Power From Within: Voices of Jamaican Female Leaders

As high achievers, women have worked hard and dedicated their lives to raising their children, to their jobs, and at educating themselves. Despite their hard work, over the years women have been marginalized, and have encountered barriers in the workplace. The purpose of this qualitative phenomenological study was to explore the lived experiences of twelve empowered female leaders in organizations in Kingston, Jamaica, to discover what has contributed to their rise to leadership position. Leadership position was defined as Director, Chief Executive Officer, President, General Manager, or other senior executive position. Five themes emerged from an analysis of the collected data. These themes were used to develop an empowerment model for Jamaican women. The term empowerment may mean different things to different persons. However, irrespective of those differences, at the heart of empowerment is the word power, which plays an integral role in the empowerment process.