Studies, or the Summer Institute in Gender Studies at Cave Hill which brings together university students, farmers, civil servants, community activists and police officers from across the region.

Excerpt: This tenth issue of the Caribbean Review of Gender Studies aptly highlights student research, some of which may not have otherwise been read outside of the university, and also provides a niche for current students and recent graduates to begin publishing their work in scholarly publications. The majority of pieces in this issue represent the research of current students and graduates of the IGDS units across the three campus units that offer a graduate programme. The issue exemplifies the rich tapestry of scholarly work and diverse research interests investigated though traditional and non-traditional modalities by students of the IGDS. It also includes work by postgraduate students who have been influenced by the work and tradition of Caribbean feminist theorising. The issue includes four peer reviewed papers, three gender dialogues, a photo essay, poetry, research in action and book review. The variety of entries not only speaks to the diversity in the output of the IGDS, but also to the range of issues still relevant to Caribbean gender and development studies. While grounded in the solid foundation of Caribbean feminist tradition, the entries challenge existing epistemologies, tease out critical ideas relating to gender identity, construct innovative dimensions for investigating 21st century challenges and force us to reckon with the future of gender studies as an ever-evolving space of discursive criticism.

Patricia Mohammed

This paper responds to a specific question which was posed to the author at the end of the twentieth century - What is Caribbean feminism and what lies ahead for its future? The paper argues that rather than an attempt to to define a specific Caribbean feminism, we should be speaking about many feminisms that are resident in the Caribbean. it argues that feminism is constantly in flux and changing and its future also depends on the actions and activism of those who carry this torch of feminism today.

Caribbean Review of Gender Studies

Book Review of Negotiating Gender, Policy and Politics in the Caribbean: Feminist Strategies, Masculinist Resistance and Transformational Possibilities. Hosein, Gabrielle Jamela and Jane L. Parpart. 2017.

Emilia De Gyves

Written and delivered as the Fifth Anniversary Public Lecture of the Institute for Gender and Development Studies at the University of the West Indies, St Augustine, this paper explores first hand lived anecdotes of incidents and ideas that make up the history of Caribbean feminism in the twentieth century

This paper explores the complex history of Caribbean feminist activism in the late twentieth-century, based on interviews with Peggy Antrobus of Barbados, Andaiye and Alissa Trotz of Guyana and Patricia Mohammed of Trinidad. It attempts to create a hitherto absent archive of these figures while interpreting their ideological and political positions. It is divided into three sections. The first explores the individual trajectories that gave these women a political consciousness. The second explores the regional and global linkages of Caribbean women's/feminist activism. The third discusses the long crisis of the 1980s and 1990s, including the decline of 'Left' projects and the impact of growth-oriented economic policies, and their role in engendering a Caribbean feminism which was not subordinated to larger nationalist or revolutionary projects. The paper ends by comparing how these persons have positioned themselves and reflect on the contemporary feminist movement.

Janet Bauer

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Gender, Intersectionality and Caribbean Societies: Women’s Speech

By Dr Myriam Moïse 

 “Gender” is a sociological concept that refers to relationships between men and women that are socially and culturally constructed. Gender is in fact the social sex as it refers to the differences between men and women that do not pertain to biology but to the construction of social relations. It is therefore through the intermingling of socio-cultural and political dimensions that one must understand the societal challenges related to gender equality and the struggles against discrimination underlying gender and development studies in the Caribbean. The study of gender relations in Caribbean societies is an innovative field at the crossroads of disciplines, whether it is sociology, anthropology, or postcolonial studies. As a scholar specializing in cultural studies and gender studies, I am particularly interested in the literary and artistic productions of Afro-Caribbean women and their strategies of resistance to oppression through art and creative writing.

My research is rooted in Black feminist theories that seek to invalidate all stereotypical representations of women of African descent in the Americas. The ideology of Black feminism destabilizes the matrix of domination, that is the set of social practices generated by intersectional oppressions. Coined by American feminist Kimberlé Crenshaw, the concept of intersectionality is central to Black feminist terminology: it refers to the situation of people simultaneously enduring several forms of domination or discrimination in a society. In Western societies (European and North American), the self is constructed in relation to a predefined fixed model and in this sense, those who do not meet all the criteria of the standard category ‘male, white, middle or upper class, heterosexual, Christian and healthy’ are labeled as “others”. This is the definition of the norm. Many theorists and academics have criticized this norm which was imposed through dominant Western discourse and binary thought that systematically oppose man and woman, white and black, nature and culture, body and mind, subject and object. All these binary patterns have therefore contributed to reinforce the oppression of all those considered as “other” and Black Feminist theorists denounce the fact that Black women have to endure this system of intersectional oppressions based on gender, race and class.

Often left on the margins of history, women of African descent have long been devalued, ignored, and erased from hegemonic and patriarchal discourses. According to African-American feminist Patricia Hill Collins, there is an urgent need to refute all the derogatory images that affect Black women’s daily lives in the Americas and are vectors of racism, sexism, poverty, and all other forms of social injustice. In her seminal text in the field of postcolonial studies “Can the Subaltern Speak?”, Indian philosopher Gayatri Spivak is highly critical of discriminatory discourses and limiting representations to non-white women whose voices are eclipsed.

In the English-speaking Caribbean, women have long been excluded from dominant discourses and have constantly struggled to impose their voices and develop their agency, that is to say their ability to act and to shift the power dynamics. Caribbean male writers themselves, for example Jamaican Claude McKay and Trinidadian Alfred Mendes, in their respective novels Banana Bottom (1933) and Black Fauns (1935), have contributed to this lack of agency as the voices of their feminine counterparts were often discredited or devalued as mere chatting or gossiping. As of the end of the 1980s, issues of voice and voicelessness  became central to allow the emergence of intellectual productions from women in the Caribbean. In 1990, Carole Boyce-Davies and Elaine Savory offer a double definition of voicelessness which still makes sense in some contexts: on the one hand, voicelessness as “the historical absence of the woman writer’s text: the absence of a specifically female position on major issues such as slavery, colonialism, decolonization, women’s rights and more direct social and cultural issues”, and on the second hand, voicelessness as silence, that is to say “the inability to express a position as well as the textual construction of the woman as silent”. ( Out of the Kumbla: Caribbean Women and Literature, 1990: 21). The absence of feminine points of view is clearly no longer relevant with respect to the most recent literary productions in the English-speaking Caribbean with a record of talented and well-known contemporary women writers at home and in the diaspora: Jamaica Kincaid, Merle Hodge, Olive Senior, Dionne Brand, Opal Palmer Adisa, Paule Marshall, Lorna Goodison, Nalo Hopkinson, Makeda Silvera, among others. When it comes to power in political spheres, many Anglophone Caribbean women have marked and continue to mark the region through their agency and political leadership, from the Caribbean ‘Iron Lady’ Dame Mary Eugenia Charles, Prime Minister of Dominique from 1980 to 1995 to the Honorable Mia Amor Mottley, Prime Minister of Barbados since 2018.

The Honorable Mia Mottley, Prime Minister of Barbados (Creative Commoons license)

French Caribbean women however share a different experience as it seems that they still strive to position themselves and assert their voices, in particular within intellectual and political spheres. In the Martinican context, dominated by men, intellectual circles have grown with the emergence of major writers and theorists in the field of Black studies (Aimé Césaire, Frantz Fanon, Édouard Glissant, and the three authors of Éloge de la Créolité , Jean Bernabé, Patrick Chamoiseau and Raphaël Confiant). Meanwhile, the texts written by women have been eclipsed or underestimated by these major male thinkers and writers who have indeed asserted their Blackness or Créolité to the detriment of the voices of their female counterparts and the gender issue overall. Unlike their English-speaking and African-American Caribbean counterparts, French Caribbean women seem to have developed a relatively ambiguous form of complicity and solidarity with ‘their’ men, which seems to have prevented them from making their voices heard fully and publicly. Afro-Martinican women in particular have seen their spaces for expression diminished and delimited by their male counterparts and constrained by the dictates of the myth of the “poto-mitan” woman. The “poto-mitan” which also designates the cylindrical column erected in the center of the Haitian Vodou temple has become a symbol of the strength of Black women in Francophone Caribbean societies, including in Haiti. Women therefore quickly felt the need to embrace this “poto-mitan” identity to the detriment of the assertion of their inner selves. “Poto-mitan” women are described as resilient and fully responsible for their household with or without a male or father figure; these mythical and cultural constructions have gradually constituted actual burdens to Martinican women who, historically, have worked hard, but often in the shadow of (their) men. Their voices were therefore rarely heard outside domestic and private spheres.

However, Martinican female intellectuals and writers have not remained silent, they have developed and expressed major points of view on the complexities of the construction of Afro-Martinican identity (Suzanne Lacascade, Suzanne Césaire, Jane Nardal, Paulette Nardal), but  their voices were not valued in the same way as those of their male counterparts. In Guadeloupe, intellectual women and writers seem to have asserted their voices to a greater extent in the literary and political spheres (Gerty Archimède, Dany Bébel-Gisler, Lucette Michaux-Chevry, Maryse Condé, Simone Schwarz-Bart).  The essay by Maryse Condé which inspired the title of this article, La parole des femmes ( Women’s Speech ), published in 1979, clearly demonstrates the urgency of the time to make the voices of women heard and reassessed in the French Caribbean.  From the 1980s to the present day, women writers in Martinique and Guadeloupe have constantly explored new angles of reflection that would allow them to go beyond the racial focus of Negritude so as to assert their Black female identities in the specific context of French Caribbean societies.  Gisèle Pineau, Fabienne Kanor, Suzanne Dracius-Pinalie and Mérine Céco all portray resilient Black female figures who seek to make their voices heard beyond normative and patriarchal patterns.

Symposium “One Caribbean Solutions”, University of the West Indies, June 14, 2019.  Dr Myriam Moïse is alongside researchers and Caribbean universities leaders. 

As a young researcher in gender studies, I want to create a synergy between the voices of women of the Caribbean beyond cultural and linguistic differences. In my capacity as secretary-general of the  organization Universities Caribbean , I invite the universities of the region to unite in order to make their students aware of the major challenges related to parity and gender equality in Caribbean societies. It is fundamental to alert the students of the region to the challenges of education for gender equality and to the specific impact of environmental, health, and socio-economic crises on women in the region. The University of the West Indies is a pioneer in gender studies research in the Caribbean context as UWI’s Gender and Development Studies Institutes (IGDS) have been in existence for over 40 years. It would be advisable to set up a multidisciplinary and plurilingual working team on gender-related issues in the Caribbean and ultimately consider the creation of a real trans-Caribbean research network on gender and gender equality as a priority topic to our region.

About Dr Myriam Moïse

  Dr Myriam Moïse is Associate Professor of English and Gender Studies at Université des Antilles in Martinique and Secretary-General of Universities Caribbean, the  organization of Caribbean universities and research institutes. She holds a Doctorate in Anglophone Studies from Paris Sorbonne University and a PhD in Literatures in English from the University of the West Indies. Her research fields include Gender Studies, Cultural Studies and Discourse Analysis, with a special focus on literary and artistic creations by Caribbean women of African descent. Her research has been funded by several visiting research fellowships in Europe and the USA: New York University in 2009, Brown University in 2012, University College London in 2018, and her recent Fulbright Fellowship at Emory University in 2020. Her most recent work was published in 2020 by Palgrave MacMillan, a collection entitled Border Transgression and Reconfiguration of Caribbean Spaces , co-edited with Fred Réno.

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International Women’s Day 2024: Five insightful charts on gender (in)equality around the world

Anna tabitha bonfert, divyanshi wadhwa.

As we commemorate International Women’s Day in 2024 , the urgency for gender equality is more palpable than ever. With the World Bank's forthcoming 2024–2030 Gender Strategy aiming to expedite gender parity to end poverty on a livable planet, it is imperative to delve into the data highlighting the critical areas requiring immediate attention. Drawing from the World Bank’s Gender Data Portal , let’s navigate through three pivotal goals underscoring the pressing need for progress: combating gender-based violence, enhancing economic opportunities, and fostering women’s leadership roles.  

Did you know about our #Gender Data Portal? Explore hundreds of indicators spanning 14 topics from around the globe, accompanied by engaging data visualizations, stories, guidelines, and resources. Dive in now: https://t.co/Qn0AoSeuIj pic.twitter.com/ZMBIW9gVqN — World Bank Data (@worldbankdata) March 4, 2024

Chart #1: Gender-based violence (GBV) remains inexcusably prevalent

Gender-based violence (GBV) is the most egregious manifestation of gender inequality and an alarming challenge to global public health, human rights, and development. One in three women worldwide experience physical or sexual violence by an intimate partner or sexual violence by a non-partner over the course of their life. Young women are the most at-risk group. This pattern holds irrespective of country income classification. GBV has wide repercussions, including deteriorating physical and mental health, reduced access to education and jobs, and worse human development and economic outcomes for survivors and their children.  

Chart #2: Gains in human capital for both boys and girls

Human capital is the foundation for economic progress and development success. The last few decades saw some hard-won gains in gender equality.  

Chart #3: Exploring economic barriers faced by women

Women’s economic prospects remain constrained. Across all regions of the world, women’s labor force participation remains below that of men.  

Chart #4: Women and girls’ time poverty limits their choices

In every single country with data available, women spend more time on unpaid domestic and care work. Women’s disproportionate burden of care and household work has wide-ranging consequences. It takes away time that could be spent working for pay, developing new skills, or growing a business. As a result, women often remain stuck in informal and lower-paying jobs or remain completely outside of the labor force. Valuing unpaid care work is essential for addressing existing gender inequalities and improving labor market outcomes for women.   

Chart #5:  Spotlighting the gap in women’s leadership representation

Though there are many initiatives focused on increasing women's leadership roles at the local governance level, women are still underrepresented in national governance structures and in corporate management.  The last 25 years have seen a steady increase in the proportion of seats held by women in national parliaments more than doubling from about 12% in 1997 to 27% in 2022. Yet, even in high income countries women account for just over 30 percent of parliamentarians. In lower middle-income countries 4 out of 5 parliament seats are occupied by men. 

What lies ahead?

Global trends such as climate change, natural resource scarcity and technological transitions will further exacerbate gender inequalities if no mitigating action is taken. Tracking global trends on key gender statistics will be more vital than ever to develop and implement solutions. Women’s economic participation and leadership improves the management of natural resources, strengthens resilience, and makes economies more competitive. Closing gender gaps remains an urgent imperative, on this day and every day. 

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Gender Inequality Essay

500+ words essay on gender inequality.

For many years, the dominant gender has been men while women were the minority. It was mostly because men earned the money and women looked after the house and children. Similarly, they didn’t have any rights as well. However, as time passed by, things started changing slowly. Nonetheless, they are far from perfect. Gender inequality remains a serious issue in today’s time. Thus, this gender inequality essay will highlight its impact and how we can fight against it.

  About Gender Inequality Essay

Gender inequality refers to the unequal and biased treatment of individuals on the basis of their gender. This inequality happens because of socially constructed gender roles. It happens when an individual of a specific gender is given different or disadvantageous treatment in comparison to a person of the other gender in the same circumstance.

Get the huge list of more than 500 Essay Topics and Ideas

Impact of Gender Inequality

The biggest problem we’re facing is that a lot of people still see gender inequality as a women’s issue. However, by gender, we refer to all genders including male, female, transgender and others.

When we empower all genders especially the marginalized ones, they can lead their lives freely. Moreover, gender inequality results in not letting people speak their minds. Ultimately, it hampers their future and compromises it.

History is proof that fighting gender inequality has resulted in stable and safe societies. Due to gender inequality, we have a gender pay gap. Similarly, it also exposes certain genders to violence and discrimination.

In addition, they also get objectified and receive socioeconomic inequality. All of this ultimately results in severe anxiety, depression and even low self-esteem. Therefore, we must all recognize that gender inequality harms genders of all kinds. We must work collectively to stop these long-lasting consequences and this gender inequality essay will tell you how.

How to Fight Gender Inequality

Gender inequality is an old-age issue that won’t resolve within a few days. Similarly, achieving the goal of equality is also not going to be an easy one. We must start by breaking it down and allow it time to go away.

Firstly, we must focus on eradicating this problem through education. In other words, we must teach our young ones to counter gender stereotypes from their childhood.

Similarly, it is essential to ensure that they hold on to the very same beliefs till they turn old. We must show them how sports are not gender-biased.

Further, we must promote equality in the fields of labour. For instance, some people believe that women cannot do certain jobs like men. However, that is not the case. We can also get celebrities on board to promote and implant the idea of equality in people’s brains.

All in all, humanity needs men and women to continue. Thus, inequality will get us nowhere. To conclude the gender inequality essay, we need to get rid of the old-age traditions and mentality. We must teach everyone, especially the boys all about equality and respect. It requires quite a lot of work but it is possible. We can work together and achieve equal respect and opportunities for all genders alike.

FAQ of Gender Inequality Essay

Question 1: What is gender inequality?

Answer 1: Gender inequality refers to the unequal and biased treatment of individuals on the basis of their gender. This inequality happens because of socially constructed gender roles. It happens when an individual of a specific gender is given different or disadvantageous treatment in comparison to a person of the other gender in the same circumstance.

Question 2: How does gender inequality impact us?

Answer 2:  The gender inequality essay tells us that gender inequality impacts us badly. It takes away opportunities from deserving people. Moreover, it results in discriminatory behaviour towards people of a certain gender. Finally, it also puts people of a certain gender in dangerous situations.

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Water for Peace: official celebration of World Water Day 2024

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Under the theme “Water for Peace”, this campaign, led jointly by UNESCO and UNECE on behalf of UN-Water , showcases water's pivotal role in fostering peace, prosperity, and conflict prevention. 

Join us at UNESCO Headquarters for the official World Water Day 2024 celebration. This pivotal event promises a rich one-day programme filled with insights from distinguished speakers, including heads of UN agencies and high-level officials, alongside technical presentations that draw on field experiences. The day will also be enlivened by artistic and cultural activities that echo the theme. A highlight of the celebration will be the unveiling of the United Nations World Water Development Report 2024. 

Programme highlights

• High level Opening Ceremony  
• Launch of the United Nations World Water Development Report 2024  
• Technical Discussions on Water Cooperation and Peacebuilding 
• Cultural shows and indoor photo exhibition (Walk of Water) 

Provisional event programme: English | Français

UN World Water Development Report 2024

The UN World Water Development Report (WWDR) is published by UNESCO, on behalf of UN-Water and its production is coordinated by the UNESCO World Water Assessment Programme. Since its first edition in 2003, the series provide policy and decision-makers with factual evidence and tools to stimulate ideas and actions. This comprehensive report, funded by the Italian Government, also provides an authoritative overview of global water trends, challenges, and solutions. The 2024 Report, entitled "Water for Prosperity and Peace", underlines the interlinked complex relationships between water, prosperity and peace, describing how progress in one dimension can have positive repercussions on the others. 

Ensure your participation in the dialogue on sustainable water management and peace by exploring the findings and recommendations of the UN WWDR 2024. 

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We welcome the participation of members of governments, international organizations, NGOs, academia, the private sector, and all stakeholders interested in the sustainable management of water resources and the promotion of peace; in-person or by watching live . Registration is mandatory to participate in-person. 

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• Water quality
• Water resources
• Water resources management
• Water supply
• Country page: France
• Region: Europe and North America
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