The Role Of Women In Overthrowing The Slave System
PIC : : THE ROLE OF WOMEN IN OVERTHROWING THE SLAVERY SYSTEM
INTRODUCTION
The Oxford desk Dictionary defines resistance as the refusal to comply with someone or something. Slavery, was terrible for men but far worse for women as it was an experience of mental, psychological and physical “rape”.
Torture came in many forms and affected the enslaved men and women in various ways. The enslaved regularly resisted or took great actions to annihilate the pain caused by their enslavers when torture became unbearable.
The enslaved females in the Caribbean displayed their sense of independence, perseverance and strong character by expressing their resistance in many forms. Despite the consequences they faced for their actions they trodded onwards in the fight against oppression.
BODY
“Millions of Black women tried to oppose enslavement with both their bodies and minds. They used strategies to negotiate and resist the harshness of enslavemant.”¹The enslaved female were not subjected to light workloads despite their sex. “Gender was not a consideration in the allocation of most tasks which required hard labour”². The women were expected to perform at the same level of productivity as the males especially in the fields, where the majority of field labour consisted of women.
“Field work was broken up into groups called gangs all depending on the strength and amount of work a particular slave could do”. ³The enslaved women performed backbreaking tasks in the field for prolonged hours without rest. “Resistance to this institution was very widespread and persistent and found to be in almost every aspect of slave life”4.
A common day-to-day passive resistance of female slaves in the field was organizing work slowdowns as a strategy of labour withdrawal where they performed less productively than they otherwise could. Usually, while working in the cane fields the women would raise their voices in revolutionary songs, which annoyed the white planters....
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