Women :: History, Caribbean Women

During the twentieth century, poor people women in the Caribbean were pulled into a predictable, gendered, labor aim operating at investment sites in the region. In this pattern poor men leave home to find temporary, labor-intensive employment in the initial phases of economic development. Women follow later to take up more permanent service employment as maids, domestics, and cleaners (Almer, 99). The significance of the citation is its showing the emergence of a labor model that has shaped the Caribbean for generations. In the beginning of the twentieth century poor eastern Caribbean women followed male unsettled marchers to various places such as the Panama Canal, Cuba, friar preacher Republic, Trinidad, Curacao, and Aruba in say to provide for their families. Eastern Caribbean women have developed their own family model, which include non-marital relationships and liberty to travel for work. According to eastern Caribbean social norms poor women are expect to have childre n and endure them financially. This results in women leaving their children with extended family and supporting them by working in distant places (99). During the Pre-1960s women migrant workers found employment as seamstresses, cooks, laundresses, and maids at labor camps located in the Panama Canal Zone, Cuba, and the Dominican Republic (100). When employment on these islands decreased, women followed the labor migrant pattern once again by traveling to Trinidad, Curacao and Aruba to perform domestic work (101). The womanly labor migrants experienced a form of freedom and independence that came with arranged predictable wages. These migrant domestics were economic mainstays for their dependents left behind in their direct societies (101). The quote is showing how migrant women have moved from their economic stead in their home town to now being able to support themselves and their families through steady employment. During the Post-1960s increased economic investment in to uristry on the US and British Virgin Islands, in addition to the Dutchs Aruba and St. Maarten brought again the labor migrant pattern of women coming to work in the tourism industry (101). The increase in tourism on the Virgin Islands brought with it increases in foreign born populations and in female workers. The global prosperity that was stimulated by tourism resulted in a solicit for female workers, as maids and ancillary personal in hotels and gift shops and as domestics in private households (102). The quote shows how female labor plays an important map in the economies of these islands.