Talk:Women in Guyana

Cracks Knuckles

Time to fix this article. I think "expert attention needed" is a very intimidating banner, but the reality is this article needs CARE, not perfection. There are no FA quality "Women in _" country articles to model from, the closest is GA article Women in Classical Athens but it's for a specific historical period and doesn't address multi-ethnic issues. Social topics aren't my forte, but I enjoy making classical topics (like business or science) more well-rounded and inclusive.

I've definitely seen RS content while fixing other articles, so I'm confident I can build this article up even with publicly accessible journals and scholarly papers. As with any broad-scope article about Guyana, I'm going to break it up into the major periods; colonial Guiana, Burnham-era, and post-Burnham/contemporary. Within that are the major ethnic segments that placed different expectations on women's roles in society; indigenous, African, European, and Indian-descent, etc. Suicide is a major issue, and other sensitive subjects like prostitution and sex-related violence will need sections. Accomplishments, business and legal rights are also major topics of note.

I claim no expertise or ownership, just a note to make clear my intention and prevent edit conflict. Cheers, Estheim (talk) 13:52, 8 January 2021 (UTC)

GA Review

This review is transcluded from Talk:Women in Guyana/GA1. The edit link for this section can be used to add comments to the review.

Reviewer: Guettarda (talk · contribs) 14:28, 30 March 2021 (UTC)

This looks like an interesting article to review. Guettarda (talk) 14:28, 30 March 2021 (UTC)

GA review (see here for what the criteria are, and here for what they are not)

1. It is reasonably well written.

   a (prose, spelling, and grammar): b (MoS for lead, layout, word choice, fiction, and lists):

2. It is factually accurate and verifiable.

   a (reference section): b (citations to reliable sources): c (OR): d (copyvio and plagiarism):

3. It is broad in its coverage.

   a (major aspects): b (focused):

4. It follows the neutral point of view policy.

   Fair representation without bias:

5. It is stable.

   No edit wars, etc.:

6. It is illustrated by images and other media, where possible and appropriate.

   a (images are tagged and non-free content have fair use rationales): b (appropriate use with suitable captions):

7. Overall:

   Pass/Fail:

Sorry this has taken me so long.

General

• This shouldn't use American spellings like "labor" and "racialized".

Lead

• The lead as a whole should summarise all the major points of the article in proportion to the way they're covered in the article.
• I don't love this phrasing: Made up of mostly Indo-Guyanese, Afro-Guyanese, and Amerindian women, Guyana also has been home to women of European or Chinese descent. It focuses too much on ethnicity rather than humanity, and ignores the mixed population. I think I think it would be better to say that Guyana is ethnically diverse and includes women of [listed ethnic groups].
• Obeah women participate as religious leaders in folk religion - I think singling out this one religious practice where women are involved exoticises them a bit. We want to include what makes us unique, but we need to do it in a way that doesn't make us seem exotic. I'm also unsure whether the best choice is obeah vs comfa versus a more general term for African diaspora religions. Singling out obeah in particular is a slightly challenging decision because it's often seen through a colonialist lens of being "witchcraft", and as far as I know it's still illegal in Guyana. So while not wanting to cater too much to the sensitivities of middle class "respectability", I think the choice needs to be made carefully.
• That statement also shouldn't be in the lead unless it's discussed in more depth in the body of the article.

Research views

• Racialized differences between Indo-Guyanese and Afro-Guyanese have often defined women's roles in Guyana's society - I have a few issues with this. For starters, I think the experience of Guyanese women as Guyanese people, and as women, does more to shape them than racial differences, but reading this, it comes across like race matters more than nationality. I'm also having a hard time understanding what you mean by "racialised differences". Regardless, it needs a solid supporting citation. In any case, I don't think you should open a section about research views with a statements like this.

• Early records of historical content about the people brought into Guyana for the purpose of labor primarily served to bolster the economic purposes of the British Empire - Through the entire period when the slave trade was legal Demerara, Essequibo and Berbice were Dutch colonies, so a significant portion of the human importation was to the benefit of the Dutch West India Company or the Dutch Republic rather than the British Empire.

• Official documentation from the colonial period often led to the portrayal of women as "libidinous, immoral women" or victims - While this view is obviously absurd (and racist), it shouldn't be presented without comment, lest it be taken as an endorsement of these views.

• Early studies on gender in the Caribbean... Early studies by whom? Outsiders, I presume? The generalisations here are too broad.

• What is the WICP? You need to spell out abbreviations

• If this section is going to be chronological, it needs to be explicitly chronological (and shouldn't end last century). It needs to do a better job of telling a story. And if it's about "research views", you need to be explicit about who held these views. Opinions don't exist in the ether.

History

• Women's history in Guyana is incomplete it you leave out people like Dolly Thomas.

Indenture

• This section is too long relative to the others, with the end result that the article is a bit unbalanced. I think you should add a
  Further information: Indian indenture system
  and trim this section a lot. Move what's not specific to Guyanese women to that page or the Girimityas article.

Burnham's co-operative republic

• In the spirit of seeing broad coverage, I feel like the history section shouldn't jump from Emancipation and Indentureship straight to Burham. It needs something in between, to cover the role of Black women in the century between Emancipation and Burnham, and Indian women in a similar, but somewhat shorter period.

Contemporary issues

• I am against the use of the word "miscegenation" in this way. It's a distasteful word that's based on ideas of racial purity and contamination. Please find a better way to express this.

• Miscegenation as a metaphor for "national unity" fails in light of the term dougla, which is used in discourses as "impurity and contamination." I’m not happy with this as an unqualified statement, especially based on a single, out-of-date source. It’s a deeply racist view of race mixing in general and of specific people’s actual identity. And while some people may use it that way, it isn't something that can be stated as a simple fact in Wikipedia's voice.

• I disagree strongly with this statement, sourced or not: Gender ideology in Guyana parallels the Anglo-Protestant notion of 'man as breadwinner, woman as caregiver, established during the colonial period that is seen throughout the Caribbean. The whole idea of female-dominated households is a huge legacy of slavery and has been at least since Emancipation. It may be possible to find a source for this, but at best it's missing a huge amount of context. It's also missing a closing quotation mark.

Violence against women

• Or is non-exclusive in English, so and/or is redundant.

Nice work putting this together, but it still needs a bit of work. Guettarda (talk) 22:54, 5 April 2021 (UTC)

Image caption

A Guyanese female technician working at the Guyana Food and Drug Department Laboratory in Georgetown, Guyana, selecting samples to be tested with a newly acquired equipment. In an article about Guyanese women, I think it's fair enough to just describe her as a technician. Guettarda (talk) 22:56, 5 April 2021 (UTC)

Thanks for improving the article. I look forward to seeing this as a GA at some point before too long. Guettarda (talk) 14:26, 6 April 2021 (UTC)

Poorly worded perhaps

Kittenklub, hey thanks for helping me with this article. I think there's some bad feelings towards my attempt at keeping edits as close to the source language as possible- but the main point of the source was something like:

"Even though mixed-race people have been used to symbolize national unity (*for political purposes), mixed race relationships and individuals still face discrimination."

Do you think that's an improvement? Estheim (talk) 00:52, 11 April 2021 (UTC)

Estheim Very very late response. You misspelled my name, and the whole Talk page system fails. Yeah, it's fine.KittenKlub (talk) 19:25, 13 December 2021 (UTC)

Chantel

Guyana 190.80.24.252 (talk) 08:15, 12 December 2021 (UTC)

Wiki Education assignment: Gender and Politics in Global Perspective

This article was the subject of a Wiki Education Foundation-supported course assignment, between 15 January 2023 and 26 April 2023. Further details are available on the course page. Student editor(s): RPolls (article contribs). Peer reviewers: Jordynederer, Lorenlacruz.

— Assignment last updated by A.lejla (talk) 19:19, 4 May 2023 (UTC)