UNESCO - EFA Global Monitoring Report

Box 3.17. Caribbean paradox



Recent attention drawn to the ‘underperformance of boys in Jamaica and the Caribbean countries has been associated with concern about the growing number of young males engaged in serious crimes, and has helped focus on the complex links between schooling and society’ [Sewell et al., 2003]. Historically, men have occupied a wider social space, controlled more resources, maintained a higher social position and exercised greater power than women. However, recent experience suggests that this privilege has come at a price. A study of socialization patterns in Dominica, Guyana and Jamaica found that, despite some minor differences related to ethnicity and class, the socialization of boys and girls was quite ‘gendered’ in terms of the nature of household chores, degree of parental supervision, severity of discipline/punishment, and expectations in relation to sexuality and its expressions. Girls in the study of Dominica had more positive attitudes towards schooling and reported that they were supervised more closely by their parents and received higher levels of encouragement. Parents also ensured that girls were more occupied with housework than boys, who were often left to their own devices. Focus-group discussion with parents		suggested that interest in reading might have been engendered at an early age, with parents more likely to buy a book or doll for a girl, whereas a boy would receive a gun or other toy. The differing nature of such gifts seems to be bound up with the parents’ concepts of masculinity. The positive reinforcement that girls receive from the home and within the school is mutually reinforcing. Teachers at school encounter boys who appear to be less motivated and less likely to make an effort than girls, which tends to reinforce their own perceptions. Parental attention to girls and their schooling appears driven partly by a recognition that in Jamaican society the rules of the game are different for the two sexes and by a fear of early pregnancy – now more heightened with the growing threat of HIV/AIDS among the adolescent population. Traditional norms are therefore under transition. While gender norms have always been less restrictive than elsewhere, the mismatch between male gender identities and the education system has grown. As schools become increasingly feminized spaces, boys tend to develop their identities within a much more restrictive concept of masculinity.



Sources: Sewell et al. (2003); Bailey (2003); Figueroa (2000).

BACK