One of the most interesting revelations from the report of the 2001 census, just released by STATIN, concerns the ratio of women to men.
Many of us baby boomers grew up in a generation which was convinced that there were as much as two women to each man which, often, explained our sexual behaviour. But, now STATIN has come and spoiled all that, by revealing that not only are the male and female population virtually even, but that there are some parishes in which men actually outnumber women!
Corporate Area male population may not be too worried as they still have a healthy ratio, but even here there are some grave signs, with the ratio dropping from 92.2 (male to 100 per cent female) to 94.1 and from 87.8 to 89.3 in Kingston and St. Andrew, respectively, since the 1991 census.
But, what is really happening in the rural parishes?
According to the report, it is most noticeable that there are seven parishes where there are more males than females. These parishes are - Westmoreland, St. Elizabeth, Trelawny, Clarendon, St. Ann, Hanover and Manchester.
Manchester, incidentally, is the only one which had a reversal of the 1991 situation when there was actually a dominance of women there. The other six parishes have had this problem since 1982.
Now before you start suggesting that I am a male chauvinist, consider the reality that we are still a very sexist society and women are not given the opportunities that men are: Women are paid less, given the most menial jobs and are often left to raise single-parent families with these cheap wages.
The fact is that these figures force us to review the myths which we have lived with in the past and look more seriously at gender issues.
How do we explain the fact that in most of the more affluent parishes -Kingston, St. Andrew, St. James and St. Catherine - there is still an abundance of females over males? And why is St. Ann, with all its tourism and bauxite resources, not among this group?
Why is it that St. Andrew still with a comfortable excess of females - 292,800 to its 261,441 males, and the best ratio of women to men, 87.8? And, why do Trelawny and St. Mary, with their unenviable distinctions in poverty, have 104.5 and 99.4 ratios?
Is Hanover the most perfect of the 14 parishes, if you really look at it objectively, with its 100.4 ratio? And what makes it almost on par with Clarendon with its 100.8?
Is the worldany better off when there are more females than males?
Well, I would prefer a ratio of far more women to men. I am really frightened by the thought that these figures will continue changing, until one day we wake up and find that there are more men than women in Jamaica.
It is not something that one can explain scientifically. It is just a dreadful nightmare that one of these days there might even be one woman for every two men.
We are living in an age of progress and there is obviously consolation for some in the fact that the differences between the sexes are becoming more blurred every day. But, that's the part that really scares the hell out of me.
Balford Henry is News Editor at the Gleaner.
