Critical Caribbean Perspectives on Preventing Gender-Based Violence

This book explores the widespread problem of gender-based violence in the Anglophone Caribbean, exploring reasons for its perpetuation and proposing viable policy and programming solutions to prevent it. Drawing on the work of a multidisciplinary team of Caribbean researchers and practitioners, the book explores the ways in which violence victimisation and perpetration have been socially and institutionally shaped, and supported by fixed gender codes.

Key themes in the book include the institutional frameworks and structural inequalities that perpetuate gender-based violence, the role of the church both in perpetuating the problem and its potential to combat it, the role of law, access to justice, and governmental and non-governmental responses to gender-based violence. The book covers violence against women, but also explores women as perpetrators, men and boys as victims, and gender-based violence against young persons. It also demonstrates the ways in which gender-based violence can further marginalise already marginalised groups, such as members of the LBTQ+ community or persons with disabilities.

Bridging the divide between academia, government, and civil society, this book challenges the normalisation of gender-based violence in the Anglophone Caribbean and proposes viable, culturally relevant solutions for prevention. It will be of interest to researchers and practitioners working on issues related to gender, the Caribbean, global development, criminology, and human rights.

Ramona Biholar is Lecturer in the Faculty of Law, The University of the West Indies, Mona Campus, Jamaica. She is the author of Transforming Discriminatory Sex Roles and Gender Stereotyping: The Implementation of Article 5(a) CEDAW for the Realisation of Women’s Right to Be Free from Gender-Based Violence in Jamaica.

Dacia L. Leslie is Research Fellow at the Sir Arthur Lewis Institute of Social and Economic Studies (SALISES), The University of the West Indies, Mona Campus, Jamaica. She is the author of Recidivism in the Caribbean. Improving the Reintegration of Jamaican Ex-prisoners.