K. Hofmeester, K. Pallaver, Filipa Ribeiro da Silva
ABSTRACT:This article places the research findings on women's work and gendered labor relations presented and discussed in this special issue in a broader and comparative perspective. We start by contextualizing and explaining main shifts and continuities in labor relations in sub-Saharan Africa in the last two hundred years. We then compare differences between women's and men's labor experiences and labor relations. To conclude we offer a comparative analysis of the main shifts and continuities in women's labor relations across several countries in the Global South. For this we draw on the case-studies analyzed in this special issue as well as on studies carried out for other African, South Asian and Latin American countries. The aim of this exercise is to show the potential of the "Global Collaboratory on the History of Labour Relations" methodology for both intra-African as well as trans-continental comparisons, in particular between countries and regions in the Global South.
{"title":"Women's Labor Relations in Sub-Saharan Africa and The Global South Compared, 1800–2000","authors":"K. Hofmeester, K. Pallaver, Filipa Ribeiro da Silva","doi":"10.1353/aeh.2022.0006","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1353/aeh.2022.0006","url":null,"abstract":"ABSTRACT:This article places the research findings on women's work and gendered labor relations presented and discussed in this special issue in a broader and comparative perspective. We start by contextualizing and explaining main shifts and continuities in labor relations in sub-Saharan Africa in the last two hundred years. We then compare differences between women's and men's labor experiences and labor relations. To conclude we offer a comparative analysis of the main shifts and continuities in women's labor relations across several countries in the Global South. For this we draw on the case-studies analyzed in this special issue as well as on studies carried out for other African, South Asian and Latin American countries. The aim of this exercise is to show the potential of the \"Global Collaboratory on the History of Labour Relations\" methodology for both intra-African as well as trans-continental comparisons, in particular between countries and regions in the Global South.","PeriodicalId":43935,"journal":{"name":"AFRICAN ECONOMIC HISTORY","volume":null,"pages":null},"PeriodicalIF":0.2,"publicationDate":"2022-06-02","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"44044575","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":4,"RegionCategory":"历史学","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
ABSTRACT:Eritrean women have always been active in the national economy although rarely their impact has been pinpointed, appreciated, and estimated by scholars. This article is an attempt to provide a long-term perspective about women's presence in the Eritrean labor market as well as their labor relations, applying the taxonomy developed by the Global Collaboratory on the History of Labor Relations at the International Institute of Social History. The colonial 1905 census, the Four Power Commission's Report on Eritrea, and the Eritrea Demographic and Health Survey 2002, serve as bases to guestimate female workforce and labor relations at the early, mid, and late twentieth century.
{"title":"Gendered Labor Relations in Colonial and Post-Colonial Eritrea","authors":"Valentina Fusari","doi":"10.1353/aeh.2022.0002","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1353/aeh.2022.0002","url":null,"abstract":"ABSTRACT:Eritrean women have always been active in the national economy although rarely their impact has been pinpointed, appreciated, and estimated by scholars. This article is an attempt to provide a long-term perspective about women's presence in the Eritrean labor market as well as their labor relations, applying the taxonomy developed by the Global Collaboratory on the History of Labor Relations at the International Institute of Social History. The colonial 1905 census, the Four Power Commission's Report on Eritrea, and the Eritrea Demographic and Health Survey 2002, serve as bases to guestimate female workforce and labor relations at the early, mid, and late twentieth century.","PeriodicalId":43935,"journal":{"name":"AFRICAN ECONOMIC HISTORY","volume":null,"pages":null},"PeriodicalIF":0.2,"publicationDate":"2022-06-02","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"42111145","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":4,"RegionCategory":"历史学","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
ABSTRACT:Women's work is often invisible in official censuses and statistics. The "Global Collaboratory on the History of Labour Relations" has developed a "Taxonomy of Labour Relations" and a method to collect data on labor relations that comprises all kinds of work, including work for the household and homestead, the family firm or farm, and self-employment in the so-called informal sector. In this article, we explain this method and give an overview of the results of data so far collected in various parts of the world, offering a comparative context for the data on sub-Saharan Africa.
{"title":"The \"Global Collaboratory on the History of Labour Relations\": Putting Women's Labor and Labor Relations in Sub-Saharan Africa in a Global Context","authors":"K. Hofmeester","doi":"10.1353/aeh.2022.0001","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1353/aeh.2022.0001","url":null,"abstract":"ABSTRACT:Women's work is often invisible in official censuses and statistics. The \"Global Collaboratory on the History of Labour Relations\" has developed a \"Taxonomy of Labour Relations\" and a method to collect data on labor relations that comprises all kinds of work, including work for the household and homestead, the family firm or farm, and self-employment in the so-called informal sector. In this article, we explain this method and give an overview of the results of data so far collected in various parts of the world, offering a comparative context for the data on sub-Saharan Africa.","PeriodicalId":43935,"journal":{"name":"AFRICAN ECONOMIC HISTORY","volume":null,"pages":null},"PeriodicalIF":0.2,"publicationDate":"2022-06-02","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"43025788","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":4,"RegionCategory":"历史学","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
ABSTRACT:This paper looks at the working lives of women in Zimbabwe and how these have shifted and changed over the nineteenth and twentieth centuries. To do so, official labor records, census and labor surveys are augmented with qualitative data about the labor relations women performed outside of the formal economy. Key here will be exploring female contributions to the informal labor economy, subsistence or peasant agriculture, and their reproductive and household labor. In order to fully assess women's participation in the economy of the region, attention will also be paid to the migrant labor system in southern Africa and how women have responded to this, participated in it, and pursued their own agency within this system. The paper adopts wider conceptual approaches, including a broader definition of labor and using the methodology and the taxonomy of labor relations developed at the International Institute of Social History for the study of shifts and continuities in labor and labor relations across time and space at a global scale. The paper makes the argument that social structure and gender relations present in African societies during the late 1800s informed responses to colonialism, not necessarily the other way around. These relations continued to influenced how women interacted with the wage labor economy and informal economy after independence and into the twenty-first century.
{"title":"Women and Work in Zimbabwe, C.1800–2000","authors":"P. Rory","doi":"10.1353/aeh.2022.0004","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1353/aeh.2022.0004","url":null,"abstract":"ABSTRACT:This paper looks at the working lives of women in Zimbabwe and how these have shifted and changed over the nineteenth and twentieth centuries. To do so, official labor records, census and labor surveys are augmented with qualitative data about the labor relations women performed outside of the formal economy. Key here will be exploring female contributions to the informal labor economy, subsistence or peasant agriculture, and their reproductive and household labor. In order to fully assess women's participation in the economy of the region, attention will also be paid to the migrant labor system in southern Africa and how women have responded to this, participated in it, and pursued their own agency within this system. The paper adopts wider conceptual approaches, including a broader definition of labor and using the methodology and the taxonomy of labor relations developed at the International Institute of Social History for the study of shifts and continuities in labor and labor relations across time and space at a global scale. The paper makes the argument that social structure and gender relations present in African societies during the late 1800s informed responses to colonialism, not necessarily the other way around. These relations continued to influenced how women interacted with the wage labor economy and informal economy after independence and into the twenty-first century.","PeriodicalId":43935,"journal":{"name":"AFRICAN ECONOMIC HISTORY","volume":null,"pages":null},"PeriodicalIF":0.2,"publicationDate":"2022-06-02","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"48329128","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":4,"RegionCategory":"历史学","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
ABSTRACT:This article examines women's participation in the economy of Mozambique by looking into multiple forms of female work and labor relations in a historical perspective, covering the period from 1800 to 2000. To this aim, I present a tentative profile of the Mozambican female population and a preliminary analysis of women's activities in the different economic sectors, as well as of the ways in which they contribute to the economy of the household, the state and the market economy. This is done by examining different types of labor relations they appear involved in, comparatively to men, and by discussing main changes over time and possible explanatory factors. For this purpose, I use population counts, censuses, and statistical data produced by the Portuguese colonial state and the Mozambican government in the nineteenth and twentieth centuries, respectively, alongside reports from officials of the Portuguese colonial state and the concessionary companies.
{"title":"Balancing Subsistence Agriculture and Self-Employment in Small Businesses: Continuity and Change in Women's Labor and Labor Relations in Mozambique, 1800–2000","authors":"Filipa Ribeiro da Silva","doi":"10.1353/aeh.2022.0005","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1353/aeh.2022.0005","url":null,"abstract":"ABSTRACT:This article examines women's participation in the economy of Mozambique by looking into multiple forms of female work and labor relations in a historical perspective, covering the period from 1800 to 2000. To this aim, I present a tentative profile of the Mozambican female population and a preliminary analysis of women's activities in the different economic sectors, as well as of the ways in which they contribute to the economy of the household, the state and the market economy. This is done by examining different types of labor relations they appear involved in, comparatively to men, and by discussing main changes over time and possible explanatory factors. For this purpose, I use population counts, censuses, and statistical data produced by the Portuguese colonial state and the Mozambican government in the nineteenth and twentieth centuries, respectively, alongside reports from officials of the Portuguese colonial state and the concessionary companies.","PeriodicalId":43935,"journal":{"name":"AFRICAN ECONOMIC HISTORY","volume":null,"pages":null},"PeriodicalIF":0.2,"publicationDate":"2022-06-02","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"49068561","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":4,"RegionCategory":"历史学","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
This special issue aims to examine the participation of women in the economy of several sub-Saharan African countries by looking into multiple forms of female labor in a historical and comparative perspective.1 To do so, the authors make reference and apply the methodological approach that has been developed by the “Global Collaboratory on the History of Labour Relations (1500–2000),” under the initiative of the International Institute of Social History (hereafter IISH) in Amsterdam.2 The history of labor in Africa became central in the field of African Studies after independence.3 Being strongly influenced by Marxist theory, the studies of the 1960s and 1970s focused on class formation and proletarianization and showed how a waged labor force developed during the colonial period and became stabilized from the 1940s onwards. This scholarship was particularly attentive to local African perspectives and experiences,4 and stressed the role of African wage laborers in independence movements, shedding light on the initiatives they developed under the power structures imposed by colonial rule.5 In this scholarship, the study of the impact of colonialism on African laborers was therefore critical. With its perpetual search for labor, the colonial state no doubt transformed labor and laborers in Africa. Nonetheless,
{"title":"Introduction","authors":"Karin Pallaver, F. Silva","doi":"10.1353/aeh.2022.0000","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1353/aeh.2022.0000","url":null,"abstract":"This special issue aims to examine the participation of women in the economy of several sub-Saharan African countries by looking into multiple forms of female labor in a historical and comparative perspective.1 To do so, the authors make reference and apply the methodological approach that has been developed by the “Global Collaboratory on the History of Labour Relations (1500–2000),” under the initiative of the International Institute of Social History (hereafter IISH) in Amsterdam.2 The history of labor in Africa became central in the field of African Studies after independence.3 Being strongly influenced by Marxist theory, the studies of the 1960s and 1970s focused on class formation and proletarianization and showed how a waged labor force developed during the colonial period and became stabilized from the 1940s onwards. This scholarship was particularly attentive to local African perspectives and experiences,4 and stressed the role of African wage laborers in independence movements, shedding light on the initiatives they developed under the power structures imposed by colonial rule.5 In this scholarship, the study of the impact of colonialism on African laborers was therefore critical. With its perpetual search for labor, the colonial state no doubt transformed labor and laborers in Africa. Nonetheless,","PeriodicalId":43935,"journal":{"name":"AFRICAN ECONOMIC HISTORY","volume":null,"pages":null},"PeriodicalIF":0.2,"publicationDate":"2022-06-02","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"45928824","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":4,"RegionCategory":"历史学","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
ABSTRACT:This paper combines quantitative and qualitative evidence to provide a long-term analysis of the major shifts in the history of female labor relations in Tanzania from the late precolonial period to 2000. The first part of the paper focuses on the nature and quality of the available sources on the history of the population of Tanzania. The sources' problems and limits are presented along with data on the population and its composition. The second part of the paper is devoted to analyzing the shifts and continuities in female labor relations for four cross-sections (1800, 1900, 1950, and 2000) in connection to major historical processes, such as the development of long-distance caravan trade, the establishment of the colonial economy, and post-independence Ujamaa policy (Tanzanian socialism). The main aim of the article is to investigate the main shifts and continuities in female labor relations and understand what has been historically distinctive about the work that Tanzanian women performed in different epochs. The article employs the methodology and taxonomy developed by the "Global Collaboratory on the History of Labour Relations 1500–2000" at the International Institute of Social History, Amsterdam.
{"title":"From Subsistence Farmers To Guardians of Food Security and Well-Being: Shifts and Continuities in Female Labor Relations in Tanzania (1800–2000)","authors":"K. Pallaver","doi":"10.1353/aeh.2022.0003","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1353/aeh.2022.0003","url":null,"abstract":"ABSTRACT:This paper combines quantitative and qualitative evidence to provide a long-term analysis of the major shifts in the history of female labor relations in Tanzania from the late precolonial period to 2000. The first part of the paper focuses on the nature and quality of the available sources on the history of the population of Tanzania. The sources' problems and limits are presented along with data on the population and its composition. The second part of the paper is devoted to analyzing the shifts and continuities in female labor relations for four cross-sections (1800, 1900, 1950, and 2000) in connection to major historical processes, such as the development of long-distance caravan trade, the establishment of the colonial economy, and post-independence Ujamaa policy (Tanzanian socialism). The main aim of the article is to investigate the main shifts and continuities in female labor relations and understand what has been historically distinctive about the work that Tanzanian women performed in different epochs. The article employs the methodology and taxonomy developed by the \"Global Collaboratory on the History of Labour Relations 1500–2000\" at the International Institute of Social History, Amsterdam.","PeriodicalId":43935,"journal":{"name":"AFRICAN ECONOMIC HISTORY","volume":null,"pages":null},"PeriodicalIF":0.2,"publicationDate":"2022-06-02","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"47855496","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":4,"RegionCategory":"历史学","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
RÉSUMÉ:Cette étude de cas s'intéresse à la microfinance, en particulier à la gestion d'un financement par une association de femmes entrepreneures, dans la commune rurale de Zagtouli, au Burkina Faso. Nous nous intéressons particulièrement aux impacts des pratiques sociales solidaires sur la gestion de cette microfinance. L'analyse des aspects multiformes des solidarités des femmes et de leur entourage (voisinage et famille) démontre les facettes de la réalité de la gestion de la microfinance par ce groupe de femmes. Il ressort de cette étude que le fait que les femmes appartiennent à une communauté donnée renvoie à plusieurs responsabilités familiales et communautaires, qui influencent leurs façons d'entreprendre leur projet. Cette étude de cas comble une littérature sur les facteurs de remboursement des prêts des femmes entrepreneures dans un contexte africain. Tous ces paramètres permettent de comprendre les facteurs qui influencent l'entrepreneuriat féminin.ABSTRACT:This case study examines microfinance, particularly with regard to the management of financing by an association of women entrepreneurs, in the rural commune of Zagtouli. We are particularly interested in the impacts of social solidarity practices on the management of this microfinance. The analysis of the multifaceted aspects of solidarity between women and those around them (neighborhood and family) demonstrates the facets of the reality of the management of microfinance by this group of women. It emerges from this study that the fact that women belong to a given community refers to several family and community responsibilities, which influence their ways of doing business. This case study fills in a literature on loan repayment factors for women entrepreneurs in an African context. All of these parameters allow us to understand the factors that influence female entrepreneurship.
{"title":"De l'expérience de la microfinance des femmes entrepreneures a zagtouli: Entre pratiques sociales solidaires et échec entrepreneurial","authors":"B. Yameogo","doi":"10.1353/aeh.2021.0014","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1353/aeh.2021.0014","url":null,"abstract":"RÉSUMÉ:Cette étude de cas s'intéresse à la microfinance, en particulier à la gestion d'un financement par une association de femmes entrepreneures, dans la commune rurale de Zagtouli, au Burkina Faso. Nous nous intéressons particulièrement aux impacts des pratiques sociales solidaires sur la gestion de cette microfinance. L'analyse des aspects multiformes des solidarités des femmes et de leur entourage (voisinage et famille) démontre les facettes de la réalité de la gestion de la microfinance par ce groupe de femmes. Il ressort de cette étude que le fait que les femmes appartiennent à une communauté donnée renvoie à plusieurs responsabilités familiales et communautaires, qui influencent leurs façons d'entreprendre leur projet. Cette étude de cas comble une littérature sur les facteurs de remboursement des prêts des femmes entrepreneures dans un contexte africain. Tous ces paramètres permettent de comprendre les facteurs qui influencent l'entrepreneuriat féminin.ABSTRACT:This case study examines microfinance, particularly with regard to the management of financing by an association of women entrepreneurs, in the rural commune of Zagtouli. We are particularly interested in the impacts of social solidarity practices on the management of this microfinance. The analysis of the multifaceted aspects of solidarity between women and those around them (neighborhood and family) demonstrates the facets of the reality of the management of microfinance by this group of women. It emerges from this study that the fact that women belong to a given community refers to several family and community responsibilities, which influence their ways of doing business. This case study fills in a literature on loan repayment factors for women entrepreneurs in an African context. All of these parameters allow us to understand the factors that influence female entrepreneurship.","PeriodicalId":43935,"journal":{"name":"AFRICAN ECONOMIC HISTORY","volume":null,"pages":null},"PeriodicalIF":0.2,"publicationDate":"2021-11-19","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"48465976","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":4,"RegionCategory":"历史学","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
ABSTRACT:This article will explore the importance of three specific commodities (tobacco, gold, and cowry shells) for the operation of the Bahian slave trade in the Bight of Benin during the eighteenth century, focusing on the trans-imperial trading networks involving Portuguese, Dutch, and English merchants on the west African coast. The goal is to demonstrate the relationship between such commodities and the transatlantic and local economy linked to the slave trade. It linked transoceanic commercial networks, which affected in several ways the political, social and economic organization of African societies, as well as playing a critical role in the organization of new trading networks between Bahian-based businessmen, Western Indian and West African traders in eighteenth-century Atlantic slave trade.
{"title":"Enslaving Commodities: Tobacco, Gold, Cowry Trade, and Trans-Imperial Networks in the Bight of Benin (c. 1690s–c. 1790s)","authors":"Carlos Patrick Alves da Silva","doi":"10.1353/aeh.2021.0010","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1353/aeh.2021.0010","url":null,"abstract":"ABSTRACT:This article will explore the importance of three specific commodities (tobacco, gold, and cowry shells) for the operation of the Bahian slave trade in the Bight of Benin during the eighteenth century, focusing on the trans-imperial trading networks involving Portuguese, Dutch, and English merchants on the west African coast. The goal is to demonstrate the relationship between such commodities and the transatlantic and local economy linked to the slave trade. It linked transoceanic commercial networks, which affected in several ways the political, social and economic organization of African societies, as well as playing a critical role in the organization of new trading networks between Bahian-based businessmen, Western Indian and West African traders in eighteenth-century Atlantic slave trade.","PeriodicalId":43935,"journal":{"name":"AFRICAN ECONOMIC HISTORY","volume":null,"pages":null},"PeriodicalIF":0.2,"publicationDate":"2021-11-19","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"42184812","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":4,"RegionCategory":"历史学","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
ABSTRACT:In 1947, most of the former German plantations at the coast of Cameroon were brought under the umbrella of a statutory body, the Cameroon Development Corporation (CDC). Like the former German planters, the CDC management faced enormous difficulties in maintaining a stable labor force on its estates. As a result, it decided to recruit women on a permanent rather than casual basis as a strategy of keeping male workers and their families within the plantation locale and to put an end to the short spells of work by migrant laborers in the estates. Unfortunately, women's favorable response to the call for recruitment in the plantations met with stiff resistance from some of their male kin. Against this background, this paper argues that in spite of attempted male obstruction, a number of women, especially from the Grassfields, defied the odds to force their way through the barriers of the established patriarchal order into the so-called "men's reserve." In seeking wage labor, women hoped to change the status quo with the ambition of gaining financial independence, which would eventually serve as backbone to their social and economic empowerment and emancipation.
{"title":"Patriarchal Obstruction and Female Responses to Wage Labor Recruitment in the Coastal Plantations of the Cameroon Development Corporation","authors":"Damian T. Akara, Melchisedek Chétima","doi":"10.1353/aeh.2021.0011","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1353/aeh.2021.0011","url":null,"abstract":"ABSTRACT:In 1947, most of the former German plantations at the coast of Cameroon were brought under the umbrella of a statutory body, the Cameroon Development Corporation (CDC). Like the former German planters, the CDC management faced enormous difficulties in maintaining a stable labor force on its estates. As a result, it decided to recruit women on a permanent rather than casual basis as a strategy of keeping male workers and their families within the plantation locale and to put an end to the short spells of work by migrant laborers in the estates. Unfortunately, women's favorable response to the call for recruitment in the plantations met with stiff resistance from some of their male kin. Against this background, this paper argues that in spite of attempted male obstruction, a number of women, especially from the Grassfields, defied the odds to force their way through the barriers of the established patriarchal order into the so-called \"men's reserve.\" In seeking wage labor, women hoped to change the status quo with the ambition of gaining financial independence, which would eventually serve as backbone to their social and economic empowerment and emancipation.","PeriodicalId":43935,"journal":{"name":"AFRICAN ECONOMIC HISTORY","volume":null,"pages":null},"PeriodicalIF":0.2,"publicationDate":"2021-11-19","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"43392224","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":4,"RegionCategory":"历史学","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
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