The independent islands of the Caribbean have received scant attention in the subfield of gender and politics. Yet these countries present trends that challenge comparative politics scholars’ conventional wisdom about gender, representation, and policy change. First, only Guyana has gender quotas governing the composition of the national legislature, but women’s representation in the islands’ appointed senates often outstrips women’s representation in upper bodies elsewhere in Latin America. Many Caribbean nations have also chosen female speakers of parliament, female prime ministers, and female party leaders. Second, notable gains in women’s leadership notwithstanding, institutional frameworks for gender equality remain underdeveloped. Gender equality policies have even regressed in some circumstances. For instance, a growing policy discourse about “men’s rights” has led several countries to create “men’s bureaus,” agencies that draw male citizens into combatting social ills such as domestic violence and single-parent households—while reinforcing traditional norms of masculinity and femininity.
This paper thus provides insight into the paradoxes of gender equality using evidence from an understudied world region. We explore how large numbers of female leaders—many of whom manifest a commitment to gender equality—can exist alongside public policies that perpetuate traditional gender roles and family arrangements. We draw on data from the Anglophone nations of Antigua and Barbuda, the Bahamas, Barbados, Belize, Dominica, Grenada, Guyana, Jamaica, St. Vincent and the Grenadines, St. Kitts and Nevis, St. Lucia, Trinidad and Tobago, and the Dutch-speaking nation of Suriname—to present an overview of gender and politics in the region. We argue that Caribbean female leaders and female activists face significant cultural and social hurdles in shifting national discourses towards gender equality, and that these historical legacies explain how women gain ground in leadership while losing ground in public policy.
