But some plantation owners preferred women as the harder workers. More men were brought from Africa as slaves than women. Women were mainly confined to fieldwork, though some worked as house slaves. There were skilled jobs which Africans did: such as carpenters, coopers, blacksmiths, potters, sugar boilers. The cultivation and processing of sugar, for example, required different skills from those needed for rice or tobacco. Work on a plantation depended on the crop grown. Sugar especially was labour-intensive, and everyone was expected to work, even old slaves and children. But the majority worked on the plantations, for 12 hours or more a day. Some slaves worked in the towns, or as boatmen. The lighter-skinned slaves, often the children of the owner or manager by a slave woman, were often given the better jobs, kept as house servants or trained in a skilled job. The blackest slaves usually had the hardest work. It could be a terrible punishment for a house servant to be put with a field gang to do heavy field work after the lighter duties in the house. Those slaves chosen to work in the house were considered to be of higher status than the field slaves. At the head of the field slaves were men and women known as drivers, who were supposed to keep the field slaves hard at work, by use of the whip if necessary.
Amongst the black slaves, skilled craftsmen such as carpenters or sugar boilers ranked above ordinary field slaves. Below him were other white employees, such as overseers and book keepers. The white owner or his white manager was at the top of the social structure. There was a strict social order on the plantations.
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