Feminist Scholars on Indo-Caribbean Masculinities

Explorations of Caribbean women’s histories in the last decade of the twentieth century had an added bonus in that they introduced new understandings of men and masculinities that had been previously hidden in the historical record. Feminist scholars asked new questions, challenged normative patriarchal notions and explanations, and in so doing contributed to a new feminist scholarship on men. The emergence of studies of masculinities in the Caribbean as with other parts of the world is in many ways a response to the challenges posed by the second wave of feminism which has had a significant impact since the 1970s. Masculinity studies and the men’s movement more generally emerged at a critical time for feminist movements. They emerged when these movements were at their peak but also at a point when they were beginning to face serious challenges and backlash which has been particularly powerful in the Anglophone Caribbean (Reddock 2004; Lewis 2003, 4). Masculinity studies therefore in a strange way represents both the success of feminist activism and scholarship and one of its greatest challenges.⁷