The Tribune

Dr Ian Bethell-Bennett

MANY Bahamians argue that men must be men; they must earn more than their wives or partners, they must be educated and they must be good providers.

These are what we call gendered norms.

We expect certain behaviour from certain people simply because of their biological and/or physiological makeup. As times change, people’s behaviour changes. It must change in order for them to survive. This is adaptability; inability to adapt to new circumstances often means that we are unable to survive, we slowly die or are taken over by those who are able to adapt.

At the same time, society’s attitudes tend to become more entrenched in the so-called ‘old’ traditional ways of being. This means that society begins to die.

In the Bahamas, this is especially true as we deal with societal expectations of men and women, especially of men that can no longer work.

We expect men to know everything and to be in charge. What happens then when they aren’t?

Sadly, we are bringing up men who are not equipped for the gendered role established for them. We then tell them that they are failures and the pressure increases on them. We mount scorn and criticism on them and still we expect them to function.

This is especially true in relationships where women heap scorn on their husbands, boyfriends and then sons. They fix the outcome. These men often get to the point where they feel utterly emasculated by their situation which is worsened by the scorn from ‘their women’. This scorn somehow follows in families as women deride their sons with the same scorn heaped on their husbands, common law or otherwise. The environment is unhealthy. Yes, she is damaged by the derision, but so too are the children. We teach them how to hate themselves and we set them up for failure.

We talk about men who cannot earn as much as their female partners as if they were lesser men. Why? Why do we define masculinity in solely monetary and or muscular ways?

When we say muscular, it literally means muscle mass; either men are muscular and make money or they are lesser men.

This image has changed. We now further define men by their muscularity and if a man is not muscular or does not have a gym body, something must be wrong.

Firstly, the traditional definition of males as breadwinners is flawed, especially now in the Bahamas where the vast majority of working-class men do not graduate high school. They will remain underemployed and so unable to make the kind of wages they are told they must. They are therefore encouraged over to the darker side.

Given that the rigid concept of masculinity is so unforgiving and we are never given the tools not to succumb to peer pressure, because we didn’t really get an education, we bow to the pressure. We are defined but our muscles, what we wear and how much we earn.

Coincidentally, problem-solving and dispute resolution skills come with education. The ability to reason one’s way out of trouble is improved with more thinking and reasoning skills that come from more advanced education and critical thinking – another skill we no longer wish to share with the masculine masses.

This double bind wreaks serious havoc on families and on himself and his male offspring because we criticise them for their inability to earn more, yet we make it impossible for them to continue to get an education that will provide them with the requisite skills for their lives, and then we scorn them for their inability to do better. Ironically, mothers are often guilty of this kind of behaviour.

While men are being emasculated by society, women are being forced into untenable positions as workers and domestic engineers. Their jobs as domestic engineers though are not appreciated. That is not work! They are thought less of if they do not work outside the home, but they are also criticised, especially by other women, when they do work outside the home.

Socially, women, much like men, are caught in a double bind. Society has extremely rigid roles that women, more so working-class women, certainly those in the church, can play in a ‘traditional’ modelled home. They are taught to be submissive and to be ‘superwomen’ who do it all. They are also taught that they cannot outshine their men. If they do outshine their men, something is wrong.

Women earn less than men in the formal work environment, yet they are more educated. They also usually have two jobs, as shown above, domestic engineer and working woman. When something goes wrong at home, the mother is more often than not held responsible. She wasn’t there enough. How can she be there when she is forced to work outside the home as the economy bottoms out, hotels close, retirement packages are stolen and National Insurance contributions never paid?

The pressure is on them, always. We do not allow them to seek help. They can speak to their women friends, but as society becomes more North-American modelled or neoliberal, we find that we have less community to turn to. Community is what keeps people together and functioning.

Today in the Bahamas, we create a myth of a tradition where there were no single-family homes, and if there were, there were fewer than there are now. That is a myth.

Historically, these have always been more of the norm than the exception. At the same time, we create images of families headed by men and women, a myth that cannot function in this neoliberal environment.

Men are under-educated, underemployed and taught to be irresponsible enough to have as many children as they can to prove their masculinity, but they are taught little else, except that they must be head of the household and that women cannot earn more than they do. Women, simultaneously, are taught that they must not outshine their men and that they must keep it all together.

None of these models works any longer. In a society where land prices are increasing at a steady pace because of demand for land for foreign direct investment, rising cost of living due in small part to being double taxed on most consumables from food to electricity and transportation, and a lack of adequate education to meet the needs of the global, neoliberal market, Bahamian society holds rigid gendered norms that fail to keep pace with the true social reality.

We are creating failure with these norms, but this failure is especially pronounced in the lower working classes who are suffering all of these social changes but cannot adjust to meet the new needs because of poor education and training.