1. See United Nations Development Programme,Human Development Report 1995 (New York: Oxford University Press, 1995).
2. See, e.g., Anthony Layne, “Government Revenue and Expenditure on Education in Barbados,”International Journal of Educational Development, Vol. 5, No. 2 (1985): 95–104.
3. This downward trend is explained in large measure by the exit of Afro-Caribbean women from the agricultural and domestic services industries. See J. Harewood, “Changes in the Demand for and the Supply of Labour in the Commonwealth Caribbean, 1946-1960,”Social and Economic Studies Vol. 21, No. 1 (March 1972): 44–60. A more recent study reveals the LFPR for women ages 25 to 44 to have exceeded 85 percent by 1993. See Addington Coppin, “Women, Men and Work in a Caribbean Economy: Barbados,”Social and Economic Studies Vol. 44, Nos. 2 & 3 (June/September, 1995). The rise in the female LFPR has both enhanced and been enhanced by the significant number of multinational firms in industries such as apparel, electronics and information services; these firms employ predominantly young females. This is a vastly different environment from that prevailing earlier in the century, when limited access to education and training severely constrained women’s options outside of the unskilled labor market. For perspectives on Barbadian women’s access to secondary education in the pre-World War II era, see Joyce Cole, “Official Ideology and the Education of Women in the English-Speaking Caribbean, 1835–1945, With Special Reference to Barbados,”Women in the Caribbean Project (Cave Hill, Barbados: Institute of Social and Economic Research, University of the West Indies, 1982); and Janice Mayers, “Access to Secondary Education for Girls in Barbados, 1907–43: A Preliminary Analysis,” in Verene Shepherd, Bridget Brereton and Barbara Bailey (eds.),Engendering History: Caribbean Women in Historical Perspective (Kingston, Jamaica: Ian Randle, 1995).
4. This outcome is comparable with one other major regional economy: Trinidad & Tobago (based on 1993 data from that country’s Continuous Sample Survey of the Population); it is also substantially higher than the 58 percent reported for women’s to men’s earnings in Jamaica (based on the 1989 data employed in a World Bank study). See Katherine McKinnon Scott, “Female Labor Force Participation and Earnings: The Case of Jamaica,“ in George Psacharopoulos and Zafiris Tzannatos (eds.),Case Studies on Women’s Employment and Pay in Latin America (Washington, D.C.: World Bank, 1991).
5. Note that the coding employed for this analysis assigned a value of unity to the highest level of education attained, so that a university-educated worker was assigned a value of zero for secondary education. The residual education category comprised “primary” and “other.” Since the latter category was small, and not readily interpretable, it was not identified separately in the analysis. For a discussion on the state of Barbadian education, see Errol Miller,Education for All: Caribbean Perspectives and Imperatives (Washington, D.C.: Inter-American Development Bank, 1992), ch. 6.