Caribbean Portraits - Christine Barrow

"Since the 1970s the study of gender issues as they relate to the Caribbean has gone through several reinterpretations. The respectable wife and mother stereotype was replaced by that of the 'powerful matriarch', which was in turn challenged by studies exposing the poverty and vulnerability of women, not only of Afro-Caribbean descent but Indian, white and coloured middle-class women. These reinterpretations signal a departure from the European, American and African feminist scholarship; indeed Caribbean feminists are beginning to accept that perhaps the 'Caribbean woman' does not exist. Caribbean Portraits makes its contribution by focusing on issues of gender ideology and identity. The articles in the collection ask simple but fundamental questions: Who are Caribbean women and who are Caribbean men? How do gender ideologies and stereotypes define them and how in turn do they respond? How are gender identities and relations formed and how do imperialism, capitalism, racism, race and culture affect these identities and relationships? "