Large and small houses in Luganda: housing construction and gender in South Africa
This article discusses the participation of women in housing delivery in Luganda, which occurred at a time of both political and economic changes that had a profound impact on their ability to consolidate their core structures. The findings suggest that few women in Luganda were involved in ‘skilled’ residential construction. When they participated, it was in supportive roles such as clearing the sites for construction, carrying water and mixing the concrete. However, home ownership brought women benefits in that their houses provided the space and infrastructure that they needed to effectively carry out their informal sector activities, which related to the services sector. This study argues that skilled work in construction is better remunerated than in the services sector, in which most women work. If women are to enter the formal construction sector it is imperative that they alter their attitudes and those of their spouses. Projects dealing with shelter delivery should therefore focus not only on the product but also on raising the consciousness of the beneficiaries with regard to gender matters.
The Role of Shelter in Generating Income Opportunities for Poor Women in the Third World
Abdl M. Ku.ow received his Bachelor ofAtts In Sociology from Michigan State University in 1990 anda Master ofUtban Planning from the Uni1111rsity ofMichigan In 1992. His areas ofinterest, as they relate to Africa and the Third World, areln utban and regional development, housing and community development, agricultural de1111Jopment, utban and rural migration, food insecurities and shortages In Africa, and the role of farmer empowerment. He plans to focus research on the constant food and hunger crisis in the Hom ofAfrica, patticularfy among the poor peasants and farmers ofsouthern Somal/a. This discussion of poor women's income opportuni­ ties seeks to identify some of the salient factors that hinder women from obtaining shelter and proper employment. Particular consideration is given to the ways in which the current economic structure of the world, industrialization, technological changes, the fragmentation of land ownership, and migration have affected women's social and economic status. This discussion is further intended to examine the condi­ tions of home-based women workers in the urban and rural areas of India, and the potential of shelter in providing economic opportunities for these women (Mahajan). Selat examines the role of self-employed women and their significant contribution to the family income and the importance of shelter in the status of women in a small locality in Malaysia. Thus, the aim of this discussion is to show the importance of residential space and the centrality of shelter in providing long-term income for poor women in the Third World. Finally, policy implications for the future are examined, showing how women's organiza­ tions can influence such policies in the future.
Reid on Hypotheses and the Ether; A Reassessment
In recent years historians of science have come to see that Thomas Reid’s Essays on the Intellectual Powers of Man had a profound impact on the development of British methodological thought in the late-eighteenth and early-nineteenth centuries. Larry Laudan has argued that Reid was “the first major British philosopher to take Newton’s opinions on induction, causality, and hypotheses seriously”; and that Reid was thereby instrumental in changing the character of British methodological discourse in the Enlightenment.(1) Geoffrey Cantor has examined in detail the influence of Reid’s critique of ether theories and hypotheses in the Essays on leading protagonists in the nineteenth-century debates surrounding the wave theory of light,(2) and Richard Olson has traced the origins of the scientific style of British physics in the Victorian period to the writings of Reid and other Common Sense philosophers. (3) As well as delineating Reid’s influence, Laudan, Cantor, and Olson have attempted to identify the problems to which he addressed himself in articulating his methodology, and they have analysed with some care the internal structure of his methodological views. Thanks to the work of these historians, therefore, we have a fairly comprehensive picture of Reid’s methodology and its fortunes in the nineteenth century.