some people say that “in Africa” (yeah, very specific) women do “a lot” of the agricultural work. I have seen these claims come from both ends of the ideological spectrum, both from those who wish to use this as evidence for African cultures being irredeemably dysfunctional and from those who probably cannot wait to implement a well-funded UN program to educate, combat, eradicate and empower bla bla bla by 2100.
Be that as it may, I have not seen any specific info on this issue, such as:
what is the distribution of percentage of female economic production in agricultural GDP among the various regions and societies. Is it let’s say bimodal, with many societies with conventional male-dominated setup and many female-dominated or is it single-modal around the female-dominated case or what is it.
how does land ownership work. If women do the most of production, do they do it on their own land? Or on land owned by a male-dominated institution like their extended family? If they don’t own the land, do they pay rent?
is there relationship between crops being grown and the female/male production split? I.e. is this weird situation with female economic dominance a result of some specific crops that can be easily handled by women or does this work equally well for all the main staple crops (i.e. let’s say rice, sorghum, cassava, bananas and whatever other staples they have there).
are there cases where two such different societies historically existed side by side? How does that work out? Do the male-dominated groups have a history of dominating and taking land away from the female-dominated ones? Or are the two setups in fact equally functional under the prevailing conditions there?
You will find different situations all over Africa.
With my experiences in Cameroon, I wouldn’t say that women dominate agriculture as much as they dominate micro-business. From what I know, the whole family would work the fields together, and the men would make most agricultural decisions (what to planet and when.) But men would be reluctant to head to the market and do stuff like sell snack-bags of peanuts or hang out near the schools selling cold water. I think men felt a strong attachment to the idea that they were a “farmer” or “trader” or whatever, and generally did not like to do these small money-making tasks. Men would rather wait for a “real job,” even if it may never come.
I think one factor that affects things is polygamy. In Cameroon, a woman was generally considered to be responsible for herself and her children, and they would live on their own in- either in their own part of a family compound or sometimes even their own compound. The husband would visit at night and usually leave some money, but women usually needed to bring in some money to buy daily things on the market. Men could be counted on to provide housing, at least one new set of clothes a year, staple foods and maybe school fees. Women would earn their own money to supplement their diet and buy any extras…
Where I lived, land was still semi-communally owned, and people were allocated plots by the local traditional leader. Getting a plot of land was simply a matter of asking for one. It was traditional to return a portion of anything grown or any market receipts to the traditional leader. Depending on the individual leader, this money may or may not be used for community improvement projects.
Sorry, but I have no time to reply other than to say Hi Even_Sven!
I’ve done some gender work on the relief agency side of things, and will strongly echo the “will find different situations all over Africa” sentiment.
It can be difficult to grasp the scope of gender differences, but keep in mind that today’s relatively egalitarian society here is extraordinarily recent. Go back to just the seventies (and I’m sure the eighties in a few places) and you’ll find archaic-seeming property laws that would seem absurdly out of place in modern society. Now, go back to the twenties or so, take away a fair portion of the social and societal infrastructure, mix in changing borders and unstable states over time (and fragment the boundaries while you’re at it), and you’ll have a glimpse at the vastly different foundational perspective needed to drive you straight to drink.
Property rules are unstable, unclear, and biased. Literacy rates and access to services are vastly skewed. Poverty levels are tilted, as are cultural expectations. Wow, is there a lot that can be written about this…
FWIW, the cliche’ of “woman does all the work while the man drinks or tomcats around” is hardly limited to Africa. It was part of the stereotype of the “hillbilly” in the US (think Snuffy Smith drinking hooch out of a jug while his wife does the plowing), and it’s modern urban form is the working poor single mother with a non/semi contributing boyfriend. For that matter Al Capp has been the epitome of this for decades.
Interestingm I was told that this was less common in agricultural societies, because farming tended to need all available hands to work. The disparity was a left-over from the hunter-gatherer days, when women would work at home, while the men were out hunting.
Do you mean the dead American cartoonist who wrote Li’l Abner and others, or Andy Capp, the English cartoon character who lives in the industrial North-East with his long-suffering wife (not a single mom tho’ - the Capps are childless)?
In Mali, at least in the Dogon culture, the men are in charge of the granaries and control access to them. Women also have granaries, but they are mostly for personal possessions, and the men have no access to them. While the Dogon are a matrilineal society, the men have absolute power. Since it is an agrarian society, all participate in farming.