User:Fosterv24/Slavery in the British and French Caribbean

Lead
Enslaved black women in the Caribbean endured violent realities as the sugar industry expanded and there was an increased need for field workers who, in large part, were women because men would usually be assigned to skilled or supervisory positions. Enslaved women in the Caribbean were generally tasked with field work, cooking and taking care of their husband and children on plantations. Being a woman meant access to much fewer types of skilled labor positions. This gendered separation functioned as another way by which plantations owners would demean the lives of enslaved women in the eyes of enslaved people, overseers, and the white population that existed in slave societies. For enslaved women, they were seen as the property of the plantations owners who would not only use forceful methods of oppression, but also sexual oppression and slavery that came with additional physical abuse if they tried to opposed sexual advances from authority figures.

Childbirth and reproductive health for women in the Caribbean, white women included, was almost as dangerous as the work enslaved women were forced to perform. Slave owners maintained apathetic attitudes towards the idea of reproduction for enslaved women, believing more profitability resulted from the work enslaved women produced than could be gained from providing better conditions for work and child delivery.

White men held a large part of the active functions of slavery, but the role of white women in Caribbean slavery was also an important part in establishing a culture of division across racial lines. White women were treated as subordinates to their white male counterparts, but were removed from social restrictions performing similar tasks to those as enslaved men and women. White women in Caribbean slave societies were able to get better, less physically demanding jobs, separate from those of enslaved women. In the case that they had children with enslaved men, their kids would be entitled to freedom from slavery and an improved social status from those of full African descent. This indirectly functioned to make white inhabitants of slave societies socially and economically powerful and created an association of blackness with lack of opportunity or inferiority.