“Jamaica is not for the weak” A field study about female entrepreneurs in Jamaica’s informal economy.

Abstract

Jamaica has one of the highest proportions of entrepreneurs working in the informal sector, which accounts for about 40% of the national economy (Bowen 2021; Peters, 2017). This sector provides crucial economic autonomy for many Jamaicans across diverse socioeconomic backgrounds and communities. Situated within this reality, this thesis presents an ethnographic study of how Jamaican female entrepreneurs experience informal work in Kingston. It examines the economic, social, and political challenges they encounter, and the strategies they use to maintain and grow their businesses. Fieldwork was conducted over five months in both uptown and downtown business environments with ten weeks of focused participant observation and interviews. The study situates women’s entrepreneurial experiences within Jamaica’s colonial legacies, spatial class divisions and gendered norms through the application of Bourdieu’s (1977) practice theory, Butler’s (1990) theory of gender performativity, Said’s (1978) concept of imaginative geographies and Brown Glaude’s (2011) intersectional analysis. Findings show that the class-based and spatial divisions of downtown and uptown Kingston shape the conditions, legitimacy and resources of informal work. Entrepreneurs’ social, cultural and symbolic capital, as well as their habitus, proved crucial for success and recognition in business contexts. Gendered norms of identity and respectability influenced their strategies as they balanced hard work in a culture that both sexualizes and stigmatizes women’s bodies. This field study contributes to scholarship on informal economies, gender, and postcolonial entrepreneurship by examining how Jamaican women experience working within, and against, structural inequalities shaped by history, geography and gendered norms.