The 20th Century has seen a significant challenge to the historic male gender privileging in many spheres of Caribbean socio-economic, political and cultural life. As scholars have sought to analyze as well as promote this process of change it has become clear that gender relations in the Caribbean have a complex texture that is distinctive. Historic male gender privileging has produced perverse consequences for males as well as females. This reality has been seized upon by some who are uncomfortable with the loss of male gender privilege and has led at times to a one-sided concern for difficulties faced by males with respect to contemporary gender transformations. This paper seeks to draw on specific Caribbean experience to suggest how the concept of gender privileging might be deployed to help unravel some of these complexities. By adopting an analysis that is genuinely nuanced it becomes easier to encompass new evidence while taking account of the fundamental imbalance that persists with respect to the occupation of gendered spaces in the Caribbean.

Mark Figueroa (Mr)
Department of Economics
University of the West Indies
Mona, Kingston 7, Jamaica
Phone: (876) 977-2396, 977-1188
Fax: (876) 9771483
mfiguero@uwimona.edu.jm