Women in Guyana

Women in Guyana represent all cross-sections of Guyana's society, with numbers differing during certain periods of history. Made up of mostly Indo-Guyanese, Afro-Guyanese, and Amerindian women, Guyana also has been home to women of European or Chinese descent. Guyana has had a female president, Janet Jagan. Although on the South American continent, Guyana is culturally and historically aligned with the Commonwealth Caribbean, and often compared to Trinidad and Tobago.[3]

Women in Guyana
A Guyanese female technician working at the Guyana Food and Drug Department Laboratory in Georgetown, Guyana, selecting samples to be tested with a newly acquired equipment.
Gender Inequality Index[1]
Value0.524 (2013)
Rank113th out of 152
Maternal mortality (per 100,000)280 (2010)
Women in parliament31.3% (2013)
Females over 25 with secondary education61.5% (2012)
Women in labour force42.3% (2012)
Global Gender Gap Index[2]
Value0.7085 (2013)
Rank48th out of 153
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Many Guyanese women living in urban areas of Guyana have taken roles as breadwinners for their families, particularly in working-class families.[4] Education-wise, women in Guyana have outperformed male Guyanese in regional examinations. There are currently more women in Guyana who attend education in universities.[4] Obeah women participate as religious leaders in folk religion.[4]

Research views of Guyanese women

Racialized differences between Indo-Guyanese and Afro-Guyanese have often defined women's roles in Guyana's society.

Early records of historical content about the people brought into Guyana for the purpose of labor primarily served to bolster the economic purposes of the British Empire or define a "barbaric other" which sometimes blurred the identities of the non-European subjects. Official documentation from the colonial period often led to the portrayal of women as "libidinous, immoral women" or victims.[5]

Early studies on gender in the Caribbean defined households under the assumptions of the "Euro-American nuclear family." The assumption of female domesticity disregarded their roles outside of the family unit. Afro-Caribbean female-headed households were framed as "deviant, disintegrated, denuded, and incomplete" and stereotyped households as run by a "strong, independent female and her obverse, the marginal Afro-Caribbean male" which was held in contrast to the Indo-Caribbean "submissive housewife".[6]

In the 1970s and 80s, the WICP was a project to survey women in light of feminist research. In the 90s, research shifted from simply creating visibility into more "explanatory framework for gendered relations." A major drawback of the research done is that they focus almost exclusively on low-income women, which has led to stereotyping and conclusions that fail to represent Caribbean women as a whole.[3][6]

History

Women's presence and demographics differ between the major periods of Guyana's history. The origins of Guyana's diversity is the European colonial creation of a "stratified, color-coded social class."[3] Women's roles in plantation society reflects their racial identity, as well as the perception of woman as 'maintainers of culture'. The institution of slavery destroyed African family structures, not only as a separation from family in Africa, but the subsequent selling of individuals from their family in subsequent enslaved generations. For those who arrived in British Guiana from India, the loss of the extended family, India's basic social unit, also impacted family structures.[7]

Colonial Guiana

At the onset of colonial settlement, very few women of European descent came to what was then known as the Guianas. The plantation system drew women, in addition to men, from Africa as enslaved labor. Very little distinction was made for women with regards to labor hours or punishment, whether they were pregnant or nursing.[8] The inevitable unions from this gender disparity were viewed as perversions, although little was done to address rape or sexual violence against women, nor were they ever granted rights on par with their colonial white masters. This led to stratification of society based on race and terms such as mulatto, tercerones, and quadroon to define individuals based on their appearance. Women who came from Europe (English) were seen as "refined and virtuous", and seen as a panacea to the social ills of the colony.[9]

Emancipation

Free Afro-Guyanese and those freed upon emancipation sought to avoid the plantation system by establishing their own villages, pooling their money to purchase land for agriculture. This village movement was seen as a threat to the sugar estates that still needed labor, and the colonial government enacted laws preventing the purchase of land. Denied means of subsistence, Afro-Guyanese moved out into the hinterlands as pork-knockers, or to urban areas for employment.[6]

Indenture

Emancipation set into motion new waves of society, as Afro-Guyanese sought identities away from plantation labor and sugar estates filled their labor quota with indentured servants from India, and to a lesser extent Chinese and Portuguese. 1845 marked the arrival of the first wave of such labor from India.[5]

Recruiters earned higher wages for contracting women, so deception as well as the "sexual exploitation of single women was not uncommon." Even though women came from an array of backgrounds, some religions or hierarchies made migration "easier than others." Women of lower castes were easy targets for recruitment, as upper castes could afford limiting the mobility of their women as a means of protection. Practices of caste and patriarchal rules were easily disrupted by economic hardship, leading to vulnerability and times of famine saw higher rates of indenture.[5] In Hindu the concept of kala pani, or traversing large bodies of water, was a taboo associated with impurity and correlated to criminal punishment.[10]

"The regions of Bihar, eastern Uttar Pradesh, and the Cauvery Valley in the South, were characterized by intense cultivation, high population density, and a rigid and stratified society" so labor was drawn from these areas to work in under utilized areas of India and abroad. Approximately 92% of the female work force between 1876 and 1892 were from the regions of Bihar, North West Provinces and Awadh, 84.8% of the total female immigrants between 1908 and 1917 came from the United Provinces and Agra.[5]

In the 1840s to 1880s, most of the women who were recruited for plantations were single or travelling with children. Married women made up a smaller percentage, between 1845 to 1886 it ranged between 25.57% to 35.98% of the total female population emigrating from India to the West Indies. The displacement from India to the colonies impacted gender norms from the moment they entered the recruitment depot. According to Patricia Mohammed, "the men and women who chose to leave India entered into a different negotiation of gender relations than that which they would have experienced had they remained in India." The months long journey from India to the Caribbean colonies also fostered kinship (or jahaji) between men and women, a parallel to the Afro-Guyanese experience on slave ships, and while there were rules were to keep genders separated, they were not enforced in practice. Travel to the West Indies was not without cost, and high mortality rates of women during monsoon season led to the Indian Emigration Act VII of 1871 dictating lower quotas of women during those months, and raising them for the other months of the year. In 1879, the rules were removed when criticised for interfering with the "material comfort" of their husbands, putting women's role as wives before labor. By the 1880s, it was seen as beneficial for policies to encourage settling-down to prevent the social unrest seen as a symptom of gender imbalance, and the next five years saw marked increase to an average of about 74%. From 1876 to 1892, the proportion of female workers to males was 46.3 percent.[5]

Two identities of Indian women imparted by official colonial sources were as "subjugated widows fleeing a repressive, tradition-bound society for the free spaces on plantations abroad" and those that engage in "disloyal, immoral sexual behavior ." Victorian English policy makers sought to transport women who would, in their eyes, be "good wives and mothers" to encourage the social harmony seen as essential for productive workers. Ordinance 16 of 1894 lowered terms of indenture from 5 to 3 years, aiming to attract families and women of higher caste and presumably higher quality. The introduction of Indian women also had a polarizing effect on relations between Afro and Indo-Guyanese, by enabling the immediate creation of families at the expense of social intermixing. The gender imbalance also had consequences for women in relationships outside of the male Indian worker class. European and Indian intermingling was seen as a threat to the manhood of this workforce, coupled with the injustices inherent in the plantation system, "most felt that they could do little to "protect" "their women" against outsiders". While the gender ratio seems to imply a favorable condition for women to choose their partners as they see fit, it was "a choice that was often abrogated by control and violence." Since many unions went unrecognized, violence was a common means of controlling women.[5] In the latter half of the 19th century, 87 women were reported killed on the estates, in many cases the woman was brutally "chopped" by agricultural implements.[6] Murders of wives by husbands were often accompanied by suicide.[5]

Crimes against women in this period were only examined when they caused social unrest, rather, anything disturbing the plantation labor force. Claims by women were dismissed as being a result of their "loose morals." Pregnancy put women in even more vulnerable positions for breaking their work contracts, and even legal provisions were often disregarded by plantation management. Women faced "a triple exploitation of class, ethnicity, and gender... giving rise to tensions between competing, though unequal patriarchies - the hegemonising white, the subordinated Indian, and sometimes, albeit very rarely, with the Afro-Caribbean sector."[5]

The production of sugar was labor intensive, and estate owners did little to develop technology to enhance output, putting the sugar industry in a vulnerable position when faced with global competition and salaries were hit when the market turned. The Immigration Ordinance No.18 of 1891 set a minimum wage for workers during a depression in the sugar industry, setting a lower wage for "non abled bodied" workers which often included women as a way to pay them unequal wage.[5]

Unlike the Afro-Guyanese population who mostly moved into urban areas at emancipation, Indo-Guyanese maintained ties with agriculture even after their indenture ended. By 1917, when the indenture system was abolished, nearly all Indo-Guyanese lived on or worked for the sugar estates and even as of 1939 women made up 31.49% of the total Indian agricultural workers. However women remained at the lowest skill level and "rarely drivers, overseers, or managers." Other domestic tasks, like food preparation and childcare, were also expected. Ex-indentured women's roles were focused on the "household economy, namely in self-provisioning, peasant and surplus agricultural production and the formation of families." Additionally, women took on supplementary jobs such as shop keepers or hucksters, selling traditional Indian foods are still an important part of modern Guyanese cuisine regardless of ethnicity. Landholding, while generally within the legal rights of women, typically went to the spouse. The family unit and extended kin were also crucial for raising capital for land and pooling labor, including children, with a "certain degree of power" granted to the male head of household. By the late 19th century, "control over the use and abuse of a woman's labor power was passed to the male authority." Informal patriarchal patterns took shape, sons obtaining education while daughters held responsible for assorted tasks inside the house until an early marriage. In the religious sphere, reconstruction of Hindu or Muslim values conflicted with the prevalent Christian missionaries, seeking to "civilize" the Guyanese populations. An early resistance to education from Indo-Guyanese was due to the necessity of children as labor, as well as imposing conflicting cultural values. Resistance was more so regarding the education of daughters.[5]

Colonial opinion contrasted Afro-Guyanese women with their Indian counterparts, explaining behaviors in the context of racial identity, rather than as reactions to the stratification of the plantation system. The acknowledgement that both groups of women responded roughly the same to their situation would have not only undermined the value of indenture as an institution, but serve to unify these groups. Socially acceptable behaviors were attributed to indenture as the "civilizing force" for Indians, while ex-slaves were viewed as lazy and apathetic in absence of the discipline offered by this subservience. Additionally, the resulting stereotypes of the Indo-Guyanese homemaker and the independent Afro-Guyanese became entrenched as "immutable cultural essences" of self-identification.[6]

the overall presence of women recorded in the Guyanese workforce peaked at 44% around 1910, declining from then on until the 1970s. Much of this had to do with prioritizing domestic work over other definitions of economic activity, as well as how these side jobs were viewed by outsiders recording such information.[11]

Burnham's co-operative republic

Political rhetoric started in the 1950s sought to bring together differing ethnic groups under a unifying labor-centric cause, but ethnic divisions were only further reinforced under People's National Congress (PNC) rule, and subsequent People's Progressive Party (PPP) wins were as well based on a racially-divided political sphere.[3]

During the economic collapse of the 1970s, women took on roles in the parallel economy as traders of contraband goods. Many women also left the economic and political strife for better opportunities abroad,[11]

Since the 1980s

A Human Development Report ranked Guyana "Guyana fairly high on its gender-related indicators" in 1995. Women were shown to have control and autonomy at the micro level (household or community), but lacked access at the macro level, with limited access to economic resources available to men. Women outnumber men in service industries such as health and welfare, while men work in fields that have a direct impact on the nation's GDP. Motherhood is still viewed at the epitome of womanhood.[12]

Public sector jobs followed ethnicity lines, favoring Afro-Guyanese. However, when the Indo-Guyanese oriented PPP won the presidential election of 1992, it did not draw Indo-Guyanese women into public sector jobs. As of 2001, low wages, job insecurity and lack of benefits defined the female workforce. Amerindian women are particularly disadvantaged, with economic and educational opportunities based on the coast and away from hinterland Amerindian settlements. The majority of Amerindian women are self-employed in agricultural work.[11]

In 1953, women won the right to suffrage, but continue to be under-represented in the political realm. Article 29 of the 1980 Constitution embodied gender equality, Guyana signed the 1980 Convention on the Elimination of All Forms of Discrimination Against Women, the 1989 Convention on the Rights of the Child, and in 1990 ratified the Equal Rights (Amendment). Additionally, the legal recognition of Common-law unions ensures property is inheritable by widows or children of these unions.[11]

With regards to housing, rights to property can be attributed to Parliamentary Secretary at the Ministry of Health, Public Welfare and Housing, Agnes Bend-Kirtin-Holder, who herself had lost of property from previous marriages, making her "determined to change the legal position in relation to women."[13]

Contemporary issues

Weaknesses in Guyana's infrastructure are a significant burden on the poorest women, with services like water and electricity intermittent and directly impacting their sources of income. Healthcare and education have experienced deteriorating quality since the 1980s. Malnutrition among Amerindian women is high, and the percentage of infants low birth weight is twice the national average.[11]

Family life is shaped by emigration, 'transnational family' defines family support and the signification volume of remittances Guyanese families come to rely on, but also creating wider cultural differences from those that have moved abroad and wish to distance themselves from Guyana as a scary, "backwards, primitive" space.[3] Indo-Guyanese women are deferring marriage at higher rates since the 1970s, often a consequence of improving chances for emigration, either through sponsorship or securing an "overseas arranged marriage." Inland, Amerindian women are inclined toward Brazil.[11]

Miscegenation as a metaphor for "national unity" fails in light of the term dougla, which is used in discourses as "impurity and contamination."[3]

Gender ideology in Guyana parallels the Anglo-Protestant notion of 'man as breadwinner, woman as caregiver, established during the colonial period that is seen throughout the Caribbean. Government policy has largely focused on women in the domestic sphere, and decision making has been tied to welfare at the expense of development issues. Feminism was also seen as mutually exclusive to socialism, as a divisive issue largely avoided. Gender equality is also splintered by ethnicity, and women's groups are often affiliated with political or religious organizations. Being related to the two major political factions has tended to fracture any attempt at a unifying women's group. The passage of acts in for legalizing abortion and against domestic violence (1995 and 1996 respectively), had support from all women's groups, but have done very little to provide access to safe abortions or legal recourse against violence.[12]

Organizations

Violence against women

In survey sponsored by the UN, 55% of respondents reported experiencing intimate partner violence, significantly higher than the global average, and 38% experienced physical and/or sexual violence. Also, more than one in ten experienced physical and/or sexual violence from a male partner in the past 12 months of the survey. There's a "persistent belief" that Indo-Guyanese women are subjected to greater amount of violence (related to the cultural belief that Indo-Guyanese men are more controlling), but results showed little statistical difference between ethnic groups.[17]

Disabled women

Various NGOs sponsor projects addressing employment for women with disabilities in Guyana, but they are usually short-term and lack the continuity for sustained earning. National statistics and women's organizations lack information.[18]

Sexuality

Women's sexuality is defined by heterosexual child-rearing, and otherwise deemed invisible. Stereotypes exist about butch lesbians, for being aggressive and violent, their visibility also putting them in danger of violence for being a threat to the male hegemony. Femme-lesbians, or generally cis-gendered women of any number of sexual orientations/identities, who are established in their community and have children from previous marriage (to men) face less hostility.[19] Male homosexuality is criminalized, and attempts to legislate equality based on sexual orientation have been thwarted by religious groups.[11]

Sex work
Main article: Prostitution in Guyana

Guyana National AIDS Programme Secretariat (NAPS) initiated the Georgetown SW Project in 1996 to develop outreach and awareness of clinic services (including HIV testing) and network for the distribution of condoms. Fifteen SW were trained to conduct outreach, during which they distributed condoms, educated SW about HIV/STIs and condom negotiation and other safer sex skills, and referred SW to health services. Surverys done on female sex workers in Georgetown showed high rates of HIV, 25% in 1993 and 46% in 1997, 30.6% in 2006.[20] Amerindian women make up a disproportionate number of sex workers in Guyana. In the hinterland, it is often associated with mining camps that draw men from coastal areas.[21]

See also

References
  1. "Table 4: Gender Inequality Index". United Nations Development Programme. Retrieved 7 November 2014.
  2. "The Global Gender Gap Report 2013" (PDF). World Economic Forum. pp. 12–13.
  3. Peake, Linda; Trotz, D. Alissa (1999). Gender, Ethnicity and Place: Women and Identities in Guyana. Psychology Press. ISBN 978-0-415-15004-0.
  4. Seecharan, Clem. "Guyana". Advameg, Inc. Retrieved 21 October 2013.
  5. Chatterjee, Sumita (1997). "Indian women's lives and labor: the indentureship experience in Trinidad and Guyana, 1845-1917". University of Massachusetts Amherst. Retrieved 2021-01-08.
  6. Trotz, D. Alissa (2003-01-01). "Behind the banner of culture? Gender, 'race,' and the family in Guyana". New West Indian Guide / Nieuwe West-Indische Gids. 77 (1–2): 5–29. doi:10.1163/13822373-90002527. ISSN 2213-4360.
  7. Gafar, John (2003). Guyana: From State Control to Free Markets. Nova Publishers. p. 27. ISBN 978-1-59033-647-2.
  8. Aicken, David (August 2001). "From Plantation Medicine to Public Health: The State and Medicine in British Guiana 1838 - 1914" (PDF). University College London. p. 42. Retrieved 2021-01-15.
  9. Dalton, Henry G. (1855). The History of British Guiana: Comprising a General Description of the Colony ; a Narrative of Some of the Principal Events from the Earliest Period of Its Discovery to the Present Time ; Together with an Account of Its Climate, Geology, Staple Products, and Natural History. Longman, Brown, Green, and Longmans. pp. 73–74.
  10. Mehta, Brinda J. (2004). Diasporic (dis)locations: Indo-Caribbean Women Writers Negotiate the Kala Pani. University of the West Indies Press. p. 5. ISBN 978-976-640-157-3.
  11. Trotz, D. Alissa; Peake, Linda (2001). "Work, family and organising: an overview of the contemporary economic, social and political roles of women in Guyana". Social and Economic Studies. 50 (2): 67–101. ISSN 0037-7651.
  12. Das, Maitreyi (2000). "Women's Autonomy and Politics of Gender in Guyana". Economic and Political Weekly. 35 (23): 1944–1948. ISSN 0012-9976.
  13. Peake, Linda (1986). "Low Income Women's Participation in the Housing Process: A Case Study from Guyana" (PDF). University College, Bartlett School of Architecture and Planning, Development Planning Unit. p. 18. Retrieved 2021-01-10.
  14. WILSON, LEON C.; SMITH, CLAUDETTE Y. (1993). "GENDER ROLE PERCEPTIONS IN URBAN GUYANA". International Journal of Sociology of the Family. 23 (2): 67–86. ISSN 0020-7667.
  15. Nettles, Kimberly D. (2007-05-01). "Becoming Red Thread Women: Alternative Visions of Gendered Politics in Post-independence Guyana". Social Movement Studies. 6 (1): 57–82. doi:10.1080/14742830701251336. ISSN 1474-2837.
  16. Peake, Linda (1996). "From social bases to subjectivities: the case of Red Thread in Guyana" (PDF). Black Rose Books. pp. 147–154. Retrieved 2021-01-10.
  17. Contreras-Urbina, Manuel. "GUYANA WOMEN'S HEALTH AND LIFE EXPERIENCES SURVEY REPORT" (PDF). Government of Guyana, United Nations. Retrieved 2021-01-10.
  18. Hall, Karen; Panitch, M. (2005). "Stories of women with disabilities pursuing employment in Guyana: As employees or as entrepreneurs". undefined. Retrieved 2021-01-10.
  19. Kumar, Preity (December 2018). "Women Lovin' Women: An Exploration of Identities, Belonging, and Communities in Urban and Rural Guyana" (PDF). York University. Retrieved 2020-01-11.
  20. Allen, Caroline F.; Edwards, Morris; Williamson, Lisa M.; Kitson-Piggott, Wendy; Wagner, Hans-Ulrich; Camara, Bilali; Hospedales, C. James (September 2006). "Sexually Transmitted Infection Service Use and Risk Factors for HIV Infection Among Female Sex Workers in Georgetown, Guyana:". JAIDS Journal of Acquired Immune Deficiency Syndromes. 43 (1): 96–101. doi:10.1097/01.qai.0000226794.23840.80. ISSN 1525-4135.
  21. Colchester, Marcus (2002). "Mining and Amerindians in Guyana" (PDF). The North-South Institute. Retrieved 2021-01-09.
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