Not Without Her: A roadmap for gender equality and Caribbean prosperity

The Caribbean is one of the world’s most vulnerable regions, housing open-facing and import-dependent economies that are disproportionately affected by climate change, changing commodity prices, and inflationary pressures. Governments and financial institutions face these constant stresses, but Caribbean citizens bear the brunt of the burden, including vulnerable populations like women and girls. Women and girls require government and financial support to increase their resilience and opportunities across society. Challenges facing women and girls occur across every government sector, the business community, and local organizations, meaning that addressing gender barriers and gaps requires an integrated and whole-of-society approach. This publication compiles the findings of a yearlong consultative effort with Caribbean stakeholders, which finds that the challenges facing women and girls—specifically GBV, limited economic empowerment, limited political influence, and climate change’s effects—are partially a result of perceptions of a woman’s role in society and limited access to tools and resources that can help them overcome these barriers. A restructuring and reshaping of social norms, alongside political and financial institutions, is needed to achieve greater gender equality and empowerment. Further, more opportunity for women and girls directly ties into the region’s broader ambitions of reaching its United Nations (UN) Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs). Incorporating women and girls into the development model for the Caribbean is a surefire method to prosperity. Caribbean countries perennially face issues of limited capacity from small ministries and business chambers to micro populations, which inherently caps their development opportunities. With women and girls accounting for, on average, about half of the total population across each Caribbean country, development opportunities for governments, the private sector, and civil society are lost when the full capacity of human capital is not utilized. Simply, gender equality can equate to regional development and long-term prosperity