Book Review… A timely celebration of female empowerment

Jan 28, 2018 Book Review…, Features / Columnists

Book: Minding Their Own Business: Five Female Leaders from Trinidad and Tobago
Author: Joanne Kilgour Dowdy
Critic: Dr Glenville Ashby

Minding Their Own Business is a celebration of the human spirit. Speaking volumes of female ingenuity and creativity, Professor Joanne Dowdy’s comprehensive undertaking couldn’t come at a more fortuitous time.
This is the era of female empowerment, the era of gender equality. At the outset, Dowdy gives perspective to this ascension of womanhood.
She harks back to the 19th century at the cusp of emancipation. We glean from the sordid chapters of slavery that matriarchy emerged when masculinity was riven by the brutality of the times. Resilient and resourceful, women arguably fared better, exceeding the expectations of those who might have slighted the acumen of former slaves.
Dowdy writes, “There is much evidence to assert the belief that slaves could run their own businesses, provide food for the population on the estate where they lived, create a monopoly for their goods, and make a profit from sales to their master.”
Minding Their Own Business encapsulates the keys to success. Vision, will, deliberation, planning and execution are intrinsic to every success story. The five women interviewed are in publishing, retail (bookstore), catering, floral arrangement and public relations.
Beyond the sheer will to surmount hurdles these women displayed strong communication and interpersonal skills, analytical and strategic prowess, accounting ability, and a robust ethical foundation.
One interviewee is said to have the ability to “communicate with anybody up the spectrum or down the spectrum [with] excellent facility with relationships,” [while] “always thinking of new things or different things that they could do.”
Interviewees cull from childhood experiences, one recalling her mother’s counsel to “sit down and do your homework,” leaving her assignment only when it was completed. This weighty training added to her professional life.
Throughout, there is credence to independence and rejection of the commonly held belief that security was only found in a government or corporate outfit.
The women interviewed exhibited a sense of community. Service was never marginalized.
We learn that “[a]mong the most precious memories that Gee holds are those that include the “free work” for hospitals, the university, different charitable functions…The charities that were served by the flower club included the cancer society and children’s homes.”
Later, we read about Gina who expressed her love for “feeding people and seeing them happy and seeing them in a fellowship environment.”
Such are the unmistakable elements of service and community spirit. Every venture transcends naked capitalism. There is the humanistic factor and the need to self-actualize through creativity. This validates the lives and accomplishments of every woman in this study.
The will to succeed in business germinated at a young age for one interviewee. She “decided to knit some goods and place them for sale on a table…so that passersby could see their wares.”
Timing, also was hailed as invaluable. Said one interviewee, “The…launch…had to be in the present. It has to be now. Because by then it would have been too late, I would have lost the trajectory, the way and the direction of where I should be shining.”
Noteworthy, also, is the umbrella of support provided by family members and friends. Every interviewee embodies a balanced approach to living. Admirably, their business priorities are never allowed to usurp family responsibilities and duties. As one woman put it, “[I was] aware of my role as a teacher…and a mother to these two children and to my husband.”
Dowdy provides the reader with much more than anecdotes. Hers is a qualitative undertaking that utilizes key methodological approaches to uncovering the social and psychological impulses toward uncompromising success.
With words that ring true, one interviewee sums up the thrust of every woman featured in Dowdy’s work: “I like being CEO! I feel like I have accomplished something. This is mine. I have built it…not anybody else…”

Feedback: glenvilleashby@gmail.com or follow him@glenvilleashby
Minding Their Own Business: Five Female Leaders from Trinidad and Tobago by Joanne Kilgour Dowdy
(C) 2017 Peter Lang Publishing, New York
Series: Black studies and critical thinking, ISSN 1947-5975/ vol. 94
Ratings: Highly recommended

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