Crumbling macho society puts trust in the feminine touch
Published: March 25, 2006
“If she can transform the inner cities, we will see Portia Simpson-Miller leading Jamaica for the next 20 years,” Martin Tomlinson, a PMI official, said.
Many argue that it is not Mrs Simpson-Miller’s gender that makes her so valuable, but her empathy with the poor and ability to connect. They assert that male members of society need just as much of a boost up the social ladder as women.
In the ghettos boys may be forced to drop out of school because they cannot cross enemy lines to get there, although girls’ movements are not restricted in the same way. Boys might drift into gangs, drugs and guns; some may take up odd-jobbing to defray their sisters’ school fees. The role of women, meanwhile, is often to cover up for the violent deeds of their menfolk.
Varis Beckford, 52, lives in the ganglands of Dunkirk, where the PMI says that 60 people have died in an 18-month turf conflict. Her graffiti-covered neighbourhood has embraced the PMI. But she worries for her six children. “I think about how afraid we are to walk on our streets. I think about how the little ones are going to school without lunch money and when they come home there’s no dinner,” she says. “It ’s woman time now, but it’s also time for children, men, families.”
Sharron Matthews sits on a rickety wooden bench under the shade of a tree in the Maxfield Avenue neighbourhood of Kingston. She went through school but became pregnant at 17 and now, at 46, is doing a computer course and evening classes in maths and English.
“I need to empower myself,” she says. “Women are taking over, they drive trucks and backhoes, we can do auto repair. There’s a lot of unemployment so men turn to the gun, but us women have the power to say, ‘If you don’t stop it, you ain’t getting no boom-boom from me tonight’. We need peace, we need family.”
Lloyd Patterson, a 45-year-old father of two, co-founded Fathers Inc to try to educate Jamaican men into taking a more responsible role in family life. He and his wife, Lorraine, shudder at the craze for “dancehall” music — a Jamaican version of rap that is littered with lyrics about sex and violence and derogatory references to women.
“A lot of households are manned only by mothers. Some men are in prison, some have gone away, they are spliffing. Some are just not working and so the women tell them to ship out,” he explains.
“If Portia can turn around unemployment, crime will go down. Not only murder and shooting but domestic violence. Portia is going to be our saviour.”
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