ABSTRACT
This chapter examines the impact of the economic crisis and structural adjustment policies on poor women and their households in the Caribbean, focusing on Jamaica and the Dominican Republic, two of the country’s most severely affected by the crisis. Women have always assumed a primary role in household survival strategies, securing and allocating usually meager cash and other resources to enable their families to make ends meet. High unemployment rates for women are especially critical in Jamaica because of the high percentage of female-headed households. Women are forced into the labor force precisely because of increased unemployment among men and because real wages of employed household members are decreasing, contributing to an overall reduction in household income. A 1980 study of migrants from Santiago, the second largest city in the Dominican Republic, found a much higher percentage of unemployment among heads of households with members who had migrated compared to households without migrants.
