The Climb Toward Equality: Examining Women's Empowerment in Trinidad and Tobago through a Mixed Methods Study

Background: This study examined the context of women’s empowerment in the Caribbean country of Trinidad and Tobago, including factors of social independence, attitudes toward violence, and household decision making using the Survey-based Women’s emPowERment Index or (SWPER Global). The SWPER Global is a recent validated instrument developed for the purpose of measuring women’s empowerment, with 14 items. Additional qualitative interviews captured women’s perspectives on processes and contexts of equality and empowerment, which cannot be gleaned from the SWPER Global. Women's empowerment is a critical component of achieving gender equality, as it involves women gaining power and control over their lives and making strategic choices. Although current research uses several measures to track empowerment associated variables globally, there are no region or culture-specific measures that truly explore the realities in women’s homes, marriages, and community. An exploration of these issues can create more region-focused measures instead of one global measure that may not address locally relevant issues.

Methods: Data were collected using a mixed methods design. The SWPER Global was administered in English to a sample of cohabitating partnered or married women currently living in Trinidad and Tobago (N= 300). Participants were recruited through community outreach, local agencies, referrals, and a local research firm. Multivariate analyses using Ordinary Least Squares (OLS) regression methods were used to test the relationship between empowerment scores and other covariates. A sub-sample of respondents were interviewed online or in-person using a phenomenological approach that focuses on understanding the lived experiences of women regarding empowerment factors and equality.

Results: Analysis of the data revealed that 98% of women did not believe wife beating was justified under all 4 of the conditions in the SWPER. Although, most women knew someone who had experienced domestic violence or had experienced it themselves in the interviews. On the decision-making scale, 90% and up of women made decisions jointly with partners or by themselves. One area stood out, 37% of women decided on how to spend the money they earned alone while 33% of men decided on how to spend the money they earned alone. Overall, respondents to the SWPER Global had high empowerment scores, and these were consistent across demographic variables. However, qualitative interviews indicated that women in the sample reported experiencing exposure and frustration with a culture of interpersonal violence, and challenges to income and employment opportunities.

Implications: The findings suggest that some items on the SWPER Global may not apply to women in Trinidad and Tobago and different items are needed to capture empowerment factors that affect women’s access to employment, income, and equality in decision making in their homes. This could imply that global measures cannot accurately predict empowerment for all women because they do not make room for culturally specific beliefs, access to education, societal norms, developmental status, and government policies and enforcement. Future studies could examine the use of this global measure and others like it, to determine accuracy and gaps in gender equality via interviews of women of various backgrounds in specific regions.