Review by Choice Review
Based on Bolles' fieldwork in 1978-79, this anthropological study links the national development strategies of "industrialization by invitation" to global economic issues, including the impact of the debt crisis and International Monetary Fund policies, and to the grassroots level of women's work and strategies of survival. Bolles pays particular attention to how poorly paid factory workers, who are primarily responsible for their families' livelihood, cope with poverty and insecurity, "making do" by stretching their wages through largely female networks of reciprocal support. Through such interdependence in their domestic economy they avoid total dependence on a single source of support, whether a male partner or a factory job. This study, which focuses chiefly on economic activities in the household, complements Helen Safa's more comparative The Myth of the Male Breadwinner (CH, Dec'95) about women and industrialization in Puerto Rico, the Dominican Republic, and Cuba, and Kevin Yelvington's more theoretical Producing Power (1995), which examines ethnicity, gender, and class in a Trinidadian factory. Bolles' conclusions about "African-Caribbean societies" are mostly true of Indian and Hispanic women factory workers, which suggests class and gender are more important than ethnicity. Recommended for women's studies and Caribbean studies collections. Upper-division undergraduates and above. O. N. Bolland Colgate University
Copyright American Library Association, used with permission.
Review by Choice Review
