Female Indentured Labor in Suriname: For Better or for Worse?

Abstract

Oppression is defined as a limitation of freedom by the coercive power of those who are in a superior position. Central to this analysis is the idea that the oppression of women is multidimensional and has a triple source: gender, race, and class (see Brittan and Maynard 1984). Often oppression is presented as a consequence of such abstract phenomena as “the capitalist mode of production” or “the state.” Yet personal experiences in everyday life are just as important as social, political, and economic processes at institutionalized levels. It cannot be claimed that economic exploitation, and thus class, does not affect the lives of women; I can only be disputed that it is possible to give one of the three sources of oppression priority over the others. Gender, race, and class all interact, without there being primary or secondary causes which explain women’s subordination. The oppression of the women discussed here cannot be divorced from their oppression as indentureds or from their oppression as a racial minority.

My tenure as a visiting fellow at the Center for Latin American Studies and Documentation in Amsterdam made possible the writing of this chapter. Research was also funded by the A. Curtis Wilgus Fellowship Fund, de Stichting Noorthey, and the H. Muller Vaderlandsch Funds. I want to thank Marijke Zewuster, Jane Landers, David Slater, and Jean Carrière for their comments and suggestions. I am especially grateful to Gert Oostindie and Alex van Stipriaan for their careful reading of earlier drafts.