Gender-Based Violence in the Caribbean: Historical Roots, Contemporary Continuities

Since the 1990s, Gender-Based Violence (GBV) has been contextualized as one of the primary endemic developmental issues affecting the lives of Caribbean people. Physical, verbal, sexual, emotional and financial violence against persons as a result of prevailing harmful gender norms has been recognized by Caribbean feminist scholars as crippling, particularly to women and girls who face the brunt of GBV’s frontal assault. The contemporary situation is even more grim with rising cases of deadly violence against persons which are rooted in unequal power relations steeped in gender. However there exists no comprehensive academic text which delves deeply into the historical roots of these occurrences and frames them as a critical and deliberate part of the violent history of the region. European contact with the region was deliberately curated in violence. Mass slaughter of the Indigenous Peoples, vile atrocities under the system of chattel slavery that are yet to be fully acknowledged, indignities suffered by indentured immigrants and continued brutalities in the 21st century are well explored by numerous scholars. However, few are framed within the context of gendered analysis with the specific aim of tracing contemporary violence with their historic antecedents. A well needed intervention into the historiography of the region, the text will be organized thematically and chronologically and explore topics related to violence against women, men and children framed within discourses of gender, decoloniality, race, class, culture, disability studies and sexuality.