... heart to these women, to whom I am very grateful.To the Institute of Social Studies in e Hague and the Government of the Netherlands I wish to say thanks, for funding the PhD scholarship and dis-sertation ... con-template the lives of this group of women. ese women do yeoman service for their families and, by extension, the Jamaican society and they deserve to have some part of their stories ... in-debted to others, including Professor Maureen Cain, formerly of the University of the West Indies, Trini-dad and Tobago, and to Dr Patricia Mohammed and Professor Rhoda Reddock of the Centre...