Finding a New Paradigm of Tourism, Sustainability Through Women's Empowerment in the US Virgin Islands

• In Event: More than an Island: Caribbean Constructions of Self and Place

Abstract

Feminist research in the areas of gender and development throughout the Caribbean has focused rarely on the territories of the Virgin Islands – the United States’ last vestige of colonization and imperialism in the Caribbean. I analyze the current state of environmental sustainability tourism in the name of female empowerment on the island of St. Croix. Can eco-tourism be an avenue free of racial and gender inequities? Are women becoming the resources themselves? Finding a new paradigm of developing sustainable tourism practices is a way to empower women who lack agency and economic opportunities in a “post-colonial” globalized world.

Presenter

• Courtney Reynolds, University of Cincinnati