Female Entrepreneurship in the Caribbean: A Multisite, Pilot Investigation of Gender and Work

This paper introduces a cross-cultural, interdisciplinary, and comparative study of how female entrepreneurship is patterned according to a society's particular configuration of gendered institutions and ideologies. The islands of Puerto Rico, Martinique, and Barbados, colonized by Spain, France, and Britain respectively, exhibit strong differences in the incidence of female self-employment and in local patterns of gender roles. Although these societies share a profound social history of sugar plantations and slave labor, their distinct colonial legacies have shaped important differences in the intensities and specific forms of patriarchal institutions and ideologies, differences that remain apparent in each island's female workforce.