Gender Implications of Export-Led Industrialization in the Caribbean Basin

Abstract

This chapter focuses on the gender implications of export-led industrialization in two countries of the Hispanic Caribbean, Puerto Rico and Dominican Republic. These countries share similar historical and cultural patterns but differ substantially in state policy. The chapter emphasis on the region's garment industry, which, along with electronics, has been the area of greatest growth in export manufacturing in the Caribbean Basin. Garment and textile manufacturing has commonly represented the first stage of industrialization in both advanced industrial and developing countries. In the mid-1960s, Operation Bootstrap changed from a labor-intensive to a capital-intensive focus, and, in mid-1970s, it entered a third stage of high-tech industrialization. Capital-intensive industries were adversely affected by the oil crisis, which hit Puerto Rico and the United States and virtually eliminated Puerto Rico's petrochemical industry. Industrialization started much later in the Dominican Republic than in Puerto Rico, and it focused largely on import substitution until the massive and rapid expansion of export manufacturing in the 1980s.

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