Persistent Patriarchy: Women Workers on Sri Lankan Plantations

Abstract

The early suffragists in the United States had decried the “prolonged slavery of woman” as the “darkest page in human history” with one of the leaders, Susan B. Anthony, stating on Independence Day in 1876 that “Universal manhood suffrage, by establishing an aristocracy of sex, imposes upon the women of this nation a more absolute and cruel despotism than monarchy; in that, woman finds a political master in her father, husband, brother, son” (Stanton et al 1887). While countries all over the world have witnessed progress in gender equality and gender rights since that period, the recent UNDP Human Development Report of 2014 has acknowledged that there is still “no country with perfect gender equality”.1 In Sri Lanka, women on plantations experience much gender discrimination and many gender disadvantages, being ‘slaves’ to men who themselves are ‘slaves’.