CARIBBEAN-GENDER: Debunking the Male Marginalisation Myth

By IPS Correspondents Reprint | | Print |

Misha Lobban

KINGSTON, Apr 30 1996 (IPS) - The two men surveyed the selection of electronic gadgets prominently displayed in the store, fascinated by the variety and the touted functions.

Perhaps it was the price tag on the merchandise that switched the conversation from the gadgets to the deepest concern of one of the men’s heart.

“Sheila get another promotion,” he says, a shadow of despair crossing his face. “She earning twice my salary.”

After a while he continues: “Before the children would come to me for money and as the man of the house I would pay the bills. Now she take over everything because she can afford to. I feel so useless.”

His friend thought that the promotion was a good thing and so was the woman’s increased ability to contribute to the household. Not so the husband. He resents his wife’s success and the readjustments it has forced on him.

The scene from the play “Man Talk” currently showing here, is far more than the work of someone’s imagination. Many in the audience were able to identify with the two men and the absent woman because that kind of situation is common in the Caribbean today.

Over the last 30 years the region’s women have educated themselves and moved up solidly through the labour force. They are thick in the middle management division and there is a smattering in top management.

Their corresponding movement up the socio-economic ladder has so alarmed men that the current myth is that the region’s men have become marginalised, in almost all spheres that they once controlled.

The idea first appeared in a book written by Jamaican educator Errol Miller at the beginning of the decade and which looked at the disappearance of males from the teaching profession.

The play “Man Talk” speaks to the notion of the disappearing Caribbean he-man and captures the changing construction of gender relations and the dilemma facing regional men.

At the same time “Man Talk” has been playing to sold out audiences, regional intellectuals on the Mona campus of the University of the West Indies (UWI) have been pondering, in their own inimitable fashion, whether or not the Caribbean male was an endangered species.

The consensus was –“it’s all a myth”. The intellectuals studied the condition of men from all angles; from health, economics, job prospects and salaries and attitude to family life, stacking it up against the situation of women.

“All we hear is that men are being side-lined as women take centre- stage. The truth, if we would like to hear it, is that there are more good lovers, spouses, fathers and normal men than there are child abusers and delinquent fathers,” says Barry Chevannes, sociologist at the UWI.

“Most people who speak about how men are being marginalised today somehow fail to see that those who wield political and economic power today remains 99 percent males,” he adds.

For instance female enrolment at the UWI far outstrips that of male, but it is not reflected in the power grid of the work-a-day world. In the area of wages, salaries for educated males in Jamaica range from 8,775 U.S. dollars to 50,000 dollars but educated women are almost always paid closer to the low end of the male pay scale.

Additionally in the university itself there is a serious imbalance in the gender of professors. In 1992 there were nine female and 43 male professors and 41 of the 135 senior lecturers were women.

In the political arena, men still outnumber women. There has only been one female government leader in the history of the Commonwealth Caribbean — Eugenia Charles of Dominica — and women, who have been awarded Cabinet posts have traditionally been relegated to the areas of welfare or health.

After 50 years of universal adult sufferage Jamaican women account for only 24 of the 187 local government councillors, seven of the 60 Parliamentarians, one of the 14 Cabinet Minsters and four of the 21 government senators.

Dr Sheila Campbell-Forrester, senior medical officer of health, says that Caribbean men have continued the trend of dominance in the area of poor attention to health matters.

With an impressive array of statistics she showed how more male infants died during the first year of life, more men were housed in the region’s psychiatric hospitals, more men died prematurely due to accidents and homicides and far more men contracted deadly sexually transmitted diseases than women.

“There is truth to the thought that a significant number of men have been marginalised in our society but at the same time men have not always been assertive enough in assuming their rights,” she notes, adding that they ought to be loud in ensuring that their health needs are addressed in the region.

“No longer can we continue to talk about men are an endangered species. If we agree that men are endangered then we are subscribing to the notion that our civilisation is also endangered.

“To dispel doubts about the future of our males is to focus attention on the family and to define and carry out actions which are necessary to create the kind of men, women and children who are healthy, happy and productive,” she adds.

“Caribbean men aren’t endangered,” says Ruth Jankee, executive director of the Jamaica Foundation for Children. “The problem which now exists between men and women in the Caribbean is a problem of perception.”

Carol Narcisse, of the Association of Women’s Organisation in Jamaica believes that what men need is a movement of their own.

“Caribbean men need a movement, not to keep women from advancing any further, but to enhance their own social evolution.”