WOMEN IN WEST INDIAN LITERATURE, II || COLONIAL POLICY TOWARDS WOMEN AFTER THE 1938 UPRISING: THE...

COLONIAL POLICY TOWARDS WOMEN AFTER THE 1938 UPRISING: THE CASE OF JAMAICAAuthor(s): JOAN FRENCHSource: Caribbean Quarterly, Vol. 34, No. 3/4, WOMEN IN WEST INDIAN LITERATURE, II(SEPTEMBER/DECEMBER, 1988), pp. 38-61Published by: University of the West Indies and Caribbean QuarterlyStable URL: http://www.jstor.org/stable/40653706 .

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COLONIAL POLICY TOWARDS WOMEN AFTER THE 1938 UPRISING: THE CASE OF JAMAICA*

by

JOAN FRENCH

Introduction The labour disturbances in the British West Indies in the 1930s are generally regarded as marking a turning-point in the relationship between the Imperial Government and the island colonies. In Jamaica the uprising of 1938 shook the foundations of the colonial economy, forcing a number of important reforms. The period from 1938 to 1944 was therefore one of major changes. Were men and women affected differently by these changes? In what ways? Was there a policy directed specifically at women during the period? If so, how did it relate to the major economic issues in Jamaican society at the time?

The fact is that there was a policy, and that this policy in general operated to blunt the militancy of women whose highly visible and militant participation in all aspects of the uprising has been documented (Reddock, 1984; French & Ford-Smith, 1986). It also operated to make women second-hand beneficiaries of the reforms implemented after '38. In the formation of local political parties, the increased trade union activity which followed on the expansion of the rights of workers to organise, and the Universal Adult Suffrage granted by the new Constitution of 1944 women's exercise of their full rights as citizens was limited by a policy which was not explicit in any of the Trade Union Laws, the rules of political parties or the Constitution.

Was it that women were not supporting the changes? Was it that they were passive? Not at all.

The women of the middle strata supported the movement for self-government, and struggled to get women elected to political offfice. They struggled for an increased pre- sence in the local civil service against the prejudice of both the British colonial administration and their own men. At the same time they opposed giving the vote to the "illiterate masses" and were not supporters of Universal Adult Suffrage. In spite of this, a signifi- cant number of them "assisted the working class" by working as organisers, secretaries and clerks for the new trade unions, paying particular attention to the mobilisation of women, defending, as they put it, "the interests of their sexes".

♦Presented to the Conference of the Caribbean Studies Association, Caracas, Venezuela, May 28-31, 1986.



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The women of the working poor participated in unions at factory and field level, some becoming shop stewards. None became top level leaders.

In the activity of the political parties women were very active at the base as members or doing the leg-work of organising. Working-class women became militant defenders of the right of all citizens to the vote.

All of this activity, however, has to be evaluated against one over-riding factor: the dramatic decline in the participation of women in the labour force. According to the 1943 census, between 1921 and 1943 the entire female labour force declined from 219,000 to 163,000. The percentage decline between 1911 and 1943 is from 59.6% to 34%. In agriculture, the main area of female employment at the time of Emancipation, the female labour force declined from 125,000 in 1921 to 45 ,600 in 1943. Women were becoming more active, but objectively their economic situation was becoming not better, but worse. In the same period male employment in agriculture was rising numerically and proportionately, in spite of an overall decrease in the numbers engaged in agriculture. What is the relationship between this fundamental contradiction and the policies of the period towards women?

The Moyne Commission Report: Women as the Key The contours of this policy are clearly defined in the report and recommendations

of the West India Royal Commission chaired by Lord Moyne (referred to hereafter as the Moyne Commission), appointed after the Jamaican uprising of 1938, the worst of the 'disturbances' in the British West Indies in the 1930s, to investigate social and economic conditions in the British West Indies and to make recommendations. The main vehicle for the implementation of these recommendations as they related to women was the Colonial Development and Welfare Office, which as part of its programme helped to promote and create an organisation of women, the Jamaica Federation of Women, through which the ideology on the role of women would continue to be propagated after self- government. The practical effects of the policy towards women and the ideology which supported it can be gleaned from an examination of the 1943 census.

The recommendations of the Moyne Commission rested on 3 main pillars - Social Welfare, a policy for the creation of 'responsible' Trade Unions and Land Settlement. To ensure the success of all three, the most important element was a conscious policy towards women.

The centrality of the focus on women is apparent when we examine the three things which the Moyne Commission saw as basic to a solution of the social problems in Jamaica in the period after 1938 and the implications for women. They were:

1. The status accorded to women; 2. The lack of family life; 3. The absence of a well-defined programme of social welfare. The main pillars of the policy were - the promotion of the ideology of the dependent housewife, male breadwinner,

and, as a means to this end, the promotion of 'stable monogamy', preferably marriage, the promotion of the idea of voluntary social work as the most laudable and



40

prestigious occupation for middle-strata women. Middle-strata women were to become social workers. They in turn would train poor

women to accept 'proper families'. These 'proper families' were to be definitely nuclear - male breadwinner, non-earning housewife and dependents. This non-earning housewife would not only be responsible for the reproduction of the men's labour power but for that of the whole society. "The family" was to be the answer to the unemployment, the' lack of wage work and the land hunger of the masses which the Moyne Commission identified as the main socio-economic problems facing the island. Through the family the scar- city of jobs would be eased by withdrawing women from the paid labour force, by convincing both men and women that wages were a man's prerogative, and that a 'proper' family meant one in which a woman was dependent on a man for all her financial needs as well as the needs of all those left in her care. In this dependent and wageless situation, women would nonetheless provide slave labour for the state in the provision of social services to the population placed in destitution by their economic policies. Women were to be wholly responsible for the caring of the old and sick, as well as the servicing of men and the rearing of children.

"The misery and ill health of old people [cannot] be substantially alleviated until a feeling of family responsibility has been more securely established" (MCR, p. 220).

If women were poor and families destitute, it was argued, it was because they did not have families with a man at the centre. Women would be better off depending on aman, because, even if the man was unemployed, the family would have more money than if the man alone worked, since men were paid more than women. Where there was no 'father'

"the whole (financial) responsibility falls on the mother ... In such circumstances cases of extreme poverty are inevitable, for the standard of living must be lower than it would be in a family group where, even if both parents were not employed, more money would be available, since the wages of men are normally higher than those given to women" (MCR, p. 221).

The solution to female poverty, then, was not to pav women 'proper' wages for the work they did, but to deprive them of what little wages they had through the establishment of 'proper' families, in which men were seen as the providers, and therefore as having the primary right to a wage.

The lack of this 'proper' family was blamed for the entire suffering of the masses - for poverty, for infant mortality, for venereal disease, and for 'the lot of their unfor- tunate children' (MCR, p. 227), and by women of the middle-classes for over-population. Thus was the lot of the poor blamed on the poor rather than on an exploitative and un- just system. In actual fact, the rate of infant mortality differed little whether the parents were married or unmarried, and the birthrate among married couples was actually higher than that among single or common-law mothers (Census of Jamaica, 1943, p. XLVI).



41

As part of the promotion of the ideology of the male breadwinner (the counterpart of the non-earning housewife) the Moyne Commission recommended a campaign against fathers who did not pay child maintenance, on pain of imprisonment with labour. Even the Moyne Commission was forced to admit, even if only obliquely, that some men in the society were also in a desperate situation. The Commission noted that some way had to be found to make imprisonment unattractive for men who failed to pay maintenance orders.

"Men who have been sentenced to imprisonment for failure to comply with maintenance orders are not normally required to work in prison. Imprisonment without the necessity of working has, however, little deterrent effect in the West Indies" (MCR, p. 222).

The reason can be surmised from the fact that, even today, in the West Indies some of our men are in such a desperate situation that they regard prison as an opportunity to get fuaranteed board and lodging.

As a corollary to the establishment of the male-headed household, the Moyne Com- mission proposed a campaign against "the social, moral and economic evils of promiscuity". Promiscuity was defined as all those forms of relations between the sexes and con- cepts of family which were non-marital or non-monogamous. Female-headed households and multiple consecutive unions, the most current forms among the masses, were thus condemned. Faithful concubinage was tolerated because of its monogamous and 'stable' nature, which was seen as resembling monogamous marriage in all but its legal form. The children of those unions were, however, like the children of 'promiscuous' unions, condemned for their 'illegitimacy'.

That there was some struggle around the imposition of this family model at the time of the Moyne Commission is evident from the following comment in the Report:

"Some witnesses averred that the West Indian prefers cohabitation without marriage, but no convincing evidence on this point was put before us. Other witnesses alleged that the failure of West Indians to marry is a legacy from the time when the institution of wedlock was discouraged among the slaves" (MCR, p. 221).

A glimpse of why the Moyne Commission could not be convinced of the preference of so many West Indians for cohabitation without marriage is contained in the next sentence, which alleges that, being primitive, they were incapable of consciously deciding for themselves what they wanted.

"This historical basis was often quoted to us, but there are many other factors, first among which should perhaps be placed the absence of a strong opposing public opinion among a people whose im- mature minds too often are ruled by their adult bodies" (MCR, p. 221).



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From the time of slavery black Jamaican women had made their opposition to marriage quite clear, rejecting it as 'too much work" and putting them too much under the control of man. This absence of a 'strong opposing public opinion' was still creating problems at the time of the Commission's "Statement of Actions taken on the Recommenda- tions (1945)".

A predilection for the bourgeois family was to be inculcated in the masses of women through the social work which was to be done by the middle-strata women. In exchange for their acceptance of their role in the domestication of the masses of women, they were to be given access to certain professional, managerial and political areas from which they had previously been excluded. However, this access was to be to 'suitable' tasks in these areas, that is, tasks related to the definition of women as housewives/nur- turers/mothers.

As far as access to the political machinery was concerned, the MCR had noted: "Women can take but little part in the administration of West Indian Colonies. When they are eligible to exercise the vote on equal terms with men or to stand with them for election to representative institutions, the prescribed qualifications are usually such that few women possess the property or income to satisfy them ... In Jamaica . . . women are eligible for election or nomination to the Legislative Council [but] none has yet sat in that body." (MCR, p. 217)

The MCR therefore recommended: "That women be put on equal footing with men in these matters" (MCR, p. 227).

In detail, the Commission's recommendations were that: (i) Women should be eligible for appointment to all

Boards and Local Authorities; (ii) Where nominations may be made to those bodies and

representation of the interests of women had not been secured through elections, the desirability of nominating a woman or women for membership, if well qualified persons can be found, should be borne carefully in mind; (emphasis added)

(iii) Women should be equally eligible with men for appointment as magistrates and service as jurors;

(iv) The same procedure should be adopted in selecting both male and female candidates for appointment to the Civil Service (MCR, p. 230).

The first practical consequence of these recommendations was when Mrs Mary Morris-Knibb won a seat on the Kingston and St Andrew Corporation (KSAC) in 1939. This only came about as a result of tremendous struggle by women like Amy Bailey and the other women connected with the Women's Liberal Club. Even so, the election was only to a parish body. While it paved the way for the entry of women to the Legislative



43

Council later on (which was not possible until the new Constitution of 1944), as late as 1983 a female Councillor for the parish of Clarendon complained that she was never allotted funds for local development except for social and cultural activities, and the Council refused to entrust her with arrangements for the repair of the local water pump on the basis that such a responsibility was only appropriate for a male (Sistren: 1983).

While on the surface male/female 'equality' in employment in the administrative service was being proposed, in practice it was limited to those areas in which they could serve the socialisation process for the creation and enforcement of 'proper' families. Just as the family was structured into the backlands of the economic structure, so in their role as 'family enforcers' they were paid little or nothing and so were structured into the 'lower echelons' of the Civil Service and professions. After all, working, for them, was just the 'use of leisure'. Men provided their material support, so what did they need money for? Work in the Civil Service was just an extension of social work - which in its turn was an extension of unpaid work in the home, and work in the home was by definition not work. Within the professions the roles recommended for women were as follows: As magistrates: to deal with young offenders, maintenance and other areas of 'fami-

ly law'; As doctors As nurses: to deal with venereal disease, maternity and child care, and general

sanitation and hygiene (public health); As teachers: to promote domestic science and social welfare;

Associai workers: to work at the 'local' levels on committees which were largely unpaid while men controlled the higher echelons of administration.

Even in relation to social work, women were structured into the role of 'handmaidens' of men. Again, on the surface, the Moyne Commission's recommendations seemed quite free of sex bias:

(i) An organised compaign should be undertaken against the social, moral and economical evils of promiscuity;

(ii) An organisation should be created and staff should be appointed through the agency of which a well-defined social welfare programme can be planned and execu- ted . . .;

(iii) Social welfare workers must be trained for service in the West Indian Colonies;

(iv) Public funds should be used to supplement the voluntary subscriptions on which the creation of such agencies would depend; (emphasis added)

(v) The work of existing voluntary organisations should be continued and extended by encouraging "still more interest in that work from people of leisure who are in a position to help both financially by subscrib- ing to the cost of these activities and by personal service", (emphasis added) (MCR, pp. 231-2)

Men were not considered to be 'people of leisure' so that, when the Council of



44

Social Service was later proposed by Τ S Simey, for the concrete realisation of the recommendations of the Moyne Commission, men were proposed as the main paid officers, while women were proposed as 'assistants'. The Council was to be staffed by Officers (male) who would work with the 'assistance' of three trained women social workers (Simey, 1941, 1, p. 2). These would be supported by a host of voluntary workers, name- ly, women.

The Moyne Commission also failed to challenge the expulsion of married women from the Civil and Teaching Services, and women had to resign from their jobs in these areas on marriage. This strengthened the notion of marriage as an 'alternative career' pre- dicated on the assumption of male support and female dependency. It operated against the establishment of economic independence by these women within marriage, and forced women to choose between sexuality and/or motherhood and economic independence and/or the fulfilment of a career. For this reason many women of the middle-strata in this period chose to remain single - the Bailey sisters, Edith Clarke, Una Mason among others - apparently refusing to trade financial independence for the satisfaction of home and family. These women gained a great deal of prestige through their work, and often became the envy of men, but they paid a heavy price.

Regarding the recommendations of the Moyne Commission concerning the education of girls the main aim of all female education was seen as marriage. The first paragraph of this section states:

"If there are to be happy marriages, girls must be able to be companions for their husbands and therefore need as wide a cultural education as possible" (MCR p. 130).

The basic ingredient of this 'cultural education' was to be domestic science. "Domestic science should of course form a part of curriculum of all girls' schools . . ." (MCR, p. 131).

Vocational education for girls was to consist of housecraft training, as was already being done in Guiana through the Carnegie Trade School for girls.

For the better-off classes whose girls already had access to a secondary education, subjects previously reserved for boys - mathematics, Latin, physics and chemistry - were to be extended to girls. This would allow girls access, for the first time, to the few Island Scholarships available. This was, however, to be without prejudice to their training in domestic science and housecraft, and the recommendations did not envisage women breaking out of the housework professions such as nursing and teaching.

"It is essential that girls anxious to enter the profession and capable of doing so should not be denied the necessary preliminary education. Complaints were made to us in evidence of the difficulty of obtaining girls with the education necessary to enable them to enter the nursing profession. Further many girls find it very difficult to obtain the teaching in subjects such as mathematics, Latin, physics and chemistry



45

demanded by the scholarship regulations: injustice, either the regulations should be so modified as not to discriminate against girls, or the appropriate teaching should be made readily available to them as to boys". (Emphasis added) (MCR,p. 131).

The girls of the lower classes would be trained in housecraft in the elementary schools beyond which few could advance. This would fit them for employment as assistants in the infant play-centres which the Commission recommended be attached to schools. For this they 'might receive a small fee'. On this, the Commission Offered no comment' but felt that this "would have to be decided in the light of local circumstances". The bulk of these girls would, as we have seen in the statistics for the period, end up as domestics. In Jamaica, Amy Bailey's Housecraft Training Centre attempted to offer these women more 'professional' status as domestics. For the women of the lower middle classes, initially all-male centres such as Dinthill and Holmwood were eventually diversi- fied to include domestic science for girls.

The male-breadwinner ideology and its material effects are illustrated by the fact that Dinthill and Holmwood trained boys who "were already working on their own or their father's land". The possibility that their mothers might have owned land was not envisaged, neither was the possibility that women might have access to agricultural education.

The ruling classes were well aware the the 'non-working' housewife ideology could, in practice, only have limited application among the labouring classes. The dire poverty in which they were kept by the control of the capitalist class over material resources would continually press them into service in those areas where their employment served the needs of the ruling classes. There would always be a good supply of women to work as agricultural field labour and domestics, servicing the public and 'private' areas of ruling class life. Moreover, by application of the 'male-breadwinner' iedology (never operative in practice for these classes) women could be paid little or no wages in exchange for their work. This creation of a second level workforce available at lower wages than those normally payable to males could be manipulated by capital to the advantage of the class as economic conditions demanded.

In recognition of this cheap labour force, the MCR recommended as its only measure in favour of 'working women' the establishment of hostels in town for domestic workers and shop assistants. In practice, not one such hostel was ever established out of public funds, and these recommendations did not form part of the proposals of Τ S Simey or of the programme of 'development and welfare' agreed on later by the British government.

The women in industry came in for no special recommendations. According to the Report, their main problem was safety regulations and legislation re protection from in- jury, and in these areas they were already on an 'equal' footing with men. Although the Report, notes the miserably low wages paid to women in the West Indies, and the im- practicability of this in a situation where many women were heads of households, not one of the detailed recommendations which follow relates to wages and conditions.



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"Generally throughout the West Indies, although the level of pay for men is low. an even lower standard is adopted for women, who often receive less than a living wage. The argument that man is the head of the household and is responsible for the financial up- keep of the family has less force in the West Indies, where promiscuity and illegitimacy are so prevalent, and the woman so often is the supporter of the home" (MCR,p.22O).

In June 1945 a "Statement of Actions taken on the Recommendations of the Moyne Commission (to be referred to henceforth as MCR-SA) was published. The actions taken up to that date related to the three pillars of colonial policy in the period - social welfare, trade unionism and land settlement - but the principal and most extensive actions had been taken in relation to social welfare.

The British government had lost no time in 'accepting forthwith' the Moyne Com- mission recommendation that they provide an annual sum for "social welfare and development and the establishment of a special organisation, independent of the West Indian Colonial Governments, to administer these funds" (MCR-SA,p. 3). Since then, the State- ment reported, many measures had been taken despite problems of war expenditure. By contrast we are told later that "owing to war expenditure no action has been taken on the recommendation that more hostels should be provided for women workers" (MCR-SA, p. 59). The same excuse is given for the failure to address the problems of nutrition (MCR- SA, p. 22).

The actions in relation to social welfare included the appointment of a Secretary for Social Welfare Services to "co-ordinate", since care was to be taken "to support and not replace the valuable work now being done by voluntary organisations" (MCR-SA, p. 57). 'Considerable assistance' had by then been given to Jamaica Welfare Limited, in the form of a grant under the Colonial Development and Welfare Act. As early as 1939 a completely revised curriculum had been provided for primary schools, to include instruction in hygiene and domestic science (for girls) and manual and agricultural training (for boys). While the play centres attached to schools had not yet become a reality, plans were afoot to establish them and use them for 'instruction in child welfare'. On the question of 'equal' secondary education, applicable to middle-strata women and 'equal terms' in the Island Scholarships, the Statement reported that in relation to Jamaica this was "generally already true or receiving consideration" (MCR-SA, p. 22). The Sex Disqualification (Removal) Law of 1944 had been passed, allowing the entry of middle-strata women to areas of public life from which they were previously excluded. It provided for the appointment of women as magistrates and their appointment as jurors, their entry to the Civil Service and the expansion of their role in education and the social services. Under the Constitution of 1944 women were now eligible for election to the Legislature, in extension of the right of appointment to Boards and Local Authorities which they had previously won in the wake of 1938. Whatever little help was extended to the masses was carried out largely through the voluntary labour of these women, and the semi-slave labour of the women of the labouring classes; as in the case of the two (2) central Kit-



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chens and seventy (70) school canteens established by 1945. Some clothing donated from the US was re-made by girls in schools under the supervision of female teachers and given to needy children. These are the only practical measures for the benefit of the poor which are made explicit in the statement of Action.

The most important thrust in the actions taken on the recommendations was the establishment, through the social work network created, of the male-headed family, towards which there was by this time 'a strong tendency'. In this the Church played a leading role and "the government assists in all practical ways through its social welfare services" (MCR-SA, p. 60). While the going was rough ("Progress is difficult to obtain" - MCR-SA, p. 60), hope was placed in the long-term effects of the 'home life'-centred social welfare activities and education. "Education, better housing and emphasis by social welfare workers on the value of home life will have their effects in time . . ." (MCR-SA, p. 60).

The key role of the Church in this thrust is reflected in the Chairmanship by the Lord Bishop of a Committee on Concubinage and Illegitimacy established in 1941. This Committee had made certain recommendations, but it was providing difficult to frame enforceable legislation. A standing Committee was therefore established, again under the

Chairmanship of the Lord Bishop, "to further investigate the whole problem and consider the legislation necessary to give effect to the recommendations of the 1941 Committee".

The Moyne Commission Recommendations and the actions which followed therefore marked an advance in the struggle of middle- and upper-class women for greater economic independence, a say in politics and more opportunities to get out of the home. New employment opportunities were created for the women of these classes, while their non-wage work was extended outside the home and given 'status'. At the same time the recommendations enshrined among the middle strata the European bourgeois sexual division of labour. They did little, however, to advance the wage rights of working class women. Rather, they gave official sanction to the imprisonment of the women of the labouring classes in the home - their own, and those of the upper and middle classes whose interests the Recommendations served.

Social Welfare as British Colonial Policy The first Colonial Development and Welfare Act was promulgated in 1929. This

Act was, however, concerned primarily with investment in agriculture and industry in the colonies. It made no mention of social welfare. The preamble to the Act describes it as:

"An Act to authorise the making of advance for aid- ing and developing agriculture and industry in certain colonies, to provide for the extension of the Colonial Stock Acts, 1877-1900, to stock farming part of the public debt of certain protected and mandated terri- tories".

In 1944, however, a new Act repealing the old one and concerned primarily with Social Welfare replaced the earlier Act and, together with other Acts passed between 1945 and 1959, became known collectively as the Colonial Development and Welfare Acts. The Acts of 1945-1959 essentially revised the amounts allotted to social welfare



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in the 1940 Act, setting new time periods for expenditure, and allotting portions of money specifically to 'research and enquiry'.

After the riots of the late 1930s throughout the English-speaking Caribbean, the most intense of which were the riots in Jamaica in 1938, the British State focused its attention on the Caribbean, so that while the Acts apply generally to the colonies, they were in fact triggered primarily by the events in the Caribbean, and came in handy in the colonies as a a whole because of the growing tide of colonial unrest.

While the Act of 1940 claims to provide for both 'development of the resources' of the colonies and the 'welfare' of the colonial peoples, in actual practice in the Jamaican case projects under the Act were concerned almost exclusively with welfare, and 'development of resources' according to the investment model of the 1929 Act was replaced by an interpretation which saw development and welfare as almost one and the same.

An important component of the 1940 Act is that the thrust toward welfare goes hand in hand with a thrust toward the promotion of trade unions. The main conditions of grants under the Act were the establishment of trade union laws, the facilitation of trade union activity and the recognition of trade union ̂contracts and an end to child labour. The Act states that, before supporting any programme under the Act, the Secretary of State should satisfy himself:

(a) That the law of the colony provides reasonable facilities for the establishment and activities of trade unions, and ... in particular:

(i) that wages paid will be at not less than the rates recognised by employers and trade unions ... or, if there are no rates so recognised, at rates approved by the person for the time being administering the government of the colony, and,

(ii) that no children under such age as may be appropriate in the circumstances, but not in any case being less than fourteen years, will be employed. . ."

Simultaneously, however, women's right to employment is challenged, men are given first choice in available wage work, while women are ejected from key areas of the economy and relegated to unwaged or low-paid domestic labour, or to exploitation as a super-cheap labour force to serve the expansion of the small manufacturing industry. The result is that the unions become primarily male preserves. Children who had used their labour to help their mothers face the problems of survival were now prohibited from working, without any measures being implemented to address the problem of their day-to-day survival. This became an additional problem for the mothers, already pres- sured by wagelessness and low-paid work.

In accordance with the new model of 'development and welfare', a Secretary for Social Welfare Services was appointed to Jamaica soon after the conclusion of the West India Royal Commission of Enquiry. This Secretary reported to F. A. Stockdale, Comp- troller for Development and Welfare in Great Britain. In 'indicating' to Governor Sir Arthur Richards in 1941 "the directions in which the financial assistance under the



49

Colonial Development and Welfare Act would be supported" (Gt. Britain, Comptroller for Development and Welfare, "Jamaica" - Government Printer - pamphlet 1941), Stockdale outlined a programme based on Land Settlement and supporting services (Health, Housing Education) and Social Welfare.

The document contains explicit acceptance of the proposals of Τ S Simey concerning social welfare. Simey had recommended an extensive all-island social welfare network based on "Village Community Associations". To create these associations, there was to be a Jamaica Council of Social Services, co-ordinating existing voluntary social work schemes, principal among them Jamaica Welfare (but also the YWCA and the Church), and to create others based also on voluntary effort. To quote Simey:

"Both men and women officers would find their practical functions best summed up in the phrase "home -making", interpreted in the most liberal way possible . . . The women should be competent housekeepers (emphasis added) and be able to give instructions in the arts of child management" (Simey, 1941,1, p. 2).

The curriculum proposed was craftwork, homecraft and physical training with two (2) training officers assigned to housecraft and one each to the other areas. As Simey's entire plan was based on the voluntary labour, primarily of women, he is able to comment:

"It must not be thought, however, that this scheme would involve a revolutionary change in the organisation of the public social services" (Simey, 1984, l.p.2).

In other words, additional public expenditure would not be necessary.

Someone, somewhere, seems to have been worried about the clamouring of women like Amy Bailey who were demanding not just to be allowed to do social work, but to be properly paid for it. The Education Advisor (S A Hammond), making comments on the recommendations, was more explicit. The Village Associations

"could also discharge some functions which are commonly in Jamaica thought to be functions of government" (Simey, 1941 , 1 , p. 2).

He lists pre-school education and play centres as examples. Areas normally accepted to be the responsibility of government were to be passed on to the shoulders of women where it would not be necessary to pay for them. Simey's recommendations give an interesting view of the conditions under which middle-strata women were accepted into the social services. In the proposed Council, of Social Service, men were going to be the main, paid, officers. Women could 'assist'. The kind of work they would be expected to do as professionals is illustrated by the outline of the functions of the Medical Social Worker:-



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(i) almoner to the hospital and poor house, (ii) organiser of general social service in the district, (iii) promoter of further voluntary work as the need arises.

Jamaica Welfare was considered to be already operating along these lines, and the task ahead was to extend this work.

As far as Land Settlement was concerned, Simey's proposals for Village Com- munity Associations presumed a rural focus in line with the Land Settlement programme which Stockdale identified as the pivot of the British colonial land policy. The Land Settlement programme presumed a nuclear family unit with a male head-of-household to whom the land was leased or sold. Preference was given to these 'proper families' and a female head of household stood little chance of getting her own land, far less a wife.

Women Organised for Housewifisation: The Jamaica Federation of Women The definitive form in which women were organised for the promotion of these

policies towards women was the Jamaica Federation of Women, founded in 1944 by Lady Molly Huggins, wife of the Colonial Governor, who had arrived in Jamaica in 1943. Modelled on the Women's Institute of Great Britain, the motto of the Federation was "For Our Homes and Our Country" - essentially the same as that of the Institute movement.

Women's Institutes had emerged first in Canada, and had been introduced into Great Britain in 1915 during the First World War (1914-1918). The Institutes were rural institutions organising farmers' wives and daughters to support the British war effort by growing and preserving food when supplies from overseas were curtailed by war conditions. The vegetables, small livestock, eggs, etc., produced by the women - many of whom were managing their holdings on their own since their men had been called up for war service - were sold in village stalls to each other 'since the greengrocer or shop- keeper can't be bothered with these small amounts' - a sort of subsistence agriculture which kept the country alive during the war effort. Many of these women were tackling for the first time 'jobs that their husbands used to do', and doing their housework as well. Their willingness to take on this double burden was seen as an admirable demonstration of their patriotism.

Institute meetings took place on a village basis and satisfied the need of these women for socialising and discussing common problems. There were talks on health, child care, sessions on cooking, how to make preserves, sewing, knitting and the making of Xmas presents for soldiers at war. The meetings also provided an opportunity to get out of the house, which was acceptable to men.

There were no subscriptions and no collections were allowed at Institute meetings for any cause.

The Institutes defined themselves as non-political and drew members from all parties. They were not allowed to favour any political party. Nevertheless, they promoted



51

civic education, and made representations to District and County Councils representing the rural housewife's point of view. This they did not see as political: "District and County Councils don't make laws, they only administer them, so they are not political, and we can safely take part in local government without infringing our party political rule, or in any way favouring one party above the other". It was not considered political either to give reports on different matters to Parliament or to "collect facts and suggest policy which has not yet been adopted by any one of the parties" (Lady Albemarle, interview with Una Marson, BBC, May 1943).

In all these respects - its focus on rural housewives and 'kitchen gardens', the social form and content of meetings and the non-political' claim of the organisation - the Jamaica Federation of Women (JFW) imitated the Women's Institutes.

In May and June of 1943 Una Marson, the Jamaican feminist and black nationalist, interviewed representatives of the Women's Institutes in a series of broadcasts from the BBC specifically for transmission to the West Indies. Those broadcasts were published in written form in 1944, by the office of the Comptroller for Develop- ment and Welfare in the West Indies, and the introduction was written by the Comp- troller, F A Stockdale. One of the representatives in the course of being interviewed remarked that "it seems only fitting that an organisation of this nature, which was introduced into the Mother Country during the last Great War, should spread to the West Indies during the present great struggle". The formation of the JFW, then, had the officiai support of the British government, and seems to have been the result of an official initiative from the office of the Comptroller for Development and Welfare.

In patterning itself on the Women's Institutes, the JFW was establishing a link with the most conservative branch of British feminism at the time. After World War I feminism in Britain had polarised into conservative and liberal factions. The liberal faction campaigned for reforms, welfare and equal pay, and this is the faction with which Sylvia Pankhurst was associated. On the conservative side, Emeline and Christabel Pank- hurst and their followers supported the war effort, and came to emphasise the importance of women's support for the preservation of the existing system. This branch of feminists was admitted eventually to the Parliament they had previously opposed. This is the branch of feminism to which Molly Huggins belonged.

Among these feminists the image of women as housewife was strengthened, and the spinster was seen as leading an unhealthy existence, though it was accepted that spinsters could re-channel the sex instinct into creative vocations.

The organisation consciously sought to bring together the leadership of all the existing women's groups - Community leaders, teachers, nurses, postmistresses, parsons' wives, women of 'all classes' - under one umbrella organisation, part of a concerted effort made by Lady Huggins to draw in the black and brown middle-class who were invited to be members of the Executive Committee of 20. The Liberal Club disbanded, and its members became members of the Executive Committee.

By co-opting women like Amy Bailey and Mary Morris-Knibb to their 'non-political' organisation, the JFW blunted the thrust towards the political advancement of middle-



52

sttata women which had been present in the Women's Liberal Club and the efforts of women associated with it. The aims of the JFW were in perfect tune with the policy towards women as embodied in the Moyne Commission recommendations and the

Development and Welfare programmes. They were:

- [To foster] educational, civic and cultural development throughout the island for the service of the community;

- [To improve] economic conditions of women, particularly in rural areas by encouragement of cottage industry and craft;

- To stress the value of family life and to raise the standards of home-making; - To encourage voluntary social services.

The image of womanhood projected by the JFW was that of the housewife primarily committed to the welfare of her family, to the institution of marriage, and to doing voluntary work. The JFW was not concerned with the issue of wage work or the union- isation of women. Its main focus was the women of the rural and small peasantry.

The Civics Committee is defined as the organ of the Federation which campaigns for better family living, encouragement of marriage and 'parental responsibility', for training in mother craft (child care), basic schools and the promotion of voluntary effort, and as the place where issues of concern to women should be debated. By 1948 the Federation had the sizeable membership of 30,000 and about 400 projects.

The homemaking focus of the JFW and its promotion of the nuclear family was reflected in all its programmes. The organisation had an annual Homemaker's Day, there was a kitchen-garden competition with first and second prizes of a silver cup donated by the Hon. Mrs Cazalet-Kerr and a Wedgewood bowl donated by the owner of Wedgewood. There was a Better Home campaign promoting the idea that it was an asset tò have parents who were married, and it was within the context of this that Mass Weddings were promoted by the JFW, at the instance of Mary Morris-Knibb. Through the Mass Marriage campaign wedding rings were sold for 10/-. A total of 150 mass marriages were organised and this succeeded in raising very slightly the percentage of the total population who married. This was in spite of a massive public campaign in whicb Lady Huggins marshalled the churches, schools, press, radio, welfare agencies, and 'national' associations behind the idea and the 'ample' funds expended (M. G. Smith in Clarke, 1957, pp. v., xxxv).

In the campaign for the registration of fathers begun in 1945 there was no sug- gestion that fatherhood involved anything but financial support - a subtle assumption of the male breadwinner/dependent housewife ideology. Married men, on the other hand, by definition could not be sued for child support as long as they remained in the nuclear home - even if they were bringing in nothing and were being supported by their wives.

This was to prove the most broadly supported campaign of the organisation because it gave the masses of women a chance to get some money in exchange for their reproduct- ive labour from irresponsible men who gave them children and then left them to mind them on their own. For this they did not have to trade their sexual or economic autonomy -

limited as it was - or submit themselves to the tyranny of the male-headed household



53

of the European nuclear family. However, the minimal amounts prescribed by Law for child support, the onus placed on women to find their "baby fathers" in order to get the child support and, most importantly, the failure to institute a public programme for child support through organised public contribution (as was done in the seventies for housing, for example, through the establisment of the National Housing Trust) betray a certain hypocrisy in the child support lobby as it has existed up to the present.

In the 1970s during the period of democratic socialism and the advance of socialist ideas in the society, the JFW declined in membership. From 30,000 in members in 1948 the Federation moved to a membership of only 8,000 in 1984.

The 1943 Census: The Statistical Ejection of Women from The Labour Force According to the 1943 census, between 1921 and 1943 the entire female labour

force declined from 219,000 to 163,900, while the percentage decline between 1911 and 1943 is from 59.6% to 34%. In agriculture, the main area of female employment at the time of Emancipation, the female labour force declined from 125,400 in 1921 to 45,600 in 1943. In the same period male employment in agriculture was rising numerically and proportionately, in spite of an overall decrease in numbers for agricultural labour.

According to the census figures, while in 1921 71% of the total labour force worked in agriculture, by 1943 this had declined to 57%.

The low figures recorded for female participation in agricultural labour in 1943 are explained by the redefinition of women labourers into homemakers and domestics. As the introduction to the 1953 census states (Section 16, p. 64):

"In 1943 . . . women and children were thrown out of the labour force by the manner in which the definition of 'gainful occupation' was applied. The 1943 'gainfully occupied' concept was not closely comparable to the "productive population" of earlier censuses."

The process was recognised in the Labour Department Report of 1944:

"The Census taken on the 4th January 1943 dis- closed that there are some 264,000 wage earners in the country. These are distinct from persons who are employers of labour, and others who are gainfully employed on their own account, in their own homes or on the farms of the head of the family without pay" (emphasis added). (Labour Department Report, Jamaica, 1944)

This re-definition of women workers was a result of the rigid application of the 'male bread-winner' ideology and the rigid application of the separation between the



54

'public' ('productive', male, cash-crop, capitalist-orienteH) sphere of production, and the 'private' ('non-productive', female, family, subsistence-oriented) sphere:

"For census purposes, a gainful occupation is one by which the person who pursues it earns money, performs a service or assists with the production of goods. Children working at home or general household duties or chores or at odd times at other work (emphasis added) are not considered as being gainfully occupied. SIMILARLY WOMEN DOING HOUSEWORK IN THEIR OWN HOMES WITHOUT SALARY OR WAGES WERE RETURNED AS HOMEMAKERS AND NOT CONSIDERED AS BEING AMONG THE GAINFULLY OCCUPIED (emphasis added). (Census of Jamaica, 1943)

The "drastic decline" in the agricultural labour force. (not;ed by Roberts and Carnegie) primarily because of the "disappearance" of women is not in keeping with trends in the earlier period (See Table overleaf).

While the category 'unpaid farm workers' had declined in 1921 to 27,965 women as against 31,962 in 1911, the decline from 27, 965 in 1921 to 4,539 in 1943 is too drastic to regard it as a mere continuation of a previous trend. The same is true for banana labourers - 10,812 women in 1911 to 9,053 in 1925 to the drastically reduced figure of 5,233 in 1943. Sugar is similarly affected.

From 1911 to 1921 more females than males were employed in agricultural work (agricultural labourers). During the period women maintained their proportion of agricultural labour at 55%. This was a consequence of the emigration of males from the rural area, primarily to farm work schemes on sugar and banana estates in Cuba and Central America, an emigration which was most marked between 1911 and 1921, aggra- vated as it was by the exodus of men to join the British Armed Forces during the First World War.

Between 1880 and 1920 an estimated 146,000 persons, almost exclusively male, migrated from a population of 580,000 - 858,100 (Post 1978, p. 44). The involvement of males in agricultural wage labour declined slightly from 63,843 in 1911 to 63,745 in 1921. The irony is that when the migrants were repatriated in their thousands in the 1920s and 30s women's role in agriculture was redefined to discount women's labour and reserve wages for fhales.

In agriculture in Jamaica, the majority of women agricultural labourers had come to be occupied as unpaid family workers or as paid workers on small mixed farms (provision farming) producing primarily for local consumption. In addition, 'homemakers' in Jamaica have traditionally combined their homemaking with field work, oriented

particularly towards subsistence production and the local market and the rearing of small stock.

Women (and children) also assisted in cultivation on these as well as cash crop plots as 'unpaid family workers'. Even when they worked on the estates they often did



55

work, sub-contracted to them by men, or worked for the men without a wage as 'family' (interviews, Frome, 1985). The 1943 census practically eliminated the female labour of these categories. In the first place, women as unpaid family workers are redefined as homemakers and so disappear from the labour force altogether. The 1943 census, unlike those of 191 1 and 1921 , does not contain the category "Unpaid Family Workers" at all. Instead, there is a category 'assisting in cultivation' with 16,391 males and only 4,539 females assisting in cultivation, compared with 27,965 women defined as 'unpaid family workers' in the previous census of 1921. There has therefore been a major redefinition of 'homemakers' out of agricultural labour. Presumably, the category 'assisting in cultivation' refers to non-family women working for men on land used for export oriented crops. Those female members of the household who could not be defined as homemakers (presumably because they were not wives or concubines) were defined as being active in 'personal service', as domestics, maids (whether formally or as relatives living in the household) presumably for males who were now considered the breadwinners. As males were not 'homemakers' they continued to be defined as workers. Their numbers in the category "assisting in cultivation" (unpaid) rose above the numbers categorised as unpaid family workers in 1921 by the inclusion, perhaps of other forms of male unpaid labour used on the farms, perhaps by a greater definition of male children as workers. These figures given for female agricultural labourers must therefore relate only to non- family labour engaged on cash-crop farms for a wage.

This relegation of the labour of women to invisibility and wagelessness by the definition of their labour as a natural extension of the housewife/domestic role extended even to women's activities as farmers. Their subsistence farming (so defined despite the fact that many women sold the produce and made a living from the proceeds because such farming is still primarily associated with the maintenance of labour power rather than with the accumulation of profit in developed capitalist style) was viewed as non- productive in relation to the cash-crop economy of ascending agrarian capitalism.

In the 1943 census there was a redefinition of farms. Generally speaking, farms were redefined according to their integration into the export (cash) crop economy. Mixed farms were now defined as farms on which two cash crops together provided 50% of the production value. Previously, 'mixed' farms were those growing primarily food provisions for the local market as well as some cash crop. The existence of this type of farming inte- grated with any other was the primary basis for redefining a farm as 'mixed'. Production for the local market was nowhere near as lucrative as production for export. The redefinition of farms according to earnings from cash crops therefore effectively removed provision farming - the main focus of female agricultural labour - from the census figures, so that in the 1943 census this category does not appear at all. Even though the acreage or numbers involved in labour or provision grounds may have exceeded the labour and acreage in cash crops, the fact that the cash crop earned more led to the farm being cate- gorized according to that cash crop.

With the redefinition of female family labour into 'homemakers', therefore, not only were women statistically removed from official figures but their main farming base - land used for subsistence and local food production - also disappeared. The low figures



56

recorded for women engaged in 'own-account' occupation, including farming in the 1943 census, reflect the fact that women who worked on small plots or provision grounds were now, wherever possible, defined as 'home-makers' and domestics rather than as farmers.

Females in Own-Account Occupations: 191 1-43 1911 - 32,000 1921 - 43,000 1943 - 14,000

(Source: Census of Jamaica, 1953)

The census, in noting the sharp decline in women's labour force participation between 1921 and 1943, remarks also on its association with a "declining female participation in own-account farming" (Census of Jamaica, 1953, p. 64).

It is important to note that the redefinition of farms in the 1943 census according to export earnings (cash crops) is a direct application of the male breadwinner concept. Export agriculture was traditionally controlled primarily by the big capitalist farmers and and within the ex-slave economy primarily and almost exclusively by men. According to the 1943 census, only those areas where men were earning money were important. Women were defined as 'homemakers' and in a few cases as dependents 'assisting in cultivation'. All men, however, since they were by definition not homemakers, were defined as agricultural labourers and producers as long as they did any kind of agricultural work at all.

The institutionalisation of the male breadwinner/female homemaker concept in the official records of the country was taken even further in the census of 1946. As the 1953 census states; "The 1946 Census treatment tended to relegate farmers' wives and daughters to the economically inactive class even more competely than did the Jamaica census of 1943" (Census of Jamaica, 1953, p. 65).

The policies enshrined in the Moyne Commission Report, the projects of Colonial Development and Welfare, the census of 1943 and the programme of the Jamaica Federa- tion of Women, represented the intensification of the ideology of the male breadwinner/ dependent housewife which had begun to be promoted among the slaves towards the end of slavery. The progress of the ideology through the Emancipation period remains to be traced. What is certain is that by 1937 female employment was seen as a threat to male employment and that, in defence of their own right to wages, men were accepting the idea that women had less right to wages than men. There was also an oblique recognition of the fact that women's low pay was linked to their housewife role.

"No man wants to employ us when he can employ a woman ... [A man] has no double role to play, and might refuse 10/- a week." Plain Talk: 20th February 1937)

An example of the concrete effects can be glimpsed from a brief examination of what was happening in relation to relief work. After 1938 the expenditure on relief projects was



57

increased in response to the riots and the demand for work which had been brought home with force by the employed in the many marches which they staged during and after the riots. Concurrently, relief work came to be regarded as primarily a man's right. The origin of this policy is betrayed by the fact that, in the Orde-Browne Report of 1938, the relief rates recommended had contemplated a wage based on the minimum needs of a single man without dependents. Women were not considered, as their employment on such schemes was not contemplated - or else did not seem to merit deliberation over a wage. As Post comments, "the good major thus consigned women and children to oblivion" (Post, 1978: p. 421).

The Moyne Comission Report relied heavily on the Orde-Browne report. In the promotion of the male breadwinner concept, both were representing British colonial policy. Even Lord Olivier, visiting the island in February of 1939, reports the critical unemployment situation in terms of the number of men seeking work, without any refe- rence to women (Post, 1978: p. 398). In fact, as early as 1935-6, the report of an Unem- ployment Commission estimated the 'genuinely unemployment' as men only (Post, 1978; p. 134).

By 1944 women were struggling desperately to retain their jobs on relief projects. In March 1944 women workers at the Irwin Land Settlemnt in St. James went on strike against a 'restructuring' programme which was being used as a cover for laying off women labourers (Post, 1981 : p, 407. In 1939 only 20% of relief workers were women, in spite of the critical need of women for wages (Labour Department Report, Jamaica, 1939).

Otherwise progressive union leaders like Alfred Mendes, editor of Plain Talk, unwil lingly accepted the concept of the delicate dependent female. In 1936 Mendes called for an end to stonebreaking by women labourers in public gangs. He did not say or suggest what alternative these women might have for earning a wage. Objectively the call sought to deprive women without assets or jobs of the only available wage.

This ejection of women from relief work was taking place at the same time as expenditure on relief projects was on the increase and the government was claiming thereby to be increasing employment.

Employment & Expenditure on Relief Schemes: 1939 - 1948

Year Numbers Expenditure

1939* 15,496 £163,330 1940 - 250,000 1943 11,330 170,000 1945 SUSPENDED 1946 - 140,000 1947 43,100 309,834 1948 54,014 650,377

(Source: Labour Department Reports, Jamaica).



58

*1939 is the only year for which a male-female breakdown is given, and only for the Corporate Area (Kingston & St. Andrew): 2,500 people were employed in the Corporate Area - 2,280 men and 220 women. The expenditure was £54,457.

By 1944 the differential in male and female wages on relief schemes was 2 to 1 , with men earning 13/4d per week and women 6/8d. The 2 to 1 differential was not unusual - it had obtained since the early post-Emancipation period. The increasing preference for male employment in manual labour, however, was a far cry from the realities of the last days of slavery. The change in policy was as a result of the differing needs of the exploi- ters under slavery as compared with the wage labour system. The revolutionary potential of unemployment in a context of under-developed capitalism made it expedient to promote an ideology which would justify the ejection of women - the majority among the unemployed - from the wage market, and thereby 'ease unemployment'.

Conclusion The writing of Caribbean history to date has failed to analyse the specific integra-

tion of women into the socio-economic fabric or the effect of historical processes on women as a specific group. Such an analysis forces a re-evaluation of these processes and can, as in the present case, brings into question certain assumptions about historical 'progress'. The implications are important not only for women, since ultimately these policies are not designed to control and manipulate women only, but for the oppressed and exploit- ed population as a whole. Women's history is therefore not a matter for women only. It is critical to the understanding of all historians, men and women, of historical processes in their fullness. It is even more critical for activitists and those involved in determining directions for change and charting appropriate strategies.

ABBREVIATIONS MCR - Moyne Commission Report (Report of the West India Royal Commission appointed 5th

August, 1938). MCR. SA -Moyne Commission Report: Statement of Action on the Recommendations, 1940 - made

public 1945. SDL - Sexual Division of Labour

RESOURCE MATERIALS Books, Theses and Pamphlets

Beckford, George and Witter, Michael - Small Garden, Bitter Weed: the Political Economy of Struggle and Change in Jamaica - Maroon Publishing House, Morant Bay, Jamaica, 1980.

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Brathwaite, Edward Kamau - The Development of Creole Society in Jamaica 1770-1820 - Claren- don Press, Oxford 1978 (1st edition 1971).

Carmichael, A. Mrs - Domestic Manners and Social Condition of the White, Coloured and Negro Population of the West Indies - Negro Universities Press, New York, 1961 (1st edition 1833).

Carnegie, James - Some Aspects of Jamaica's Politics 1918-1938 - Institute of Jamaica, 1973.



59

Clarke, Edith - My Mother Who Fathered Me - Allen & Unwin 1966 (1st edition 1957).

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Craton, Michael, Searching for the Invisible Man: Slaves and Plantation Life in Jamaica, Harvard Uni- versity Press, 1978.

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Gordon, Shirley - A Century of West Indian Education - Longmans, London, 1963.

Hall, Douglas - Free Jamaica 1939-1865: An Economic History - Caribbean Universities' Press, 1969 (1st edition, Yale University Press, 1959).

Harrod, Jeffrey - Trade Union Foreign Policy: A Study of British and American Trade Union Activi- ties in Jamaica - McMillan, London, 1972.

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Mathurin, Lucille - A Historical Study of Women in Jamaica from 1655 to 1844 - unpublished Ph.D. Thesis, University of the West Indies, Mona, 1974.

Mathurin, Lucille - The Rebel Woman in the British West Indies during Slavery - Institute of Jamaica for Afro-Caribbean Institute of Jamaica, 1975.

Mies, Maria - The Social Origins of the Sexual Division of Labour Institute of Social Studies, the Hague, 1981.

Mies, Maria - Towards a Methodology of Women's Studies - the Institute of Social Studies. The Hague, 1980.

Munroe, Trevor and Robotham, Don - The struggles of the Jamaica People - Popular Education Series, No. 1 Workers' Liberation League, 1977.

Moreno Fraginals, Manuel - The Sugar Mill.

Nettleford, Rex (Editor) - Manley and The New Jamaica - Selected Speeches and Writings 1938- 1968 - Longman Caribbean 1971.

Nugent, Maria (Lady) - Lady Nugent 's Journal - Institute of Jamaica, 1966.

Patterson, Orlando - The Sociology of Slavery - Sangster's Book Stores Ltd, 1973 (1st edition, 1967).

Post, Ken - Arise Ye Starvlings - Martinus Nijhoff, The Hague, 1978.



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Post, Ken - Stiike the Iron, Vols I and II, New Jersey, Humanities Press/Institute of Social Studies, The Hague, 1981.

Reddock, Rhoda - Industrialisation and the Rise of the Petty Bourgeoisie in Trinidad and Tobago -

Institute of Social Studies, The Hague, 1980.

Reddock, Rhoda - Women, Labour and Struggle in Twentieth Century Trinidad and Tobago, 1898 -

1960 - unpublished Ph.D. Thesis, University of Amsterdam, 1984.

Roberts, George - The Roberts, George - The Population of Jamaica, Cambridge University Press, 1957.

Simey, Τ S - Proposals for Extending Social Welfare Work in Jamaica - Government Printer, 1941 (Printer).

Simey, Τ S - Proposals for Extending Social Welfare Work in Jamaica - 2 Kingston Scheme - Govern- ment Printer, 1941.

Standing, Guy, Unemployment and Female Labour - Macmillan Press, 1981.

Turner, Mary - Slaves and Missionaries: The Disintegration of Jamaican Slave Society 1787-1834 - University of Illinois Press, Urbana, Chicago, London, 1982.

ARTICLES

Aidoo, Agnes Akosua - Asante Queen Mothers in Government and Politics in the Nineteenth Century - in the Black Woman Cross-culturally, éd. Filoména Chioma Steady, 1981.

Eaton, George (2) - Trade Union Development in Jamaica - Introduction. Unpublished and undated

paper, Trade Union Education Institute, University of the West Indies, Mona.

Eaton, George (3) - The Trade Union Law 1919 - unpublished and undated paper, Trade Union Education Institute, University of the West Indies, Mona.

Higman, Barry - The Slave Family and Household in the British West Indies 1800-1834 - in Journal of Interdisciplinary History, Vol 6 No 2, Autumn 1975.

Higman, Barry - Domestic Service in Jamaica since 1750 - in Trade, Government and Society, 1983 - ed. Higman.

Higman, Barry - Household Structure and Fertility in Jamaican Slave Plantations: A Nineteenth Cen- tury Example - in Population Studies, Vol 3, 1973.

Reports, Government and Institutional Documents and Publications

Brief Historv of the International Trade Union Movement - International Confederation of Free Trade Unions, 1973 (First Printing Feb 1960). British Broadcasting Corporation - The Women's Institute Movement in Great Britain - See MARSON, Una.

Censuses of Jamaica: 1844, 1861, 1971, 1891, 1911, 1921, 1943.

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Affairs, The West Indies, Federal House, Trinidad and Tobago, 1960.

Focus on Women - Guides for Unions #4, Jamaica Trade Union Research Development Centre, 1983.

Great Britain - Comptroller for Development and Welfare in the West Indies, Jamaica, Government Printers, 1941.

Jamaica - Memorandum on Colonial Development and Welfare Schemes, Kingston, Government Printer, 1945.



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Orde-Browne, Major Granville St J - Labour Conditions in the West Indies - Report presented by the Secretary of State for the Colonies to Parliament, July 1937.

Social Welfare Training Course (Fifty), Mona, Jamaica, 1947. Report by the Dean, Miss D. Ibberson, Social Welfare Advisor to the Comptroller for Development and Welfare in the West Indies.

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The Jamaica Federation of Women - papers and boxes in the Institute of Jamaica.

Newspaper The Daily Chronicle: 1914 The Daily Gleaner: 1918, 1919, 1938, 1939 The Jamaica Advocate: 1898-1901 The Masses Plain Talk: 1935 Public Opinion: 1937-1944



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