The cultural constructs of race, gender and class: a study of how Afro‐Caribbean women academics negotiate their careers

Abstract

Research on the cultural constructs of race, gender and class among 44 full‐time faculty women from the Jamaica, Barbados and Trinidad campuses of the University of the West Indies suggest that that racial identity does separate women. However, their gendered identity establishes a common ground that allows them to share a socially constructed reality. Through in‐depth interviews with Afro‐Caribbean faculty women who were from different ethnic groups but the same race, the researcher discovered the unique ability of these women to negotiate their identities as they shared their perceptions and interpretations of daily academic life as Black faculty women.

Acknowledgements

This research study was funded by the City University of New York (CUNY) Faculty Exchange Program and co‐sponsored by the Centre for Gender and Developmental Studies (CGDS) at the University of the West Indies (UWI). Special thanks are extended to Otis Hill, previously Vice President of Student Affairs at Kingsborough Community College in Brooklyn, New York who provided the author with faculty leave for this Visiting Scholarship; to Elsa Leo‐Rhynie, Violet Eudine Barriteaui and Rhoda Reddock, the directors of the CGDS at each of the three UWI campuses in Jamaica, Barbados and Trinidad, respectively, who graciously arranged for the author’s visit and shared their time, space and resources; and to the 44 Caribbean faculty women who shared their life stories. Deepest gratitude is due to Linda Tillman and Melanie Carter for their unwavering support, critical insight, validation and friendship.

Notes

1. The term ‘coloured’ is the British word used in the Caribbean and it is the same as the term for ‘colored’ or Black in America.

2. The Centre for Gender and Development Studies grew out of Women and Development Studies groups on the three campuses of the University of the West Indies. With program support from the Ford Foundation and the Government of the Netherlands, these groups developed a teaching and research project in collaboration with the Institute of Social Studies in the Hague as well as with the Institute of Social and Economic Studies on the Cave Hill, Mona and St Augustine campuses. This project led to the establishment in 1993 of the Centre for Gender and Development Studies. Besides research, it conducts an energetic program of seminars and workshops that increases awareness of gender issues in the academic community, as well as in the wider society.

3. Ladson‐Billings (1994) has observed that by ‘talking with’ rather than ‘talking to’ other Black women, Black women have the opportunity to deconstruct the specificity of their own experiences and make connections with the collective experiences of others. The give and take of dialogue makes struggling together for meaning a powerful experience in self‐definition and self‐discovery (p. 155).

4. The term ‘West Indian’ is used interchangeably with the term ‘Caribbean,’ referring to native Caribbean residents.

5. A female‐headed household is considered one in which a woman retains control over her own income, her assets and her children.

6. Marriage involves legal sanction and co‐residence.

7. Common‐law involves co‐residence only.

8. Visiting is indicative of the birth of a child during the year preceding the census although the woman was not in a married or common‐law union at the time of the census.