Handsworth, 1971(George Hallett): Source: http://birminghamblackhistory.com/external/gallery.html

Black History Month, 2010, provides an opportunity to focus on the lives of British Caribbean and British Asian women – their histories and the factors that have influenced, and continue to influence, their lives. In the transition from migrants to citizens much has changed over the generations and in the media, workplace and politics, black and Asian women are beginning to have a higher, and more positive, profile.  Given the problems face by first generation migrants and the burden of history these are welcome developments.

 The migrant experience has been largely recorded as a male experience. Black and Asian women have been left out of histories and official studies of migration and the gendered nature of this process was only explored after the 1980s as gender studies gained more prominence.  More gender sensitive studies have revealed the differences in the experiences of women of Asian and Caribbean origin in Britain but also important commonalities  related to the ‘triple oppression’ of gender, race and class and the historical legacy of white representations of colonized women. This highlights the relationship between past and present in understanding these gendered experiences of migration and British citizenship.

The burden of history

The invisibility of women in history is centuries old and is linked to the paucity of written evidence and the powerlessness of women. Until the emergence of the new imperial history in the 1980s  and related pioneering studies of the importance of gender to understanding colonial societies and the power structures of colonial rule, African Caribbean and Asian women were invisible or marginalised in histories of empire. This is explained by in the general marginalisation of women from history but also the fact that Western racism only included men in the ‘civilizing project’. Women were seen as ‘outside’ modern western civilization, as representatives of barbarism (African women) or inferior ‘traditional cultures’ (Asian women). Thus the starting point of understanding continuing gender and race inequalities in British society are the damaging stereotypes stemming from the era of imperialism. 

Black and Asian women’s lives can only be interpreted in relation to the history of colonialism and slavery. There were significant differences in white stereotypes of black and Asian women that evolved in the colonial era but both contrasted adversely to ‘superior’ white women (Bush 2004).  Asian women were stereotyped as docile and passive and oppressed by patriarchy, particularly Moslem women. The perceived seclusion of the veil, purdah and the forbidden sexuality of the harem, common themes in  western orientalist discourse, strengthened the stereotype of passivity.  This contrasts with the multiple identities attributed historically to women of African origin in the Americas during the era of slavery- ‘Sable Venus’ and sexual temptress; rebellious ‘she devil’ and as, the African American writer Zora Neale Hurston, observed, the  ‘mule ah de world’ (Bush, 2000). Many important changes have occurred since the first female migrants arrived in post war Britain but black and Asian women can only be brought firmly from the margins to the centre and participate in British society as equal citizens when these durable stereotypes no longer have any resonance.

From migrant  to citizen

When Asian women arrived in Britain to join their migrant husbands stereotypes derived from the colonial era were re-iterated in white ‘race relations’ literature and the media and reinforced through language barriers and related confinement in the home. In contrast to African-Caribbean and Irish women, few Asian women were independent migrants and were regarded as reluctant migrants, products of arranged marriages with little freedom of choice. There was, of course, some factual basis for these perceptions rooted in the nature of gender roles and relations in Asian families. In Sikh, Hindu, Pakistani and other Muslim communities male honour is vested in how their women behave and this has been sensationalized in media stories about ‘honour killings’ when women and girls break these strict codes, usually by wanting to marry an ‘unsuitable’ man.  Thus girls are more strictly controlled and suffer more problems than boys.  Violence may be used against them if they beak codes of behavior. In a hostile society the concept of male/ patriarchal family honour became even more central to re-affirming masculinity and pride in minority Asian communities. 

Negative perceptions of Asian marriage and family norms proved particularly sensitive issues because of a perceived link to state control of immigration but forced marriages of young girls in poorer South Asian communities continued to generate both media and official concern.  We must go beyond the stereotypes however and consider the diversity of experience, amongst Asian women contingent on age, religion, origins, class and levels of education. In certain sections of the Asian population, particularly in the middle classes, arranged marriages were never as repressive as assumed by white society and many parents now see it as a joint undertaking between parents and young people: there are even Asian dating web-sites.  Additionally, British Asian women have taken action against the worst practices of forced marriage and domestic violence ( Alibhai Brown, 2000).

The myth of passivity and seclusion of Asian women is deeply embedded in the European imagination.  But this is far from the reality of many women’s lives. Historically, Hindu women such as the Rani of Jhansi’s fought the British during the Indian Mutiny, 1857.  More recently Phoolan Devi, the ‘Bandit Queen’ (1963-2001) was an Indian dacoit (armed bandit) and later a politician. Both Pakistan and India have had powerful female politicians such as Indira Gandhi and Benazir Bhutto.  In India in the penultimate  years of colonial rule  women of all classes were active in anti-colonial  resistance. Additionally, poorer  Asian women have always had to work – as ayahs (nannies and servants) for English families of the ruling elite in the India empire and Britain (see illustration below), in agricultural labour, and, subsequently, in British factories and sweatshops.

© 2010 The British Library 073776 ‘A European lady and her family, attended by an ayah, or nurse’, in Captain Thomas Williamson,The costume and customs of modern India. (London, c.1824). 

To be continued tomorrow.

References

Barbara Bush, ‘Gender and Empire: The Twentieth Century’ for ed. Philippa Levine, Gender and Empire, (2004).

Barbara Bush, ‘“She Devil” or “Sable Venus”? British Slavery and the “Fabulous Fiction” of Black Women’s Identities c.1650-1850′, Women’s History Review, vol.9, no.4, 2000.

Yasmin Alibhai – Brown ‘The Truth about Forced Marriage’ The Guardian, July 3, 2000.

Barbara Bush is Emeritus Professor of History at Sheffield Hallam University. She is the author of Slave Women in Caribbean Society, 1650-1838 (James Currey, 1990); Imperialism, Race and Resistance: Africa and Britain 1919-1945 (Routledge, 1999) and Imperialism and Postcolonialism (Pearson Education 2006). Since the 1980s she has published number of articles on gender and culture in slave and post-slave societies.