This project involves preliminary research by a team of three young anthropologists studying how female entrepreneurship is patterned according to social and household constraints in Puerto Rico, Martinique and Barbados. These three Caribbean island societies were colonized by Spain, France and Britain, respectively. While exhibiting strong differences in the incidence of female self-employment and local gender role patterns, the islands share a history of sugar plantation economies and slave labor. The research is designed to identify the specific institutional and ideological factors associated with higher frequencies and success rates of female entrepreneurs in each island society. The researchers will conduct a household socioeconomic census and structured in-depth interviews with male and female household heads in each island's central city to gather comparative data to test hypotheses about the relation of various gender-based ideological and structural factors to women's economic outcomes. This research is important because it will advance our understanding of the social and institutional constraints on women's economic success in the developing world. This inexpensive pilot project should allow the researchers to refine their procedures and plan a major comparative study on this subject.
