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Abstract
The present contribution was originally published in 1990 with the aim of exposing the dominant narrative on Afro-Curaçaoan girls and women as well as challenging prevalent notions of what constitutes a typical Afro-Caribbean family. It contests the emphasis on marriage and discrimination against single mothers, divorced or unmarried women and contrasts it with the unconventional realities of kinship networks. It reflects on the emancipatory processes that ensued in the wake of the uprising of May 1969 in Curaçao and the long struggle to abolish the National Ordinance on Material Civil Servants Law, which legally incapacitated women and did not permit women to be employed after marriage.
Abstract
Among the social transformations that characterized Aruba in the 1950s was the legalization of a site that came to be known as Campo Alegre (Happy Camp), which served as a location for sex workers from abroad, legitimized by the authorities as being economically necessary. The licensing of the camp led to nearly a decade of widespread protests, spearheaded by Aruban women and supported by leading figures from the church and civil society groups. This contribution, based on archival research in Aruba, summarizes the conflicts and protests around Campo Alegre, which ultimately led to its dismantling as well as the (temporary) withdrawal of residence permits for the sex workers.
Abstract
Bacilio’s play about Felix Chakutoe, leader of the port strike of 1922 in Curaçao, captures the milieu to which Chakutoe belonged and explores the complex ties between the Church, the state and the community. The play explores the impact of these conditions on the broader society, paying particular attention to the lives of working-class families, especially the women in this milieu. The society depicted in the play is characterized by unemployment, poverty, hunger and exploitation, resulting in the migration of unskilled men, leaving women alone to raise their children. Three scenes have been selected and translated from Papiamentu for the present volume.
Abstract
This contribution explores the historically specific manifestations of sexuality that have culturally defined or challenged popular conceptions of gender in Curaçao. It attempts to find out in which ways colonial cultural institutional policies helped to shape the gender attitudes and behaviors of black working-class men and women in Curaçao after the abolition of slavery in 1863. It also looks at how this specific group replicated and contested these impositions on their lives. Central to this contribution is the concept of respectability, expressed in Papiamento as hende drechi (respectable people). Abiding to the norm of respectability meant a better chance of socioeconomic progress when compared to that of people who challenged it.
Abstract
The contribution analyzes the underrepresentation of women in managerial jobs in business and government in Curaçao, using the conceptual tool of the glass ceiling from a financial-economic perspective. How does this underrepresentation come about and how does it affect women’s participation and position within the labor market? It charts the factors that sustain and reinforce the glass ceiling in the context of Curaçao, namely ambitions, family support, broader social networks, organizational cultures and gender-sensitive institutional policies. It operationalizes the notion of the “thickness” of the glass ceiling to examine barriers in the upward mobility of women from middle to higher career levels. It concludes with reflections on recent developments in gender equality in Aruba, thereby marking substantive cracks in the glass ceiling in the last decades.
Abstract
Using travelogs, colonial records and municipal archives, this contribution traces and reconstructs the living conditions of women in Curaçao in the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries, including both white women and women born into slavery. The sources offer insights into women’s daily lives, working conditions and social relations. The author concludes that women in this patriarchal society worked hard and sought independence despite social barriers, and that women, white and black alike, despite belonging to different social classes, suffered different kinds of oppression. White women, although the more privileged, suffered legal, social and sexual limitations. Colored, black and enslaved women, on the other hand, experienced racial discrimination as well as economic and sexual exploitation. This contribution challenges the male perspectives inherent in the historical sources, arguing that they do not entirely correspond with the reality of most women’s lives, especially the most exploited groups of enslaved and freed women.
Abstract
By tracing the trajectory the women’s organization SEDA (Women’s Development Center) over five decades, the contribution appraises the influential role they played in setting the agenda for governmental action on women’s rights in the Dutch Caribbean as well as in transforming the public perception and understanding of women’s issues.
Abstract
The concept of forma di papia (ways of speaking), developed by Elis Juliana and Joceline Clemencia, remains essential for scholarship that pushes back against the silences of the colonial archive. Engaging thoughtfully with forma di papia and the questions they raise about transparency, truth-telling, publicity, directness and the agency of marginalized speakers can guide scholars of gender and sexuality to rethink how to approach signs of feminist and queer life that exist outside of the archive and may otherwise evade documentation.