Female Entrepreneurship: A Comparative Study of Gender and Work in the Caribbean.

Colorado State University, Fort Collins CO

Investigators

Abstract

Browne/Freeman (9911743) This comparative study of Puerto Rico, Martinique, and Barbados will investigate how female entrepreneurship is patterned according to social and household-level constraints. The three islands differ significantly in the incidence of female self-employment, in local patterns of gender roles, and in female workforce participation. The key factors that constrain women's entrepreneurial interests are both institutional and ideological and are located in the domestic realm, the workplace, and the state. The research will document and explain the differences in women's participation across islands, as well as the factors that lead to successful versus unsuccessful entrepreneurship. Variation in workplace and state level policies across the three islands will also be taken into consideration. A number of hypotheses will be tested including relationships between types of occupational segregation (by gender), weak/strong patriarchal gender relations, and variable rates of female entrepreneurship. The relationship between welfare-oriented, state policies and women's economic risk aversion will also be investigated. Methods include household censuses of samples from the three islands, extensive interviewing of subsamples of male and female entrepreneurs, and life history analysis. This research will contribute to anthropological theories of gender and economic entrepreneurship, as well as to state level development planning that seeks to strengthen the "informal" sector of developing economies.