Enjoying Power: Eugenia Charles and Political Leadership in the Commonwealth Caribbean

Enjoying Power presents a fascinating range of studies on the political life of one of the Caribbean's most imposing leaders of the twentieth century. Eugenia Charles's political leadership in the Commonwealth Caribbean is unprecedented. Up to the time of her death in 2005, she was the only Caribbean woman to have been the co-founder and leader of a major political party, to be elected as head of government, and to hold for fifteen years the offices and portfolios of prime minister, minister of finance and economic affairs, and minister of foreign affairs. A unique feature of this work is that the contributors capture the complexities, contradictions and ideologically conservative politics of a woman who enjoyed the exercise of political power and demonstrated this in many ways. Charles personifies the Caribbean woman who, as politician and political leader, has had the greatest impact on twentieth-century Caribbean politics. A particular strength is that the study moves easily between theoretical analyses of the intersections of gender, law and citizenship, democratic governance, foreign policy, economic development planning, and the psychology of political leadership, and practical investigations of the policies and planning that underpinned her leadership. In the process, the book makes a singular contribution in offering to social scientists an excellent opportunity to subject theories to empirical evaluation and to refine, where necessary, some of the theoretical claims that are sometimes made when theory is not informed by empirical data. The study explores Charles's ambivalence about feminism, CARICOM-US relations during the Grenada invasion, entrepreneurial and economicdevelopment in a micro state, women and political power, the portrayal of women in the print media, and popular culture as an expression of political dissent.