Dear Editor:

Relatively poor, quasi-literate men do not usually form relationships with financially secure, educated and independent middle-class women.

It is not the norm. Middle-class women date middle-class men.

Lower income men and their pool of available mates share a potentially destructive philosophy amidst an existence of scarce funds in a materialistic world. The Judeo-Christian view of women and relationships may have been useful in an earlier age and in a bygone time of acquiesce appetite. But it no longer is in today’s world.

The Jamaican lower income male and his female share the view that it is a man’s responsibility to take care of a woman. And, in an economy that lacks the ability to empower women through meaningful employment, there are many women who date for financial help.

I think Jamaican working class men have been giving way too much to their women, often at the cost of their own individual advancement. But male sexual energy is very pronounced. This lays the framework for a sort of symbiosis where poor women and poor men form relationships on the promise of sex, family and money.

In such social context, we should not expect the perennial high rate of men killing women to abate.

If a man must put off his own growth in satisfying that of his woman, he will likely become possessive. It will inevitably unnerve the ‘possessor’ at the prospect of losing that which he ‘possessed’.

You just cannot have a context where our women possess the liberty, freedom to change her partner whenever she likes and at the same time being the financial burden of poor men.

In bygone era, where it was the expectation of men to completely care for women, all her liberties were taken away. Those were male-dominated societies, founded on religious absolutism — in our case Judeo-Christian morality, which views women as inferior. Women were forbidden to work, own property or even get an education.

The world has been changing. Our women are enjoying immense assertiveness. Yet the Jamaican economic reality robs her of financial empowerment. The world has also become far more materialistic. Her Brazilian hair, smartphones, school fee, rent etc, must be had through assistance from her male counterpart. But her male counterpart is of limited means. When he gives, he gives all he has.

Fix the economy or change the values of lower income women, or do both. With financial empowerment our women will more readily form relationships not out of desperation for money. Our men will less likely view relationship as a form of financial burden where the loss of their women elicits memory of money loss. Today is not the ancient or medieval world. Women must have financial and emotional liberties.

Ricardo McKenzie