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International Sociology

DOI: 10.1177/02685809030183003 2003; 18; 491 International Sociology

Ann B. Denis Resistance in Barbados

Globalization, Women and (In)Equity in the South: Constraint and

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Globalization, Women and (In)equityin the South

Constraint and Resistance in Barbados

Ann B. Denis University of Ottawa

abstract: Contemporary globalization is conceptualized as agendered phenomenon and its impact on the (in)equitywomen experience is examined for Barbados, a small islandnation, which has been experiencing shifts in economic andsocial policies which are informed by the neoliberal ortho-doxy of globalization. After considering how recent globaliz-ation has affected the Barbados political economy, the articleexamines how these changes affect the productive and repro-ductive activities of women in different social locations. Theresulting benefits and disadvantages for women areconsidered, together with the latter’s strategies of resistance.

keywords: Barbados ◆ economic policies ◆ globalization ◆paid work ◆ production and reproduction ◆ social policies ◆

unpaid work ◆ women

Introduction

Although globalization is not a new phenomenon, its forms during thepast quarter-century have taken on distinctive features which have beenvariously described as ‘opening many opportunities . . . for economicgrowth and human advance’ (UNDP, 1999: 1), increasing inequity withinand between societies, and undermining the autonomy of nationalgovernments (Mishra, 1999), notably their ability to maintain policiesaimed at promoting social equity. At the same time, although much of themacroeconomic literature ignores this, there are complex gender,racial/ethnic and class ramifications to contemporary globalization, in

International Sociology ✦ September 2003 ✦ Vol 18(3): 491–512SAGE (London, Thousand Oaks, CA and New Delhi)

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both its practices and outcomes. The focus in this article is on exploringhow women in Barbados, a society which was in the forefront of ‘develop-ing’ societies on the Gender-Related Development Index (GDI) in 1970,(UNDP, 1995: 80), experience, benefit from, are constrained by and resistaspects of globalization in the paid, productive and the unpaid, repro-ductive activities of their everyday lives.

Some Conceptual Considerations

Moghadam has defined globalization as ‘a complex economic, political,cultural, and geographic process in which the mobility of capital, organiz-ations, ideas, discourses, and peoples has taken on an increasingly globalor transnational form’ (Moghadam, 1999: 301). Critics of globalizationpoint to the ‘growing marginalisation of large numbers of Third Worldeconomies on the world market’ (Watson, 1993: 2). Whether measured inpurely monetary terms or in social ones, the costs and benefits of globaliz-ation have become increasingly unevenly distributed within and betweensocieties (Hoogvelt, 1997; Mishra, 1999; Williams, 2001).

Supranational, intergovernmental organizations make contradictorycontributions. On the one hand, such organizations as the InternationalMonetary Fund (IMF) and the World Trade Organization (WTO) directlyor indirectly promote commodification, deregulation, the privatization ofspace and economic activity, and the downsizing of government, includ-ing the scaling down of social entitlements (Mishra, 1999: 6–8; Hoogvelt,1997: 148–9). On the other, the International Labour Organization (ILO)and the United Nations (UN) organizations have promoted socialmeasures, such as international labour standards, human rights andliteracy. The latter organizations seem, however, to exert far less influencethan the former, which are promoting the neoliberal agenda.

In its examination of globalization and women in Barbados, thisanalysis uses a broad definition of work that includes activities whichmaintain the society (‘reproductive work’) as well as those which arerevenue generating (‘productive work’) whether in the informal or theformal sector. Although within feminism such a conception of work iscommonplace, in non-feminist analyses of work, the inclusion of repro-ductive, and often of informal sector work, remains exceptional. Insofaras available data allow,1 the analysis takes account of the ways in whichother categorical groupings, notably, ethnicity/race and social class, inter-sect with gender as important dimensions of women’s complex position-ing in society.

International Sociology Vol. 18 No. 3

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The Political Economy of Barbados

With an area of 430 km2 and a population of 247,288 (Barbados, 1994b),Barbados is a densely populated small island state in the southeasternCaribbean. According to the 1990 Census, the most recent available(Barbados, 1994b: Table 2.04), women make up slightly over half (52percent) of the population. In terms of ethnicity/race, 92.5 percent of thepopulation is black, 3.2 percent is white and 2.4 percent is ‘mixed’, whileEast Indian, Chinese, Syrian Lebanese, ‘other’ and ‘not stated’ eachaccount for less than 1 percent of the population. Three-and-a-halfcenturies of uninterrupted British rule ended peacefully when Barbadosbecame an independent member of the Commonwealth in 1966.

Barbados was a plantation economy, with resident Britishowners/managers and, until emancipation in the 19th century, a labourforce composed of African slaves, both men and women. After emanci-pation many continued working on the plantations, now as waged labour.The white planter-merchant elite has remained economically dominant,although a black merchant class developed after emancipation, andduring the 20th century blacks gradually entered other occupations. Whilethe economic elite remains predominantly white, the political elite andunion leaders are predominantly black (Karch, 1981; Lewis, 2001), but allthree continue to be very predominantly male. Women’s labour forceparticipation, particularly that of black women, has been significantthroughout Barbados’s history. Its low point, attributed to the idealiza-tion of the ‘housewifization’ (Mies, 1986) of women (Green, 1994), wasabout 45 percent in 1960 and 1970 (Massiah, 1984: Table 1.5). This contrastswith rates of about 75 percent between 1881 and 1921 (Green, 1994: 159)and 62 percent during the 1990s (Barbados, 1994a, 1999).

Barbados has a relatively fragile economy, which, historically, wasbased on sugar cultivation. Due to competing products and mechaniza-tion, this sector is now a declining source of employment. Because of therelatively small size of the population, internal markets for manufacturedgoods have been limited, which has restricted the possibility of economiesof scale in the production of goods for domestic consumption. Protec-tionism has frequently been an important economic strategy, and muchinvestment has been of foreign origin. Policies of investment by invita-tion were intended to develop local manufacturing capacity, including theassociated human resources. What occurred instead has been consider-able development of branch plants, especially of American multinationalfirms, for production without investment in research and development(Hoogvelt, 1997: 125–8). Moreover, foreign capital typically relocateswhen a sufficiently qualified, but cheaper labour force or better fiscalconditions become available elsewhere. Drawing on a variety of

Denis Globalization, Women and (In)equity

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expressions used in the literature, I use footloose multinational capital as away of summarizing these phenomena.

Changes since the 1980s in the philosophy underlying trade agree-ments are another consequence of globalization. Trade agreements,2 whichwere explicitly intended – at least in part as measures of social justice –to give preferential opportunities for export by Caribbean signatories toEuropean and North American markets, are now threatened preciselybecause they are considered inimical with the neoliberal orthodoxy oftrade liberalization (CAFRA/WIDE, 1998). The advent of the Free TradeAgreement of the Americas (FTAA) and the need for har-monization ofthe various trade agreements with the free trade terms of the WTO consti-tute additional pressures towards trade liberalization (Arthur, 2001;Bryan, 2000; Benn and Hall, 2000). These pressures impact, often incontradictory ways, on women’s employment and consumption. Toremain internationally competitive and to respect conditions of inter-national trade agreements, Barbados has experienced pressure to deregu-late its economy, which, in fact, has been but one aspect of reducedgovernment social intervention. So, in its response to trade agreementsand structural adjustment policies (SAPs), including pressures for reducedgovernment spending and intervention, there is an uneasy coexistence of thecapitalist and social democratic agendas which have informed theBarbados political economy ever since Barbados negotiated full internalself-government from Britain in 1961, even before its political indepen-dence in 1966. Such uneasy coexistence is well illustrated in the country’sNational Development Plans, which are statements by the governmentof the principles intended to guide its economic and social policy.Endorsement of capitalism and of a social democratic philosophy arereflected in all these Plans since independence. Barriteau (2001: 101–2)points out, however, that from 1983 on, the Plans have included anincreased role for the private sector and retrenchment of some socialprogrammes. This shift in emphasis is reflected in legislation and budgetallocations.

Perhaps because of the absence of a strong indigenous capitalist classinterested in promoting its own multinational interests, when the level ofnational debt, combined with the international economic climate, resultedin strong international pressure on the government to adopt SAPs, therewas the political will to develop a tripartite Social Partnership. In 1991 theprime minister invited employers (representing the private sector) andtrade unions (representing workers in both the public and private sectors)to join with the government to establish a package of measures foreconomic recovery which avoided devaluation, a measure that allopposed, due to its disastrous effects elsewhere. The resulting SocialPartnership agreement, signed in 1993, included a wage cut (mandatory


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in the public sector and encouraged in the private sector), productivityprovisions, adjustment of income tax and voluntary price controls, but nodevaluation. Subsequent renewals have included undertakings by theSocial Partners to work cooperatively to increase productivity, to exerciserestraint in both wage and price increases, to minimize job cuts and incor-porate union participation in decision-making about such cuts, and toharmonize the agreement with multilateral trade agreements. Mechanismsfor regular consultation and monitoring have been introduced (Barbados,1993; Barbados, 2001; Dunn and Dunn, 1999). I was told by one unionofficial, and read in publications of another union, that this voluntaristicapproach had reduced the negative impact on the population of theausterity measures which international pressure had rendered inevitable.The official also detailed to me instances of each of the Social Partnersretreating, when faced with opposition from the others, from proposalsthey had wanted to introduce. Recently, the economic climate has allowedfor the gradual reinstatement of the earlier wage cuts (BWU, 1998, 2000).

Furthermore Barbados, with its partners in CARICOM,3 has beenfighting hard for the continuation of clauses in trade agreements whichinclude some measure of preferential treatment for trading partners fromthe Caribbean, thus acknowledging existing inequity in resources andcapacity between them, as small island nations, on the one hand andEurope, Canada and the US on the other. In the interests of equity theyare also negotiating for similar clauses, exemptions and/or longer periodsof tariff protection in the new trade agreements such as the WTO and theFTAA (Arthur, 2001; Girvan, 1999; Williams, 2001). These various Bar-badian discourses and practices suggest that the state continues tosupport social democratic principles of equity, both nationally and inter-nationally in conjunction with an overall capitalist economy. Thus,although there has been little popular discussion of and protest againstglobalization, the inevitability (and desirability) of neoliberal economicglobalization is not fully accepted by the government. Despite analysesby feminist activists and scholars about the negative effects of thesemeasures on women (Antoine, 1997; Antrobus, 1989; Barriteau, 1996;CAFRA/WIDE, 1998; Massiah, 1990; Reddock, 1998; Stuart, 1998;Williams, 2001), explicitly gendered analysis is, however, conspicuouslyabsent from the official discourse.

Women and Production: Footloose Capital, TradeAgreements and Local Industry

Prior to the 1970s, women’s formal labour force participation wasprimarily as agricultural workers, domestic servants, informal sectorvendors and seamstresses (Massiah, 1984). From the 1970s, the strategy


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of investment by invitation in export-processing zones (EPZs),4 with itsassociated fiscal benefits for overseas investors, opened new employmentpossibilities for women in Barbados successively in semi-skilled assemblywork in the manufacture of clothing and semi-conductors, in service jobsin tourism, and in routine data entry jobs. Although the wages womenearned in garment manufacturing were the lowest paid within manu-facturing (Green, 1994), for black women with limited education, who hadformerly been agricultural labourers,5 maids in private households orunemployed, these jobs represented opportunities for improved wagesand working conditions, and some training. Opportunities for further skilldevelopment, transferable training and advancement have, however, beenlimited (Jayasinghe, 2001). As their tax holidays ended in the 1980s, manyof the offshore companies departed to sources of cheaper labour andimproved concessions, a trend reinforced by the introduction of the NorthAmerican Free Trade Agreement (NAFTA), which increased the attrac-tiveness of Mexico for American companies. By the end of the 1980s, EPZcompanies in garment and semi-conductor manufacture were eitherdownsizing or closing, due to more attractive conditions elsewhere, aneconomic downturn and, in the case of the latter, a glut on the market(Green, 1994; Watson, 1994), eliminating women’s jobs. A pattern ofemployment and layoff by a succession of such companies emerged frommy interviews with women about their employment during the 1980s(Denis, 1994).

Data entry is another important source of women’s EPZ jobs, open tosecondary school leavers with keyboarding skills. It does not pay betterthan light manufacturing, but is considered more desirable because of the‘modern’ nature of the work and the working conditions (Freeman, 2000).Women’s jobs have been concentrated in routine keyboarding, which isnow being done increasingly by scanning. In response to this techno-logical change, Barbados has begun to market itself as being able to meetthe new needs of foreign capital by offering a labour force capable ofsoftware design and other technologically sophisticated tasks (BIDC,1998). It is men, however, who, since they have the requisite qualifications,are obtaining these new jobs, while the routine jobs that women havefilled are being moved elsewhere to reduce labour costs and avoid union-ization (Dunn and Dunn, 1999; Social Partners, 1998, cited in BWU, 1998:5–6). I found no evidence that the gendered implications of this change ofpolicy had aroused official concern.6

Locally owned manufacturing has also been affected by globalization.The food and beverage sector employs significant numbers of bothwomen and men, with women constituting the majority of the workersin poultry and meat processing, and confectionery (BIDC, 2000). Plantclosures in 2001 in poultry production (and in male-dominated soft drink


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production) resulted from the competition of cheaper overseas products,including those from other parts of the Caribbean.

The expansion of supermarkets, and the increasing importance ofAmerican food products, is undermining the traditional marketing busi-nesses of black women with limited education (Karch, 1981: 234–5).Rather than being a main source of livelihood, the informal selling ofproduce and baked goods is increasingly done for supplementary incomeby women, and men, who have regular jobs, from data entry clerksthrough teachers, in the formal sector (Freeman, 2000; and informalpersonal communications).

On the other hand, opportunities to work as sales persons in larger,usually white-owned stores in the modern sector are increasing, and arenow open to more educated black women. Previously, such employmentwas only open to white women (Karch, 1981: 218–19; Lewis, 2001; andinformation from local middle-class informants).

An area of growth for women’s employment, increasingly supportedby foreign investment since the 1970s, has been in service, clerical andadministrative jobs in hotels and restaurants. With technological changereducing the time and cost of international travel, Barbados has targetedmiddle to high-end tourism as a sector for economic growth. At the sametime, the capital required to establish ‘competitive’ facilities has resultedin the businesses being increasingly foreign owned. Employment oppor-tunities for women have been concentrated in low-skilled service jobs,some of which, albeit often low paying and seasonal, offer an attractivealternative to domestic service (Levy and Lerch, 1991). It has been esti-mated (Levy and Lerch, 1991: 71) that in 1975 approximately 10 percentof the total labour force worked in tourism, with the proportion increas-ing to between 15 percent (Lewis, 1999) and 20 percent (Levy and Lerch,1991) in the 1980s and 1990s.7

The jobs in tourism for women as receptionists and in ‘middle-level’hotel work as accountants, business office staff and housekeeping super-visors have also increased. These opportunities, combined with the post-independence expansion of the public service and the development ofoffshore financial services (another niche Barbados has been promoting),have contributed to increases in the proportion of the female labour force,in Barbados as elsewhere, in professional and technical jobs (from 10percent to 16 percent) and in clerical jobs (from 14 percent to 22 percentbetween 1970 and 1990) (Denis, 2001).

Existing research does not permit a full assessment of the gender, class,race and nationality (local or expatriate8) of those in the clerical, admin-istrative or managerial jobs in the private sector, nor of their conditionsof employment and ease of finding re-employment if laid off. While multi-national firms in manufacturing, data entry, tourism and financial services


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seem to hire a predominantly local, black, female workforce for lower-level jobs, management and even supervisory positions are often filledeither by men or by foreigners, whether men or women (Dunn and Dunn,1999). Dunn and Dunn also report that differential salaries and benefitsreceived by local and expatriate managers and professionals have led toa two-tiered system of remuneration, to the advantage of the expatriates.This has resulted in increased and increasingly visible economic inequity.

Although globalization during the past quarter-century has resulted innew employment opportunities – some of the time – for women, as Table1 shows, their unemployment rates, which have been systematically andsignificantly higher than men’s, skyrocketed between the mid-1980s andthe mid-1990s. In summary, new waged jobs at various skill levels haveopened for women due both to the post-independence expansion of thepublic service and to new areas of industrial expansion within the privatesector. The range of occupations open to black women has also increased.Interpreting globalization as involving the movement of discourses aswell as capital and organizations, much of this improvement is the resultof globalization. Equally, however, there has been considerable loss of jobsfor women due to relocations, retrenchment and displacement of the self-employed. This can also be attributed to globalization.

Women’s Production and Reproduction: LabourStandards and Flexibilization

Consistent with the ILO Conventions it has ratified, Barbados’s labourlegislation is quite comprehensive, but there is no overall minimum wage,only wage standards within particular industrial sectors. Occupationalhealth and safety regulations are embryonic and sexual harassment legis-lation is non-existent (Alleyne, 2000; Robinson, 1999). Unionization is rela-tively widespread, 30 percent overall, and particularly prevalent in thepublic sector (communications from officials in the Department of Labourand two of the national unions). Barbados requires that offshorecompanies respect its labour legislation. Since enforcement of such


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Table 1 Percentage Unemployed in the Female and in the Male Labour Force, 1981–98(Selected Years)

1981 (%) 1984 (%) 1987 (%) 1991 (%) 1994 (%) 1998 (%)

Women 15.1 22.1 23.1 21.5 25.5 16.4Men 7.4 12.9 13.3 13.2 18.2 8.4

Sources: for 1981, 1991 – Denis (1994); for 1984 – calculated from Barbados (1987); for 1987 –calculated from Barbados (1989); for 1994 – calculated from Barbados (1994a); for 1998 –calculated from Barbados (1999).

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legislation is easier in organizations than in the case of employment byindividuals, one might expect that women, formerly in private domesticservice, should enjoy better working conditions in EPZs and tourist facil-ities. Certainly their pay is somewhat higher, although still low both inabsolute terms and relative to men’s (see Tables 2 and 3). Unionization is,however, exceptional in EPZs. In the late 1990s there were documentedcases of offshore companies objecting to legitimate attempts at unioniza-tion. At least one offshore data entry company chose to relocate insteadof accepting unionization, alleging that the voluntaristic labour relationspractised in partnership by the government, unions and the private sectorin Barbados constituted an unacceptable form of labour relations (BWU,1998; Dunn and Dunn, 1999). If taken at face value, rather than simply asa pretext for rejecting unionization, this reaction is indicative of a lack ofrespect for the local labour practices.

Research on the informatics sector (Dunn and Dunn, 1999; Freeman,2000) has identified work-related conditions which negatively impact onemployees, the majority of whom are women. High production quotascan cause both physical and mental stress for women, particularly whencombined with ergonomically inappropriate work stations, as is the casein some enterprises. The high level of turnover, particularly in the dataentry work in which women are concentrated, suggests that problemsexist. I interpret the juxtaposition of points made in a Barbados IndustrialDevelopment Corporation’s profile of the sector as implying that it wasthanks to the high turnover that the health-related problems were notgreater (BIDC, 1998). An additional problem that Dunn and Dunn (1999)noted in some companies was that, although overtime or additional shiftwork are formally optional, they are expected, and, unless a woman didovertime or informal sector work, it was often impossible to earn enoughto meet financial responsibilities for her family.

Women’s Production and Reproduction: TheEffect of Reductions in Government Expenditures

Like many other societies which became independent during the secondhalf of the 20th century, the public service has been an important employerin Barbados, employing about one-fifth of each of the male and the femalelabour forces in 1990 (Barbados, 1994b: Table 8.01), and contributing tothe realization of a social democratic project of economic developmentand increasing equity and social justice. The public sector has been moreopen than private sector enterprises to the hiring of blacks, whether menor women, and to the hiring of women in professional, management andclerical jobs. It has also been a relatively well-paying source of employ-ment, especially for women, and the only one where their salaries are


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Table 2 Percentage Earning Less than $200B Gross per Week and Median Gross Weekly Earnings by Type of Employer, for Women andMen, 1990

Women Men

Gross weekly earnings Gross weekly earnings

% Earning Median (Total number % Earning Median (Total number< $200B earnings in category) < $200B earnings in category)

Employment status (%) ($) (%) ($)

Worked for employer 48.2 100–199 (34,270) 22.8 200–299 (40,153)Government 26.4 200–299 (9,801) 19.4 200–299 (12,143)Private enterprise 46.0 100–199 (21,846) 23.9 200–299 (27,108)Private household 81.2 100–199 (2,594) 35.2 200–299 (877)

Worked for self 30.0 200–299 (2,653) 13.6 400–499 (6,460)

Total employed (36,923) (46,613)

Source: Calculated from Barbados (1994b: Table 8.02).

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Table 3 Percentage of the Labour Force and Median Gross Weekly Earnings by Occupation, for Women and Men, 1990

Women Men

Gross weekly earnings Gross weekly earnings

% of Female Median % Earning % Earning % of Male Median % Earning % Earninglabour earnings < $100B

approximately equal to men’s: as Table 2 shows, in 1990 about 20 percentof either gender earned under $200B a week, in contrast to the labourforce as a whole where 23 percent of men and 49 percent of women earnedunder $200B a week (see Table 3).

As already noted, since 1990, salary reductions, layoffs and reductionsin operating budgets and privatization have been introduced in the publicsector as part of the tripartite Social Partnership. The resulting loss of jobs,increasing expectations at work (having to do more with less) and lowerincomes have had a particularly deleterious effect on women, due to theconcentration of the best-paid women within this sector and due to itsimportance as a means of occupational mobility for black women. Wecould anticipate, on the basis of past practices within the large-scale enter-prises of the private sector, that, in the newly privatized organizations,women’s opportunities for advancement, particularly those of blackwomen, will decrease. Thus, the fiscal retrenchment which has been aconsequence of globalization has had a more negative impact on theproductive activities of women than on men working in the public service.

Furthermore, by its effects, through reductions in government expen-ditures, on their reproductive activities, globalization has touched allwomen negatively.9 The fiscal and monetary measures, such as the elimi-nation of price controls on basic food stuffs and the imposition of valueadded tax (VAT) on consumer purchases, introduced ‘voluntarily’ tocounter the threat of externally imposed devaluation, have obligedwomen to cope with rising expenses for their household needs,10 oftenwith less money. Although prices were controlled, thanks to the SocialPartnership agreement, increases were certainly not eliminated. Thecutbacks in some services (public transport, medical care) and theprivatization of others (telephone) substantially increase the stress womenexperience, resulting in such problems as deteriorating health. As in othersocieties, women are more dependent than men on public transport, menbeing more likely to have cars or bicycles. It is women who typicallyorganize the logistics to access state-provided health care, social servicesand child care. Equally, it is women who continue to have informalresponsibility for the care of elders and the infirm, and for child care inthe face of insufficient provisions of such care by the state. Although thedevelopment of home care and the extension of child care have beenamong the objectives of the Barbados Development Plans, implementationhas been curtailed by the external constraints on government spending.In summary, these ‘invisible’ negative effects of globalization and SAPstend to weigh more heavily on women than on men (Antrobus, 1989;Barriteau, 1996).


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Women’s Reproductive Activities: The Effects ofTrade Agreements and Footloose Capital

The effects of trade agreements in particular and of globalization ingeneral have been contradictory. We have already discussed the mixedeffects on employment – both the opening up of new employment oppor-tunities, and also rising unemployment, which have a significant effecton women’s ability to carry out the reproductive responsibilities expectedof them. Increases in male unemployment also impact negatively, sincemany women rely to some extent on financial contributions from residentor non-resident partners. On the other hand, the increasing availability ofimported foods and other goods at lower prices than their locallyproduced equivalents stretches the buying power of what budget is avail-able. Equally, however, the intensive advertising of imported products‘creates’ new ‘needs’ for these consumer goods.

The working conditions imposed by some offshore employers can alsoimpact negatively on women’s reproductive work. Dunn and Dunn’s(1999) study in informatics suggests that employers’ expectations relatedto such matters as overtime and punctuality reflect little appreciation ofthe challenges that women, in particular, experience, often as singleparents and reliant on sometimes erratic public transport, in coping withthe demands of their productive and domestic responsibilities. The lackof organized child care by employers or the state makes shift workparticularly challenging.

Women and the International Movement ofInformation and Ideas

Improvements in speed and reductions in the costs of communication(and transportation) during the last quarter-century have increased possi-bilities of sharing information and building alliances. We have alreadyconsidered the negative effects on women of the neoliberal ideas inform-ing the work of the international financial organizations. It is in the workof the organizations dealing with human development that elementspromoting greater sensitivity to gender equity are articulated, supportedby gender-disaggregated data and tools for gender analysis. Preparatorywork, participation in and follow-up work related to internationalwomen’s conferences continue to offer occasions for stock taking andstrategizing. For example, the Barbados National Commission on theStatus of Women and the Department of Women’s Affairs were both estab-lished in 1976, a year after the first UN conference on women. Further-more, the issuing of the National Policy Statement on Women in 1992coincided with preparation for the Beijing Conference in 1995. The


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conventions of such bodies as the ILO, of which Barbados is a signatory,provide legitimation for maintaining and improving labour standards,reiterating the principle of freedom of association, and legislating equalpay. They also legitimate the introduction and maintenance of socialmeasures, such as old age pensions, maternity leave and free education.Our examination of Barbados makes it clear, however, that the inter-national bodies dealing with fiscal matters are more powerful than thosewith a human development agenda.

Resistance by Barbadian Women to the NegativeEffects of Globalization

Women’s resistance to the negative effects of globalization has taken twoforms: strategies to improve their individual situation11 and strategieswhose objective is the promotion of social change. Investing in furthertraining in order to be able to obtain jobs which offer greater autonomyand/or remuneration or becoming trained for a variety of jobs is one formof individual resistance, as these examples from interviews I conductedin 1993–4 (Denis, 1994) attest.

After leaving school with no qualifications, ‘Sandra’ began studying math andtyping in a private institution and wants to take computer courses in order toget a better job.

‘Margaret’ successfully completed school leaving exams in several subjects. Shehas since completed a secretarial diploma and courses in accounting, DOS[computer operating system prior to the advent of Windows] and cake andpastry making, the last ‘so at least I’ve something to fall back on, in case’. Sheworks full-time in accounts in a supermarket.

After leaving school with no qualifications, ‘Sharon’ took evening classes insecretarial subjects and later did a basic typing-receptionist course. She subse-quently improved her craft training by working for an experienced craftsper-son and also took business courses to improve her management of hersmall-scale handicraft business. She has since taken a nursing course and worksin elder care because craftwork was not financially stable. She continues to doit on the side and could use her secretarial skills if necessary.

Another strategy, also illustrated by the last two cases, is for those withsalaried, typically full-time, employment to take on a second or third job,often establishing microenterprises in the informal sector. These couldinvolve selling fruit, eggs or preserves, for instance, operating a smallconvenience store from home (as another of the young women whom Iinterviewed, one with a middle-level job in the public service, did) orproviding tutoring or day care. This strategy is now used by professionalsas well as those with clerical, manufacturing or service jobs. Despite


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entailing an additional source of stress, this strategy, as I was told infor-mally by a number of black middle-class contacts during my two researchvisits, provides a way for women (and men) to maintain the standard ofliving they had achieved 10 or 20 years ago, but which they now seeslipping away as a result of the changes related to globalization, notablyrising costs, reduced salaries and increasing expectations with regard toconsumption.

The sharing of housing by three generations, by adult siblings and theirfamilies, or by unrelated nuclear families reduces the cost of housing andmay, at the same time, facilitate child care (Antrobus, 1989; Barriteau, 1996;Denis, 1994; and informal communications). This is a final example ofindividual strategies identified by Caribbean feminist scholars andactivists as examples of resistance.

Barbadian women’s collective resistance, through women’s organiz-ations, to the negative effects of globalization has primarily taken one oftwo non-confrontational forms. The first focuses on research, lobbyingand public education through NGOs at the local, regional and inter-national levels, often working in collaboration with sympathetic bureau-crats within the government and international organizations. Thepreparatory work for the Beijing Conference and follow-up activities areexamples of this strategy, as are lectures, public meetings, media inter-views, letters to the editor and publication of research reports by repre-sentatives of the Women’s Forum, the National Organization of Women(NOW), the University of the West Indies’ Centre for Gender andDevelopment Studies (CGDS) and its Women and Development Unit(WAND) (all local), the Caribbean Association for Feminist Research andAction (CAFRA) (regional) and Development Alternatives for Women fora New Era (DAWN) (international) (Antrobus, 1989; Barriteau, 1996;CAFRA/WIDE, 1998; Massiah, 1990; Reddock, 1998; Williams, 2001). Theother type of collective resistance by women’s organizations is to continueto support social welfare-type work which helps to fill the gaps in thesocial safety net: on the one hand, these activities meet a clear communityneed, but on the other, they facilitate the state’s disengagement, thepreferred policy of the proponents of the neoliberal globalization.12 TheBusiness and Professional Women’s Club now administers a Shelter forBattered Women, for instance, while the Barbados Mothers’ Union of theAnglican Diocese contributes to the funding of its programmes (Alleyne,2000). In addition, women have become more active in mixed organiz-ations, including unions (Alleyne, 2000; BWU, 1998, 2000). The lack ofsuccess in negotiating on issues identified as being of particular concernto women – such as sexual harassment and paternity (as well as mater-nity) leave – suggests that these have not been a priority in union nego-tiations and have received scant sympathy from employers.


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Concluding Remarks

In conclusion, what is the relation between (in)equity, on the one hand,and globalization, on the other, for women, and how does the inter-section of women’s social positions affect the relation in Barbados?

This, admittedly selective, overview has demonstrated the effects ofspecific aspects of globalization on women’s productive and reproductivework in Barbados. Overall, apart from a brief period of improvementduring the 1970s in Barbados, globalization has been associated with deteriorating working conditions for most women and with insecureemployment. Wage gaps between women and men and among womenremain significant, exacerbated by differential local/expatriate pay rates.Women remain concentrated in jobs in which they are offering low-paidservices to others, although socioeconomic changes since the 1960s haveopened new opportunities for occupational, and thus social, mobility,largely based on education, for both women and men. After rising from20 to 11 between 1970 and 1990 (UNDP, 1995), women’s GDI rank hadfallen to 27 in 1997 (UNDP, 1999),13 an indication of the increasing inequitythat women experience, in a society whose Human Development Index(HDI) rank has also fallen, from 25 in 1995 to 31 in 2001 (UNDP, 1995,2001). The analysis of the effects of globalization on reproductive work isless detailed, suggesting the continuing social invisibility of this work andthe need for research on it.14 So, the effects of globalization have mainlybeen negative, increasing women’s unpaid work, often without acknow-ledging that this is being done.

At the moment, despite daunting odds, it seems as if there is a politicalwill to oppose, at least to a limited extent, the negative effects of globaliz-ation on social policy in Barbados. The Social Partnership, the insistencethat education is an economic not a social investment, and Barbados’sactive participation in the CARICOM negotiations related to the FTAA,WTO and other trade agreements all attest to such political will. Itappears, however, to remain oblivious to the gendered nature of theinequities it is tackling, with the result that solutions do not necessarilyreduce the gender-based inequities that women experience. Their inequal-ity remains evident, reinforced, often implicitly, by the neoliberal policiesand pressures in the public and private sectors. These pressures, in fact,constitute a backlash against gains that women had gradually, if unevenly,been making.

Women’s strategies of coping and resistance in Barbados have beenprimarily individual or as part of mixed groups. This indicates, perhaps,the relative weakness of the women’s movement there, despite thepresence of dynamic and articulate feminists within the society.

Finally, our overview also highlights, in a very summary manner, the


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fact of the diversity of women’s experience, due to differences in training,in race or ethnicity, or in social class. The ways in which women there-fore live the effects of globalization vary in form and severity, but, formost, they share two common threads – of being difficult and of beingfaced actively, not passively.

NotesI wish first to acknowledge and thank Dr Eudine Barriteau, head of the Centerfor Gender and Development Studies, University of the West Indies, Cave Hill,Barbados, for her support, advice and friendship, particularly during 2000–1 whenshe made me very welcome as a visiting researcher at CGDS. I also wish toacknowledge with thanks the helpful comments of José Havet, Esther Chow andthe anonymous reviewers for International Sociology on earlier drafts of this manu-script.

1. Most of the research literature and available statistics related to women donot explicitly discuss ethnicity/race. I have drawn on extrapolations fromavailable material (scholarly and more popular), combined with my own(formal and informal) observations during two research stays of six to tenmonths each, other briefer visits and information and insights that colleagues,feminist activists, officials, friends and acquaintances have been generousenough to share with me. See also Karch (1981) and Lewis (2001).

2. These include the Lomé Convention (between the European Community andthe Caribbean), CARIBCAN (between Canada and the CommonwealthCaribbean) and CBI (between the US and the Caribbean). ‘Lomé’, the nameof a city in Togo, refers to a Convention between the EU and the ACP (statesin Africa, the Caribbean and the Pacific). Initially signed in Lomé in 1975 andrenewed several times since, it is a comprehensive agreement on trade,development and cooperation. CARIBCAN is an acronym for the tradeagreement between the Commonwealth Caribbean and Canada. CBI is theacronym for the Caribbean Basin Initiative, an agreement between the US andcountries in the basin of the Caribbean Sea.

3. CARICOM refers to the Caribbean Common Market. Originally composed ofthe independent English-speaking island states of the Caribbean and theadjacent mainland, it has since expanded to include the independent Dutch-speaking state of Surinam and, more recently, Haiti (Girvan, 2000).

4. For fiscal purposes the whole of Barbados is treated as an EPZ. The govern-ment has also established several industrial parks which offer serviced facilities to industrial investors.

5. A declining source of employment for both women and men.6. Nor did I find evidence of systemic attempts to encourage women to enrol

in relevant programmes in the Community College or the University of theWest Indies. They are a minority in these programmes. Rather, the concernhas been with the overall absence of men in post-secondary education. It willbe interesting to see whether the current EDUTECH initiatives in the school


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system result in increased female enrolment in IT (as distinct from keyboard-ing) programmes at the tertiary level.

7. The reported data are not broken down by gender. They are estimates becausegovernment statistics do not distinguish work in tourism from work in relatedsectors. The percentage of the female labour force in all service jobs increasedfrom 32 percent to 36 percent between 1970 and 1990, with a shift during thesame period from work as domestics in private houses to other types ofservice occupations (Denis, 2001).

8. ‘Expatriate’ here refers to nationals from the economic North, primarily thoseemployed by multinationals.

9. Over half the household heads in Barbados are women. In some cases thosewho are mothers of dependent child(ren) receive contributions from non-resident father(s). As in many societies, regardless of living arrangements, itis the women who are expected to assume most reproductive responsibilities,including managing the household budget, and material and emotional careof resident and non-resident family members and, often, of close friends. Theyare frequently assisted in this by an informal support network – of otherwomen (Barrow, 1986, 1996)

10. During extended research stays in Barbados first in 1993–4, when the firstSocial Partnership Protocol was being implemented, and then in 2000–1, mygrocery shopping at the neighbourhood supermarket was at least asexpensive as it was at home in Canada, even though I made a point of usinglocally produced goods. In 2000–1 I noted a decline in the availability oflocally and regionally manufactured goods and an increase in American ones.The latter were often less expensive, despite the higher transportation costswhich presumably were involved. Furthermore, my groceries were certainlymore expensive in Barbados than in Trinidad and Tobago, where I also hadresearch visits that entailed self-catering during the same years.

11. One evaluator questioned whether such strategies constituted ‘resistance’ orwere simply ‘coping’ mechanisms. I argue that they are resistance becausethey indicate a refusal to accept passively such conditions as unemployment,declining living standards, poorly paid jobs. Some of the strategies areproactive, others, reactive. ‘Coping’ implies making do within externallyimposed constraints, while ‘resistance’ implies challenging, whether collec-tively or individually, the limits imposed by the constraints. Thisconceptualization reflects a usage by feminists.

12. At the same time, they also represent resistance to the dominant ideology.During my first research visit, for instance, domestic violence against womenwas simply not acknowledged as an issue of public concern. Since the estab-lishment of the shelter, it is becoming one, a change which reminds me of theprocess by which partner abuse of women has gradually become part of thepublic policy agenda in Canada, since the 1970s.

13. Barbados’s GDI rank has not been given since 2000, due to unavailability ofsome of the data needed for its calculation. The GDI uses the same variablesas the HDI, but is calculated to reflect disparity in achievement betweenwomen and men. The decline in Barbados’s ranking on the two indices during


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the 1990s is due to greater improvements on the constituent variables in othersocieties rather than an absolute decline on these variables in Barbados.

14. The CGDS is conducting a study on ‘Gender and the Economy: The Impactof a Stablization and Structural Adjustment Program on Four Communitiesin Barbados’, which should provide valuable information on this subject.

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BIDC (Barbados Industrial Development Corporation) (1998) ‘The InformaticsSector’, unpublished report. Bridgetown.

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Denis, A. B. (1994) ‘A Follow-Up Study of Participants in the People of TomorrowProgramme, WAND, Barbados’, Canadian Bureau for International Education,Ottawa, mimeo.

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Dunn, L. L. and Dunn, H. S. (1999) Employment, Working Conditions and LabourRelations in Offshore Data Service Enterprises: Case Studies of Barbados and Jamaica,Multinational Enterprises Programme, Working Paper No. 86. Geneva: ILO.

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Lewis, D. (1999) ‘A Case Study of Vulnerable Groups: The Impact of Trade Regu-lations on Women in the Caribbean’, commissioned by UNIFEM, mimeo.

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Massiah, J. (1990) ‘Economic Change, Structural Adjustment and Women in theCaribbean’, revised version of a document submitted to the CommonwealthCaribbean Regional Meeting on Structural Adjustment, Economic Change andWomen. Cave Hill, Barbados: Institute for Social and Economic Research,University of the West Indies.

Mies, M. (1986) Patriarchy and Accumulation on a World Scale. London: Zed Books.Mishra, R. (1999) Globalization and the Welfare State. Cheltenham, UK and

Northampton, MA: Edward Elgar.Moghadam, V. M. (1999) ‘Gender and Globalization: Female Labor and Women’s

Mobilization’, Journal of World-Systems Research 5: 301–14; at:csf.colorado.edu/wsystems/jwsr.html

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Watson, H. (1993) ‘The Changing Structure of World Capital and DevelopmentOptions in the Caribbean’, in H. Watson and F. Frobel (eds) The Future of theCaribbean in the World System: Two Contributions, pp. 1–46. Kingston, Jamaica:Friedrich Ebert Stiftung and University of the West Indies.

Watson, H. (1994) ‘The United States–Canada Free Trade Agreement, Semicon-ductors, and a Case Study from Barbados’, in H. Watson (ed.) The Caribbean inthe Global Political Economy, pp. 127–46. Boulder, CO/Kingston, Jamaica: LynneRienner Publisher/Ian Randle Publishers.

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Biographical Note: Ann B. Denis is a Professor of Sociology at the University ofOttawa. Her research and publications focus on women’s work in Canada andthe Commonwealth Caribbean, the intersection of gender, class andethnicity/race, and the use of the Internet by women and minority Franco-phones in Canada.

Address: Department of Sociology, University of Ottawa, Ottawa, Ontario K1N6N5, Canada. [email: [email protected]]


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