Background
Barrow was born in Fairmount, a town that belonged to St. Lucy's parish, in northern Barbados, on November 15, 1916. She was the second of five children.
Barrow was born in Fairmount, a town that belonged to St. Lucy's parish, in northern Barbados, on November 15, 1916. She was the second of five children.
Although the educational system of Barbados discouraged the schooling of women, her mother Ruth made sure her daughters received the best possible education available to young girls in Barbados. She was educated in Barbados and became a teacher.
After teaching secondary school for two years, Barrow trained as a nurse at the Barbados General Hospital. Her mother and other relatives tried to dissuade her from studying nursing because of the grueling nature of the training and the racist and oppressive conditions faced by black nursing trainees in Barbados. When she trained at the Barbados General Hospital, nurses learned by watching and doing; very little direct instruction was offered. British nurses ran the facilities with a strong hand. Trainees lived in the hospital and endured long shifts, dating restrictions, curfews, menial pay, and bad treatment. Barrow protested the treatment the nurses received but was a dedicated student with a great sense of duty and responsibility. In 1940, after completing her five years of training, she went Trinidad for more specialized instruction in midwifery.
She was accepted as a fellow in post-basic nursing education at Toronto University in Canada. At the time, the university had a novel program intended to prepare nurses in a broad range of areas such as public health and epidemiology. Her sense of commitment and responsibility impressed her professors so much that they extended her fellowship for a second year and paid for a special rotation in infectious diseases at a Jamaican hospital. Barrow finished her Canadian training in 1945.
In 1945 she immediately accepted a position as an assistant nursing instructor at the newly founded West Indian School of Public Health in Jamaica. When she arrived in Jamaica, she learned that the head nurse had left her position; Barrow quickly became the sole person in charge of the nursing staff at the institution. At the same time, she became the head nursing instructor for the teaching program at the hospital. One of her major contributions at the time was to refocus the training of nurses from care-giving to prevention and public health. In 1951 Barrow traveled to Edinburgh, Scotland, to pursue an additional year of training in public health. On that trip, she visited other medical facilities throughout Europe and studied their models of health care and prevention. Barrow, who had started to work with the YMCA in Jamaica, took advantage of the trip to Europe to represent Jamaica at the YMCA's 1951 world convention in Beirut, Lebanon. The trip was significant because it marked a lifelong association with the YMCA, an organization she presided over many years later.
Barrow's advanced training in the field of public health allowed her to pursue other career opportunities. On her return to Jamaica, she was appointed to the position of sister tutor at the Kingston Public Hospital. She was in charge of providing nursing training to the staff and developed such a good program that in 1954 she was offered the position of matron at the University College Hospital of the West Indies. The position of matron went beyond training responsibilities: she was the chief nursing official at the hospital in charge of a large staff. One of her challenges was to work with a large number of British doctors who thought that a black West Indian was not qualified to undertake such a huge job. In a few months she came to be regarded as a formidable administrator who ran the nursing program with a competent but kind hand.
Barrow's work at the University Hospital was so successful that when the position of principal nursing officer in Jamaica became available in 1956 she was offered the job. Despite her initial reservations about the position, she accepted and was in charge of the system of nursing training and health care for the whole island of Jamaica. The Jamaican health care system had faced many deficiencies, as the population relied on several hospitals scattered throughout the island and there was little uniformity or integration of their health care system. Barrow took a very aggressive approach toward health care and tried to integrate the hospitals within one system. She stressed the importance of community health care and established more than 100 community health care centers throughout the island. Isolated communities were provided with community health centers so that people did not have to travel more than eight miles to receive adequate care. Simultaneously, Barrow tried to improve the standards of care for patients: she persuaded the government of Jamaica to increase the health care budget more than ten times.
Barrow left her position in 1962 to go to New York and finish her college degree at Columbia University. Many of her colleagues worried that although she had achieved her nursing certification, her lack of a formal degree would curtail her ability to pursue other positions and would eventually affect her credibility as a public health official. She finished her bachelor's degree and in 1964 was selected to direct a major research project sponsored by the Pan-American Health Organization (PAHO) and the World Health Organization (WHO) to assess nursing training throughout the Caribbean.
Through her work with PAHO and WHO, Barrow became more involved with other international organizations. During the 1970s she worked closely with the World Council of Churches (WCC) and expanded her involvement with the YMCA. After attending a 1967 WCC meeting in Germany, Barrow was invited to become a commissioner for the Christian Medical Commission (CMC), the health care branch of the WCC. Tire CMC developed and implemented health care initiatives conducted by Christian groups throughout the world. Her work as a commissioner eventually led to her appointment as an associate director of the commission in 1970 and to the position of director in 1976. As a leader of the CMC, Barrow worked hard to develop programs focusing on community health and local medicine. Although she was based in Geneva, Switzerland, Barrow traveled throughout the world promoting different health care initiatives and gaining support for community medicine. She also became a passionate advocate of the need for more adult education programs worldwide and in 1982 became the president of the International Council on Adult Education.
In 1983 Barrow retired from her position with the WCC and completed her second term as president of the international YMCA, an organization that she hadpresided over since 1975. Although she intended to retire and go back to Barbados, she was offered a position as coordinator of the Non Government Organization Forum '85, a conference focusing on women's rights held in Nairobi, Kenya in 1985. By 1986, Barrow was so well recognized in international circles that the government of Barbados appointed her as Barbados' permanent ambassador to the United Nations. While at the United Nations, Barrow became the spokesperson for the U.N. Commission on the Status of Women and was a staunch defender of human rights and a critic of the apartheid regime in South Africa. She tried to bring cohesiveness to the members of the Caribbean delegation to the United Nations and to unify their work on behalf of Caribbean nations. Despite a failed bid for the presidency of the General Assembly in 1988, Barrow gained a reputation as a diplomat and came to occupy a great degree of visibility within the United Nations. She also developed a reputation as a defender of women's rights throughout the world. Because of this work, she was selected in 1986 to be the only female member of Eminent Persons Group that looked into the apartheid problem in South Africa.
Her years of hard work in so many positions of responsibility uniquely positioned Barrow to assist her island. After years of serving the world in a number of capacities, Nita Barrow was sworn in as governor general of Barbados on June 7,1990. She was the first female governor of this Caribbean nation and worked relentlessly to improve the lives of her fellow Barbadians. Although she faced a major economic crisis during her mandate, she worked hard to bring consensus among all members of the government and recognized the importance of community organizations in helping to improve the lives of her people.
Barrow became a staunch opponent of the apartheid regime and brought immense credibility to the efforts to bring down racial segregation and exploitation in South Africa. Barrow was referred to by many as a Citizen of the World”; however, her Caribbean vision and values led Jamaican scholar Rex Nettleford to aptly say, "She is the Caribbean".
She was a member of the Commonwealth Group of Eminent Persons that visited South Africa in 1986. During that mission she successfully thwarted South Africa's military restrictions, through entering the restricted area of Alexandra township disguised in African garb and head-dress.