Successful Caribbean Women -- "We Had the Courage and the Vision".

Abstract

Twenty four successful Caribbean women from twelve English speaking Caribbean countries were studied using a definition of success that included both educated and uneducated women, and women who were in the professional and manual work categories. The problem was to find out how these successful Caribbean women accounted for their success. The women were selected by using a reputational survey and by utilizing the regional contacts of the Women and Development Unit at the University of the West Indies in Barbados. The data were collected by conducting interviews within a Native Anthropology and Insider Research framework, which makes use of the returned native as a special source for collecting data at home since she would have additional or "insider knowledge" of the population. Four hypotheses were generated, two by the women and two by previous studies of successful women. The two that came from the literature focused on role models and the presence of a high self-concept, and the two that were generated by the women focused on the importance of religion and a high feminist consciousness. The findings were that the women had high and and rogynous self-concepts and predominantly female role models regardless of their occupation or educational status. Most of the women had a high feminist consciousness and the most conscious were those with little or no education, and those with the most education. For the lives of the successful Caribbean women, Religion or a belief in God was an important factor. The comparison between these Caribbean women and U.S. women can at this time only be speculative since the definition of success used in this study was not used in studies of successful U.S. women. One of the major speculations was that Caribbean women were likely to be successful and have a greater chance at equality because their work was still more central to their societies' survival. U.S. affluence has contributed to the interpretation of women's work as peripheral rather than central. In short, the male dominance ideology cannot yet be completely afforded in the Caribbean and it is this that gives Caribbean women a slight edge.