Introduction: Women under Colonialism

When European countries began colonizing Asia, Africa, and the Caribbean between the 1600s and 1900s,
they did not just take control of land and resources — they also changed the lives of women in powerful
ways. Under colonial rule, women’s bodies, labour, and personal freedoms were shaped by the needs of the
colonial economy.

Women were often treated as workers, reproducers, or “natural resources” that could be used to increase
profit. In many colonies, women lost rights they previously had, were pushed into hard labour, or were
controlled through ideas of “civilizing” and “modernizing.”

At the same time, European women were being encouraged to become dependent housewives. This created
a sharp contrast:

 Colonized women were exploited and seen as “savage” or “uncivilized.”

 European women were idealized as “civilized ladies,” even though both groups were controlled by
the same system.

Scholars like Maria Mies (1986) explain that colonization and the oppression of women were closely
linked. The way colonizers treated women shows how racism, sexism, and capitalism worked together to
shape societies.

Let’s start with the Caribbean — places like Jamaica, Barbados, and Cuba — where European countries
brought enslaved Africans to work on sugar plantations.

Here Maria quote that - “The

colonizers’ attitude to slavery and slave women in the
Caribbean was based clearly on capitalist cost-benefit calculations.”

🌾 Phase 1: Natural Reproduction PHASE (1655 – early 1700s)

At first, when plantations were smaller, slave owners followed a more “peasant” model of life.
They allowed enslaved people to live in small family groups because they needed them to have children to
grow the slave population.

 The farms didn’t have enough money to keep buying new slaves from Africa was difficult and
expensive during this early period.
 So, they hoped that enslaved women would naturally have babies, who would then grow up to
become workers.

Slave women were seen as:

 Workers AND
 Breeders of future workers (their children would automatically become slaves)
 Their pregnancies were tolerated because their children were viewed as economic assets.

So, motherhood was encouraged ONLY because it produced more slaves.

🍬 Phase 2 SUGAR REVOLUTION PHASE (1760 – 1800)

DURING THIS PERIOD, Large sugar plantations began to take over. Sugar was in huge demand in Europe,
and plantation owners wanted maximum profit.

Here’s the shocking part:

Plantation owners decided it was cheaper to buy new slaves from Africa than to allow slave women to have
babies.

So they began discouraging women from getting pregnant.

If a woman became pregnant, she was:

 Scolded, beaten, or punished.

 Forced to continue hard labour, even while pregnant.
 Not given time or food to recover or feed her baby.

One planter, Mr. G. M. Hall, said very openly:

“During and after pregnancy the slave is useless for several months… the expense is so great that a baby
born on the plantation costs more than one bought at the market.”

This quote shows how cruelly women’s lives were reduced to numbers and profit margins.

The result?
Many enslaved women stopped having children altogether — their fertility dropped because of exhaustion,
malnutrition, and resistance.

🚫 Women’s Resistance: The “Birth Strike”

After the slave trade from Africa was banned in 1807, the plantation owners changed their minds again —
they suddenly wanted slave women to have babies!
They started encouraging marriages among slaves and offered small rewards for mothers.

But by that time, enslaved women had learned that having children only created more slaves for their
masters.

IN ORDER TO RESIST THE LOCAL BREEDING AMONG THE SLAVES, WOMAN WENT ON
“BIRTH STRIKE”.

So many refused PREGNANCY BY

 TAKING herbs to cause abortions.

 AND some let their babies die rather than let them grow up enslaved.

Maria Mies calls this an “anti-motherhood attitude” — not because they didn’t love children, but because
they didn’t want their children to suffer.
It was a form of resistance — women using their own bodies to fight back against slavery.
After Slavery: Rejecting European Marriage
IN THE LATE 19TH CENTURY, when slavery was abolished, the British tried to make freed slaves follow
European ways of living.
They wanted people to get legally married, live in nuclear families, and adopt Christian values.

But both men and women in the Caribbean refused.

 Women didn’t want to be tied to one man who could control or beat them.
 Men didn’t want to be restricted to one wife — many practiced polygamy or temporary partnerships.

So they stuck to their “common-law unions,” where people could live together freely.

The British officials and missionaries couldn’t understand this independence. They even called it
“uncivilized.”

🇲🇲 Burma: Equality Seen as “Backwardness”

Here we see,
A British officer named Mr. Fielding Hall lived there in the late 1800s.
He noticed that Burmese women were independent and equal to men. They ran businesses, owned
property, and had strong voices in their communities.

But instead of admiring this, he thought it was a problem!

He said Burmese men should learn to fight and dominate women to become more “manly.”
He even wrote:

“It has never been good for women to be too independent. The nations who succeed are masculine.”

So, under colonial rule, gender equality was destroyed.

Women lost independence, and men were taught that “progress” meant controlling women.

Maria Mies uses the Burma case to show that colonialism often tried to destroy the
strength and independence of women in colonized societies.
What the British called ‘civilization’ was actually the imposition of patriarchal values —
values that reduced women’s freedom and turned them into dependents.

So, in the Burma case, we see clearly how colonialism reshaped gender roles on purpose.
The British intentionally attempted to make Burmese men more aggressive and dominant, and Burmese
women more submissive and dependent.
This was not progress — it was a systematic effort to replace a culture of equality with a culture of
patriarchy and control.

In short, Burma shows us that colonialism didn’t simply rule countries — it tried to rule people’s
relationships, families, and gender roles.
And women were the ones who lost the most under this so-called ‘civilizing mission’.”
Africa: From Powerful Traders to “Savages”
Mies also shares research by George Brooks (1976) about women in Senegal, West Africa, before
colonization.

There, women called signares were powerful traders who did business with Europeans.
They were rich, respected, and beautiful — even European men especially Portuguese and French men
admired them!
even One British chaplain, John Lindsay, wrote:

“They far surpass the Europeans in every respect… they are wonderfully polite, clean, and graceful.”

During this period, European male traders often formed marriage alliances with the signares. These
relationships were not seen as shameful but were actually helpful for trade, because African women
controlled important business routes. These women were independent, wealthy, and confident. Their
children with European men often rose to high positions.

But when the British took over, everything changed.

They brought racist ideas that saw African women as inferior and sexual objects.
Marriages between white men and African women were banned.
African women were turned into servants or prostitutes for British men.

So, the same women who were once leaders became degraded and powerless under colonial rule.

Maria Mies uses this Africa case to show something very important:
colonialism did not just take land and resources — it also destroyed women’s social power.

So, the Africa example proves that colonialism created a sharp divide between
‘civilized’ white women and
‘uncivilized’ colonized women.
This division was not natural — it was deliberately constructed to keep colonial power in place. And the

�🏽 Asia (Sumatra): When Women Became “Too Weak to Work”

In North Sumatra, during the early 1900s, the Dutch ran very large plantations. They needed a huge
number of workers, so they brought in labourers from Java — and many of these workers were women. At
first, the planters used these women for everything: for very hard plantation labour, for domestic work inside
the homes of managers, and even for sexual services for unmarried male workers.
In this beginning phase, prostitution was actually encouraged, because it helped keep the male workers
‘satisfied’ and easier to control. It was a way for the companies to maintain discipline at a low cost.

But soon, a problem came up. Because prostitution was so common, many women began suffering from
venereal diseases. This meant they could not work, and the company had to pay for hospitalization.
Suddenly, female workers — who were earlier considered ‘useful’ — became expensive. At this point the
plantation owners changed their entire policy.

In the 1920s and 1930s, the planters began encouraging marriage among workers instead. They argued that
married workers were more stable and less likely to fall sick. But the real reason was economic: married
women could now be removed from regular plantation work and pushed into unpaid domestic roles. In
other words, they were turned into housewives.

The planters also started saying that women were ‘too weak’ to do hard plantation labour. But this was not
based on truth — the same women had done heavy work for years. This new idea was simply used to justify
paying women less, or not paying them at all. Women were now allowed to do only casual, low-paid,
temporary work, while men received the fixed wages.

So, the Sumatra case shows a clear pattern. Colonialism first used women as a cheap labour force and as
sexual commodities. But when that became costly, the system pushed the same women into dependent,
unpaid positions, calling them ‘natural housewives’. This shift had nothing to do with protecting women. It
was simply a strategy to reduce company expenses.

conclusion
“To conclude, when we look at the Caribbean, Africa, and Burma together, a very clear pattern appears:
colonialism targeted women in every region, but in different ways that all served the same purpose —
profit, control, and domination.

In the Caribbean, enslaved women were treated like machines for labour and reproduction. Their bodies
were controlled depending on what made more money for plantation owners — sometimes they were forced
to have children to increase the slave population, and at other times they were punished for becoming
pregnant because it reduced profits. Their motherhood was not respected; it was manipulated.

In Africa, especially in places like Senegal, women who were once powerful traders and leaders were
pushed down to the lowest levels of society. Early European traders admired African women, but as colonial
rule grew stronger — especially under the British — these same women were degraded, sexualized, and
stripped of their economic and social status. Racism was used as a tool to justify their exploitation.

In Burma, women who had long enjoyed equality and independence were forced into dependence as the
British tried to replace a peaceful, balanced society with patriarchal values. Burmese women lost their
economic roles, their political voice, and the freedom they once had, simply because colonial rulers believed
that a ‘civilized’ society must have male domination.

So even though these regions were different, colonialism used the same strategy everywhere:
it broke down women’s independence,
it controlled their bodies and labour,
and it reshaped gender roles to fit the needs of colonial power.

Women were exploited as workers, as reproductive bodies, as sexual objects, and as dependents — whatever
role helped strengthen the colonial economy and weaken local societies.

Maria Mies shows us that the oppression of women was not an accident of colonialism; it was one of its
central tools.
Colonialism succeeded not only by taking land, resources, and labour, but also by attacking the position of
women and destroying the gender systems that once supported equality and balance.

In every region, the message is the same:

colonialism did not just conquer nations — it conquered women.”