Entrepreneurial Women in the Caribbean

Adopting an intersectional lens, this book comparatively examines the multiple processes and systems of power that frame the experiences of female entrepreneurs in the Caribbean and the fluid ways in which they respond to these. Specifically, it challenges entrepreneurial scholars who are concerned with the experiences of women within that sector to critically interrogate interlocking structures of power (e.g. gender, race, class, age, industry-based hierarchies) that operate within that space, the marginalizing effects of related processes, and the extent to which these affect their thinking and practices of female entrepreneurs within the region. Through comparative lenses, the book highlights the structural and relational realities and complexities that undergird the entrepreneurial landscape within the region, the effects of these on the entrepreneurial identities, positionalities, and practices of female entrepreneurs. It underscores the many ways in which they navigate that terrain. In so doing, the book offers critical insights into the historical, socio-cultural and economic parameters within which female entrepreneurs in the region engage, the lived realities associated with these, the prospects or possibilities for re-presenting or re-framing such contextual and discursive spaces. It also provides necessary understandings of the motivations, positions, prospects, possibilities and constrains of entrepreneurial women in the region and the policy implications of these realities. This book offers insights for scholars and policymakers that are important for (i) understanding the current gaps in entrepreneurial research and policy, (ii) the tools, methods, and strategies that are needed to address these contextual and discursive realities, and ultimately, (iii) the ways in which policy makers and local governments can promote the authentic empowerment of female entrepreneurs in the region, while giving considerations to precarious realities of women.

“If you are a policymaker, this book is a must-read and will help you understand the unique context for women entrepreneurs in the Caribbean. If you are an academic, with this work, you will learn both the basis and latest insights to continue conducting research in this field”.

(Katherina Kuschel, Ph.D. Associate Researcher, CENTRUM Graduate Business School, Pontificia Universidad Católica del Perú)

“This timely and hugely important text combines critical insight, comparative intersectional analysis, and textured narrative portraits of women entrepreneurs in the Caribbean context. An incredibly useful contextualized illumination of the extent to which Caribbean women entrepreneurs are positioned in the ambiguities of the entrepreneurial space. This book provides fascinating insights into the lived realities of women entrepreneurs across the Caribbean and is essential reading for those seeking a more nuanced understanding of the factors that influence women’s global entrepreneurial experiences”. (Maura McAdam, Professor of Management/DCU Director of Entrepreneurship, DCU Business School, Dublin City University, Ireland)

Talia Esnard is a Senior Lecturer in the Department of Behavioral Sciences at the University of the West Indies. She has published on issues related to women, work and organizations with particular emphases on women in academe and in the entrepreneurial sector. She  recently authored a student textbook, Entrepreneurship in the Caribbean and co-authored the book Black Women, Academe, and the Tenure Process in the United States and the Caribbean.