Women in Guyana

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]

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]

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]

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]

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]

• Caribbean Women's Association (CARIWA) - Founded by Viola Burnham in 1970, an arm of the People's National Congress.[14]
• Red Thread Women's Development Organisation[15] - Founded by members of the Working People's Alliance.[16]
• Women's Progressive Organization - Women's arm of the People's Progressive Party

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]

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]

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]

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]