Gendered labour in 20th-century Tobago

By Dr Rita Pemberton

Although some Africans were assigned specialised tasks, there was no rigid sexual division of labour during enslavement.Tthe situation changed in post-Emancipation Tobago, when there developed a sharp division which became more emphasised during and after the period of metayage.

In the years immediately following Emancipation, the desire to own land, the ability to live off the estates away from planter control and the desire to keep their wives and children away from estate labour were badges of freedom, and were the main ambitions of the freed Africans.

Land-owning was a more long-term goal, but the housing arrangement was more readily attainable by renting house spots from the estates.

Women and children were kept away from plantation work, and it was preferable to send the older male children to learn the skilled trades. The attempt to keep the family unit together was practicable as long as the family income could be sustained, but during more challenging financial times the older male children were allowed to do plantation work.

Women remained in the home, but found a variety of means to employ themselves, including rearing chickens to produce eggs for sale, drying fish, rearing animals and planting food crops around their homes.

The removal of women and children from the workforce distressed the planters, who complained about having to pay adult males to perform tasks classified as “lighter” work traditionally performed by women and children, and lamented there was a shortage of labour. This led to additional employment opportunities for men under terms which included increased access to land to extend their gardens and increase their incomes.

The plantation practice of offering metayage agreements mainly to men assisted the trend of reducing the presence of women in the estate labour force, but the situation changed during the challenging years of the 20th century. Crop diversification and an increase in government employment opportunities, coupled with the increased cost of living, led many women to seek employment outside their homes. The most common form was in the homes of the well-to-do as general domestic workers or specialised as cooks, cleaners, laundresses and, if there were children, as nurses.

In the windward districts, where male migration was highest, women constituted a significant portion of the labour force on the working estates. Women participated in cultivating family plots, where they moulded the young plants, and some women became landowners, or tenants had their own garden plots.

The spread of cocoa cultivation brought opportunities. On cocoa estates women were employed to weed around the young plants and older trees, clearing drains to protect the trees from flooding, hauling and spreading the “mould,” the material removed from around the plants that was also used to mould the young plants. Women also worked picking cocoa, gathering and heaping the pods in one place, for which they earned 12 cents per day.

Men cut the pods and women removed the beans from the shell and put them in baskets, which when filled, were put on mule or cow carts to be taken to the drying tray. After the cocoa was sweated and dried, both women and men danced the cocoa to remove any extraneous material from the shell and give it the final polish which determined the price on the market. Smooth, polished beans attracted the highest prices.

After the union with Trinidad, the government established a Public Works Department, mainly to maintain roads and government buildings. Few women worked in the department, which was considered degrading for women because it was extremely laborious work which required moving very heavy material over long distances.

Those employed on the roads performed three types of tasks. First was the routine road-cleaning exercises, when the sides of the very narrow roads were cleared of grass and weeds. Men did the clearing with cutlasses and hoes and piled the “mould” along the roadsides. They shovelled it onto trays which women carted away on their heads, sometimes over long distances, to throw it at a designated site where it was not visible.

Next, the island was well known for the poor state of its roads, and road repair was an ongoing exercise. This required gravel, which men extracted from rivers and piled into trays, then assisted women to place them on their heads. The line of women then ferried the loads from the rivers to the road-repair sites.

Thirdly, most employment for women on the roads occurred during the rainy season, when, after landslides, they helped clear the debris. The process was the same as during road repairs.

On coconut estates men did the planting; women were responsible for cleaning and mulching the young plants, and on some estates they were also required to cutlass and plant, particularly in the windward areas. Men were pickers, who climbed the trees, or choppers, who cut the nuts. Women “pulled,” that is, gathered, the nuts for cutting and extracted the kernel from the cut nuts. Women also carted the kernels on trays to be dried into copra. They extracted the fibre from the coconut shells, which was exported to Trinidad to make mattresses.

On tobacco farms, women were mainly employed to establish the nursery and water the plants twice per day, while men did the planting. The men tended the plant to maturity and put the leaves in the tobacco barns for drying. The barns were mainly operated by men, but a few women owned barns

Women were never directly involved in woodcutting, hunting and fishing, but were responsible for processing dried fish, which was sold in different parts of the island. Women with trays on their head travelled on foot, or, for the more fortunate, on donkey carts to sell their produce.

The dominance of the len’ han’ culture was very marked during this period. This afforded women an essential role in all the activities in which the males were engaged, even though they were not active participants.

When the men gathered their “pardners” to complete a job on cocoa or coconut fields, tobacco farms, woodcutting or food gardens, part of the agreement was that they had to be fed. Usually work started very early on mornings, so breakfast and lunch had to be provided. The women created a fireside, where, using biscuit or oil tins, they prepared food for the teams of men. Breakfast was usually chocolate tea and roast bake with fried bonito, jacks or whatever seasonal fish was available. Lunch was usually cookup rice with provision and steamed fish.

Woman’s work was loosely defined during this period, despite some differentiation, and they contributed to every field of endeavour, in addition to roles specifically identified as women’s work.

The line of women toting trays filled with heavy gravel or landslide debris is reminiscent of the slave coffle, in which captive Africans were restrained by heavy wooden blocks on their heads to prevent their escape.

So too were the women of Tobago impeded by the heavy trays on their heads and made captive by the lack of opportunities on the island. The symbolism is inescapable.