Women and Industrialisation in the Caribbean

Abstract

Export-led development strategies have become increasingly popular in Latin America and the Caribbean in the past decade, especially in the manufacturing sector. Although the Border Industrialisation Programme in Mexico is the best known and most important in terms of exports to the United States, other countries also have turned to export as a way of earning foreign currency and alleviating the current debt crisis, sometimes spurred on by the neo-liberal policies of the International Monetary Fund.

I wish to acknowledge the financial support of the National Institute of Mental Health for collection of the Puerto Rican survey data, and the Wenner Gren Foundation for collection and analysis of the in-depth interviews in both Puerto Rico and the Dominican Republic. Several institutions and individuals assisted me in this endeavour. Foremost thanks go to Magaly Pineda, Director, and the other staff members of CIPAF, who supplied me with the data on Dominican women workers that they had collected. I am grateful to Francis Pou, who assisted me in conducting the in-depth interviews in the Dominican Republic, and to Lorraine Catanzaro, Quintina Reyes and Milagros Ricourt, whose analysis of the survey data in their MA theses greatly facilitated my own study. Susan Joekes’ data on the export processing zones in the Dominican Republic and her general paper on women and export manufacturing provided me with valuable insights. I also wish to thank Carmen Perez who conducted the survey on the Puerto Rican women in 1980, and Clifford Depin and his staff of the Puerto Rican office of the International Ladies Garment Workers’ Union, who facilitated access to the factories and data from their own files. Finally, my appreciation goes to Lourdes Beneria, Carmen Diana Deere and June Nash, for their critique of an earlier draft and for their constant support and encouragement.