User:RPolls/Women in Guyana

Women in Guyana are a cross-section of Asian, African, and indigenous backgrounds. British colonization and imperialism have contributed to the sexism against Guyanese women in the household, politics, and education.

Overview
Guyana is geographically located in South America, but Guyana is culturally and historically aligned with the Commonwealth Caribbean and is often compared to Trinidad and Tobago.

Demographics
A country with primarily Indo-Guyanese, Afro-Guyanese, and Amerindian women, Guyana has also been home to women of European (mainly Portuguese) and Chinese descent. Indian emigration to the West-Indies is mostly concentrated in Guyana (43.5%).

Roles in Society
Many urban Guyanese women are breadwinners and heads of the households,  particularly in working-class families. In 1966, after Guyana's independence, women had to acquire stable jobs to accumulate a portion of the household income. As a result of the instability of Guyana's economy post-independence, it led to an increase in marriage and generational conflict.

Stereotypes and Household Dynamics
Racialized differences between Indo-Guyanese and Afro-Guyanese people have often defined female roles in the country's society.

Indo-Guyanese Women
Early records about South Asian women (a large percentage from India) brought to Guyana for indentured, agricultural labor to bolster the British Empire's economy defined a "barbaric other" which sometimes blurred the identities of the empire's non-European subjects. Official colonial-era documents often led to the portrayal of "libidinous, immoral women" or female victims.

Afro-Guyanese Women
Early studies of gender in the Caribbean defined households in terms of the "Euro-American nuclear family", and the assumption of female domesticity disregarded women's roles outside the family. Afro-Caribbean households headed by women were framed as "deviant, disintegrated, denuded, and incomplete", stereotyping households as run by a "strong, independent female and her obverse, the marginal Afro-Caribbean male" (in contrast to the Indo-Caribbean "submissive housewife").

In 1992 statistics, about "40% of Afro-Guyanese women live in a household with a male partner, as against 58% of the Indo-Guyanese women".

Research Results
During the 1970s and 1980s, the Women in the Caribbean Project (WICP) surveyed women in the light of feminist research. In the 1990s, research shifted from creating visibility to a more "explanatory framework for gendered relations." A major drawback of the research is its almost-exclusive focus on low-income women, which has led to stereotyping and conclusions which fail to represent Caribbean women as a whole. Although some progress had been made towards women's rights by 2019, "only 24.5% of indicators needed to monitor the SDGs from a gender perspective are available"; this creates knowledge gaps in information critical to reaching gender-based goals.

Household Dynamic(s)
The female presence and demographics differ during the major periods of Guyana's history. The difference in historical displacement alters the "family and household structure across ethnicity". The relationship between marriage and motherhood is impacted by emigration and plantation slavery.

Guyanese diversity originated from the European colonial creation of a "stratified, color-coded social class." Women's roles in a plantation society reflected their racial identity and their perception as "maintainers of culture". Slavery destroyed African family structure – not only separation from family in Africa, but the selling of individuals from a family in subsequent enslaved generations. Afro-Caribbean women tend to display their feminine presence through dominating their households. Thus, motherhood and marriage are not a causal relationship within most Afro-Caribbean households with the implementation of the visiting union or "friending" relationship dynamic.


 * In 1992, studies concluded that only 40% of Afro-Guyanese women live with their male counterparts in comparison to the 58% of Indo-Guyanese women.

For those who arrived in British Guiana from India, the loss of the extended family (India's basic social unit) also impacted family structure. The typical Indian family (prevalent in East Africa and Fiji) followed a "classical extended family," a joint household of multiple generations. However, the plantation caste system destroyed the joint family unit. Recruitment of indentured servants prioritized qualified workers (healthy and young) over sustaining family members. In addition, the lack of "eligible single women" further bridged the ability to create new prosperous families.

Factors that increase female-led households:

(1) Widowhood

(2) Male migration or desertion

(3) Female initiative in their relationships

These factors can impact both ethnicities [Afro-Guyanese and Indo-Guyanese women]

Environmental and Emigration
Weaknesses in Guyana's infrastructure significantly burden the poorest women, with services such as water and electricity intermittent and directly impacting their income. Healthcare and education have deteriorated since the 1980s. Malnutrition among Amerindian women is widespread, and the percentage of low-birth-weight Amerindian infants is twice the national average.

Family life is shaped by emigration. The "transnational family" provides remittances on which Guyanese families have come to rely, but widens cultural differences by moving abroad and distancing themselves from a "backwards, primitive" Guyana. More Indo-Guyanese women have deferred marriage since the 1970s, often to improve their chances for emigration through sponsorship or an overseas arranged marriage. Amerindian women tend to emigrate to Brazil.

Gender ideology in Guyana parallels the Anglo-Protestant ideal of men as breadwinners and women as caregivers which was established during the colonial period and is seen throughout the Caribbean. Government policy has focused on women in the domestic sphere, and decision-making has been tied to welfare rather than development. Feminism was also seen as antithetical to socialism: a divisive issue which was largely avoided. Gender equality is fragmented by ethnicity, and women's groups are often affiliated with political or religious organizations. Being related to the two major political factions has hindered attempts at a unified women's group. Legislation legalizing abortion and prohibiting domestic violence (in 1995 and 1996, respectively) had support from all women's groups, but have done little to provide access to safe abortions or legal recourse against violence.

Sexual Violence Against Women
Fifty-five percent of respondents to a survey sponsored by the United Nations reported experiencing intimate partner violence (significantly higher than the global average), and 38 percent experienced physical or sexual violence. More than one in ten had experienced physical or sexual violence from a male partner within 12 months of the survey. Although a "persistent belief" exists that Indo-Guyanese women are subjected to greater amount of violence (related to the cultural belief that Indo-Guyanese men are more controlling), the survey results indicated little statistical difference among ethnic groups.

Female inferiority was fueled by male violence and lack of women representation in the public sector. Women were not seen as household breadwinners; further limiting their sexual autonomy and economic agency. Any exhibited dependency on men led to extreme violence.

On plantation estates, women were reported murdered between 1859 to 1907.

Women in Politics
The country has had a female president, Janet Jagan.

Women in Education
British authorities and plantation owners discouraged education amongst East Indian children. In fear that educated individuals will result in escapees and revolts. The Compulsory Education Act of 1876 excluded east Indian children.

East Indian indentured servants were unskilled and uneducated, making them strictly qualified for agricultural work within Guyana. Without a formal education, East Indian women were successful in milk trading and gardening. Women comprised "77% of the East Indian milk sellers in 1891," with a decrease in percentage within two decades. Despite the later implementation of Western education in assimilation tactics, East Indians remained largely uneducated. Schools conducted in English, but most East Indian children still spoke in their native Indian language. And formal education was required to perform urban-based careers outside of milk trading and gardening.

In 1946, conducted research established the 41.3% difference in literacy rates between Indo- and Afro-Guyanese populations. The English literacy rate of East Indians (above ten years of age) was 56% to the 97.3% literacy rate of Afro-Guyanese communities.

Female Guyanese students have outperformed their male counterparts in regional examinations, and more women than men attend universities to advance their careers.

Women's Employment
Western assimilation influenced the trajectories of socio-economic prosperity within Guyanese communities. Learning to be literate in English was conditioning for urban employment; formal education was a requirement.

Exploitation and plantation resistance made Afro-Caribbean women dominant figures in paid workforce labor. Afro-Caribbean women to dominated urban-based fields.