The woman of the 20th century: from 1900 to the end of World War II
1900 is the century of transition of Martinique, which will pass from a colonial economy based on the export of fruits from cane to sugar (sugar, rum) to a tertiarisation of employment. Martinican society had remained plutocratic. The Békés, descendants of White settlers, are at the top of the hierarchy. They have vast land estates (52% of the total area of the island) where cane cultivation is practiced to make sugar and/or rum intended for export.
Blacks and Indians are confined to agricultural worker positions. Few enter higher education, allowing them to aspire to better. Mulattoes, former “colored men” are the new bourgeois of this aristocracy, they dreamed of being doctors or school teachers. At the same time, the process of assimilation led by the French state, so that Martinique passes from a "colonial immigrant" society to a fully French society, is launched.
Women at work from the beginning of the 20th century to 1946
The situation of women changed after slavery to the extent that they are no longer mainly domestic workers whose main tasks were the maintenance of houses and the education of children. They are charcoal carriers, moorers, milk or fruit and vegetable merchants, seamstresses, laundry workers, or teachers...
The charcoal carriers (charbonnière locally)
Women's work adapted to the Martinican economy based on the export of manufactured products from sugar cane (sugar, rum). Also, women are called upon to integrate the production chain of the harvest (mooring machines, see below) but also in the port of Fort-de-France, where they will be labor forces in the transport of goods to the metropolis. We, therefore, find them as dockworkers or coal miners or laundry workers (women responsible for washing the laundry of the cargo staff in the river and ironing it) or even employed in shopping for food destined to be consumed during transport.
The charbonnières or charcoal carriers were women who carried on their heads in immense wicker baskets, charcoal in particular for the Compagnie Générale Transatlantique, in charge of transporting products between the metropolis and Martinique. The baskets or baskets could contain 25 to 50 kg of charcoal. Indeed, the coal carried by these women was essential to the operation of the boats because it was the combustion tool that allowed the steamboats to function. These boats existed from 1890 to 1930.
The charcoal carrier, therefore, worked on the ports of Fort de France and Saint Pierre to load and embark the coal on these boats. In 1925, there were more than 500 in the port of Fort-de-France. They sometimes worked from 6 a.m. to 4 p.m. for a salary of 25 cents a manna. Mothers, who sometimes have only income from the household, their salary allowed them to take care of their children.
Since 1935, the boats have now supplied with fuel oil. These women will then become dockers or even work in the transport of bananas. Martinican women will play a strong trade union role. The charcoal carriers were the first to unionize in what was called the “Corporation des Charbonniers et des Charbonnières de Saint-Pierre”. The latter became an active union with a branch in Terres Sainville, a neighborhood in Fort-de-France.
The Martinican woman, "mooring" in sugar cane plantations
In 1900, Martinique was a French colony completely dependent on the metropolis with which it traded. Against its sugar and rum, the island bought all kinds of food products (flour, rice, pasta, etc.). However, the new competition from beet sugar, since 1884, the island has been going through various sugar crises, which have strongly impacted the purchasing power of the sugar cane workers. In February 1900, the workers who demanded a salary increase came up against repression, which left 10 dead and 12 wounded who were hit by live ammunition by the gendarmes. Two years later, Martinique was hit even harder by the eruption of Mount Pelée on May 8, 1902. After a revival of Martinique sugar activity, the island, which had become dependent on this monoculture, diversified with the introduction of bananas and pineapples, and later because of food shortages linked to the First World War.
They join the sugar cane plantations where they go to work with their husbands. They were “moorers”, those women whose job it was to tie canes cut into bundles. They accompanied their husbands, whose main task was to cut cane. The salary is no longer based on working time but on the daily quantity of sugar cane cut, tied, then transported by cabrouettiers (a cabrouette is a cart pulled by bulls). Thus, the whole chain of work was linked, and the slightest defection meant that all those engaged were the losers. The agricultural worker combined motherhood and her work in the fields.
Thus, the women sometimes took their babies on their backs, and with the help of a strong piece of cloth well fixed, they went barefoot to work in the fields. If necessary, they would breastfeed the child in the fields and then resume their work. The working day was long (almost 55 hours per week on average).
The arrival of the Section française de l'Internationale ouvrière (SFIO was a left-wing party defender of the workers' cause) under Léon Blum in 1936 in power as Prime Minister is a bearer of hope. He established the work week at 40 working hours, but the Békés, landowners, categorically refused that this be applied to agricultural workers. Even the children took part in the work in the fields, sometimes working as many hours as the adults.
In 1935, out of 25,000 agricultural workers employed in the sugar or rum economy, 8,000 were women and 3,000 children in conditions that can easily be described as overexploitation of work according to the definition of the French anthropologist, Claude Meillassoux (1925-2005), in his book Femmes, greniers et capitaux. He declares: “There is overexploitation when the remuneration of labor is below the cost of reproducing labor power." In the aftermath of World War II in 1946, women made up 43% of agricultural workers in Martinique.