Changing Gender roles in the caribbean
Uploaded by DISABLED USER on May 22, 2016
Gender changes has become a well debated issue in the last two to three decades as it has impacted the customary happenings of the world. The researcher plans to specifically touch on the impact it has had on the males and children of Southfield, St. Elizabeth. Gender, as a social construct, became popular during the 1960’s and 70’s and refers to a set of qualities and behaviours expected from males and females by society, that is, those differences which are socially constructed and subject to change. Almost all feminists agree that “gender” is socially constructed. This means that gender roles are learnt rather than determined by biology, and the most significant institution where we are socialised into our appropriate roles and norms of behaviour is the family.
Weber (1947) had defined patriarchy as women and younger men being dominated by older men, who were heads of household. While a few feminist theorists have followed the Weberian definition, the more common approach has been to discard the generation difference among men and define patriarchy as a system of social structures and practices in which men dominate, oppress and exploit women. Sociologists argues that while white feminists have traditionally conceptualised the family and home as a major source of women’s oppression, this is not the same among Blacks where the family is not a major source of women’s subordination. Indeed, increasingly it has become a major site of their liberation as more and more become heads of households.
Sommerville (2000), a liberal feminist, recognises that significant progress has been made in both public and private life for women. She stated that the system is more likely to accept small policy changes, while it would resist revolutionary change and argues that this is an ethnocentric view – it reflects the experiences of mainly white, middle class women. Against Liberal Feminism, they argue that paid work has not been ‘liberating’. Instead women have acquired the ‘dual burden’ of paid work and unpaid housework and the family remains patriarchal – men benefit from women’s paid earnings and their domestic labour. Some Radical Feminists go further arguing that women suffer from the ‘triple shift’ where they have to do paid work, domestic work and ‘emotion work’ – being expected to take on the emotional burden of caring for children.
Caribbean countries were colonized by typically patriarchal European nations and after Emancipation women were named ‘second class citizens’....