Shopkeepers, washer women, hairdressers and housekeepers are among some of the occupations women are engaged in on the Middle Cay of the Pedro Banks. However, there are other women who have been providing well-needed service to the hardworking men that are there.
With some of the fishermen staying as long as nine months before returning to the mainland, some of these women have been playing the role of rent-a-wife.
THE STAR has learnt that the rent-a-wife can earn as much as $30,000 a month for doing all the regular household duties: washing, cooking, cleaning, and of course catering to the sexual desires of her client.
"What happens is a contractual marriage where he pays you for the week, and you do all wifely activities. You cook, when him come in him get him dinner, the place clean, she wash, do everything - for a price," one person familiar with situation at the cays, told THE STAR.
And, of course, with women accounting for under 10 per cent of the population on one of Jamaica's most popular offshore fishing locations, the usual market forces obtain with supply and demand dictating the cost of goods and services.
"The more 'fresh' the girl is, the more she can charge. If she is there for a long time everybody know her already, so she charges a lower price than the new girl," our informant disclosed. "For the week, she will cook, wash your clothes, do everything that a regular wife would do, but you just rent her for the week."
Then what happens at the end of the week? "She is liable to be somebody's rent-a-wife the other week and the other week and the other week."
One woman who is the wife of a fisherman, who plies his trade on the cays, told THE STAR that she has accompanied her husband there as a form of security.
She said that her main reason for being there is to ensure that his money and sex drive are channelled to the right place. While they are there, the children are left with a grandmother, with their mother content to stay on the cay for as long as her man is there.
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