Women of Belize

Gender and Change in Central America

Bibliographic Data

ID2579224
AuthorsElizabeth C Babcock, Irma Mcclaurin (0000-0001-9185-5140)
Year1998
Volume4
Issue2
Pages395
Publication date1998-06-01
Peer ReviewedYes
Open AccessNo
TypeARTICLE
VenueJournal of the Royal Anthropological Institute (JOURNAL)
Journal identifiersISSN: 1359-0987 • E-ISSN: 1467-9655
PublisherJSTOR (PUBLISHER)
DOI10.2307/3034558
OpenAlexW2006965708
LanguageEN
Citations received14

Provides a vivid and evocative portrait of the dynamics of gender and the evolution of women's consciousness in this small but very complex multiethnic society. McClaurin's own voice throughout the book is eloquent and subtle, always attentive to both the private and the public implications of women's words.--Daphne Patai, author of Brazilian Women Speak: Contemporary Life Stories Insightful and inspiring.--O. Nigel Bolland, Colgate University has sensitively enabled three Belizean women to speak frankly about their difficult lives. [Her]self-awareness and interpretations deepen our understanding of these women and their environment.--Zee Edgell, author of Beka Lamb This engaging ethnography is set in the remote district of Toledo in Belize, Central America, where three women weave personal stories about the events in their lives. Each describes her experiences of motherhood, marriage, family illness, emigration, separation, work, or domestic violence that led her to recognize gender inequality and then do something about it. All three challenge the culture of gender at home and in the larger community. Zola, an East Indian woman without primary school education, invents her own escape from a life of subordination by securing land, then marries the man she's lived with since the age of fourteen--but on her own terms. Evelyn, a thirty-nine-year old Creole woman, has raised eight children virtually alone, yet she remains married of habit. A keen entrepreneur, she has run a restaurant, a store, and a sewing business, and she now owns a mini-mart attached to her home. Rose, a Garifuna woman, is a mother of two whose husband left when she would not accept his extra-marital affairs. While she ekes out a survival in the informal economy, she gets spiritual comfort from her religious beliefs, love of music, and two children. The voices of these ordinary Belizean women fill the pages of this book. Irma McClaurin reveals the historical circumstances, cultural beliefs, and institutional structures that have rendered women in Belize socially disenfranchised and economically dependent upon men. She shows how some ordinary women, through their participation in women's grassroots groups, have found the courage to change their lives. Drawing upon her own experiences as a black woman in the United States, and relying upon cross-cultural data about the Caribbean and Latin America, she explains the specific way gender is constructed in Belize. Irma McClaurin ia an assistant professor of anthropology at the University of Florida

Geography · Political science · Agriculture, Land Use, Rural Development · History · Migration and Labor Dynamics · Migration, Ethnicity, and Economy

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