Abstract: The new structural adjustment policies in Tanzania are encouraging increased agricultural production through improvements in pricing and marketing policy: these policies, with the increased foreign exchange for new transport, agricultural machinery, and spare parts will assist in increasing production and reducing food imports which, from 1982 to 1986, consumed 24% of Tanzania's foreign exchange earnings. But the 25% of smallholder farmers which are female-headed households and which consume most of their production will not be assisted by these policies. This paper contrast the resources and needs of this important segment of rural farming households and suggests solutions which would be beneficial.
Abstract: This paper focuses on fertility and sexuality in terms of various conceptualizations, views, and approaches. The article aims at: (1) weeding out the misconceptions about fertility control and family planning, and showing their relationship with the control of female sexuality, and (2) raising questions regarding feminist understanding or definition of sexual freedom and liberation. The analysis deals with contraception in practice, in regard to both means and methods. The paper concludes that feminist thinking does confront the relation between female sexual freedom and contraception, but with gaps and contradictions, and that population controllers avoid questioning dominant sexual norms and thus indirectly uphold them.
Abstract: Mira, Ecuador, is a village which has undergone significant socio-economic change in the past 25 years, including the growth of cottage industries and the building of high schools. Although this change initially provided substantial opportunities, young women now coming of age see few options. Public sector jobs have become scarce, and a diploma carries less weight than it once did. Paradoxically, Mira's educational and economic strategies have worked too well, and the usefulness of expanding access to higher education has largely disappeared. Thus, the system which brought such success to the previous generation is now at best unreliable.
The editor of this series wishes to congratulate Amalia Gladhart who, as an author of this paper, won the undergraduate award for the 1988-89 student Paper Competition, sponsored by MSU-WID.
Abstract: In order to understand the intersecting needs of the working mother and her children in developing countries, two questions were addressed: first, is there any evidence that the mother's role satisfaction, which is important for predicting the outcomes of maternal employment in the US, should be considered in predicting the consequences for women's work in developing country contexts; and second, are there differences in the recommendations for maternal employment behavior that stem from models of child development common in the US and those appropriate to developing country contexts. Three differences between US methods of child rearing and patterns described in cross-cultural studies were noted. These were the early transfer of child care from mother to an alternate care giver; greater use of sibling caretakers; and limited role of the father in care taking. It is proposed that policymakers become more aware of their own implicit assumptions about child development, and that a greater understanding of the positions of both the interveners and the clients needs to emerge.
Abstract: During the last few centuries, Islam has become firmly implanted in the culture of many West African societies, and with it, Islamic ideology has been variably interpreted to circumscribe the roles women may play. In some of these societies, pre-Islamic (African) women's roles, including those pertaining to trade, have been maintained, though now operating within the confines of the ideology of purdah (seclusion). However, this kind of transformation has not been the case among settled Muslim Fulbe in northeastern Nigeria, in which both pre-Islamic and Islamic cultural elements have been blended in a way that precludes many women's activities beyond reproduction and the performance of domestic chores. In a broad sense, this paper suggests that the recent literature on Northern Nigerian women has failed to adequately portray the variable roles the women play and the factors, especially the cultural ones, that condition them. More specifically, the paper identifies the cultural and historical elements that have shaped Fulbe women's roles into their modern day form, the place that Islam has assumed in ramifying these tendencies, and its repercussions for the fuller participation of Fulbe women in public affairs and development.
Abstract: Much past and contemporary research highlights the positive contributions of education to economic development. This article addresses an issue largely ignored in that research tradition: Do the long-term economic effects of expanding educational opportunities for school-age girls and boys differ? If so, how does gender and schooling interact to produce these differential effects? The research presented here analyzed cross-national data from 1960 to 1985 on 96 countries and found clear evidence that in less developed countries especially in some of the poorest educational expansion among school-age girls has a stronger effect on long-term economic prosperity than does educational expansion among school-age boys. This effect, in contrast to much contemporary thinking, is not mediated by women's participation in the wage labor force or by measurable differences in fertility behavior. The author argues that these findings provide qualified support for institutional theories of education's impact on society.
Abstract: A comparative study on the role of women in the decision making processes and their actual participation in the farming systems was done in Ratnanagar (inner terai) and Pumdi Bhumdi (hill) farming systems sites of Nepal. The study indicated that women's involvement in the farming systems occurred more in Pumdi Bhumdi than Ratnanagar. Women were involved in all aspects of crop and vegetable production, utilization, and marketing. They were also responsible for livestock production and marketing. Women, alone or together with men, played important roles in most of the decisions related to crop and animal production activities in both sites.
Abstract: This paper looks at women in landowning households in Chingleput District of Tamil Nadu, India, one of the main traditional rice-producing regions of the state. Also, occasional references are made to other parts of the state and to other states. It discusses: (1) what constitutes a farm family, (2) the general nature of the sexual division of labor in agriculture, (3) the constraints to production and marketing activities which female land owners face (and even females who manage land belonging to their husbands or sons), (4) the effect on the sexual division of labor and on management activities of caste, size of land holding, and family structure, and (5) ways in which innovations in extension might be useful for these households, especially those that could improve the income available to women.
Abstract: Modern contraception implemented in the health posts of the Peruvian highlands has not been readily accepted. The goal of this paper is to report on the contraceptive practices of the Quechua-speaking Indians living in a small rural community near Cuzco, Peru. The attitudes of husbands and wives toward contraception and the control of family size are analyzed in relation to their internalized values about fertility and their cultural role. Women's subordinate position in the society and vis-à-vis their husbands is reinforced by cultural taboos concerning menstruation. Men's involvement in contraception and their preference for periodic abstinence suggests both that they fear menstrual blood, and that they do not wish to lose control over their wives' sexual lives. Couples' behavior about the control of family size reveals that within the context of the society, gender identity perpetuates men's dominant role and women's subordination. Suggestions for improving the delivery of family planning services emphasize educational workshops given separately to husbands and wives. Women's economic coalition through the marketing of crafts would enhance their social position and would increase their participation in reproductive decisions.
Abstract: This paper examines the roles of women in the processes of evolution toward full centralization in two secondary states in West Africa the Mossi and the Akan states. Although the developing state was being organized on a supra-kinship basis, it is quite clear that women emerged as political actors primarily because of their roles and statuses within kinship groups, whether based on descent or affinity. Women contributed to the very survival of ancient African politics and played critical roles in justification, consolidation, and expansion of the state. Nevertheless these same kinship factors often prevented them from ruling in their own right, or from passing on the power to rule to their offspring and lineal descendants. In the patrilineal Mossi case, royal women possessing the name were politically threatening to their royal brothers. In the matrilineal Akan case, dual leadership gave women political rights as Queen Mothers, but other structures of the state deprived them of access to central political decision-making. It appears that these African states, unlike many of their European counterparts, never reached the stage in evolution when their lines of succession were so secure that males did not fear competition from royal females or their offspring.
Abstract: In Papua New Guinea gender relations between men and women have long been described by anthropologists under the rubric of "sexual antagonism," and as being on the extreme end of the scale of male dominance. In this paper I argue that in the least two societies the Baruya and the Sambia male dominance is so extreme that men and women can be said to occupy different socioeconomic "classes," in the conventional Marxian sense of the term. I begin by critiquing two anthropological dogmas "egalitarian" social formations and the "complementarity of sex roles" that make difficult the critical scrutiny of male dominance and practical work aimed at ending it. Next, I present ethnographic data from the Baruya and Sambia focusing on the productive means, relations, and forces, the analysis of which clearly demonstrates the existence of a "gender/class system." My analysis thus challenges the gender-blindness of conventional Marxian thinking on the Women Question. I then discuss the methodological and ethical flaws of non-feminist fieldwork, and conclude by making a plea for an explicitly feminist anthropology and feminist research program in Papua New Guinea and elsewhere.
Abstract: This paper suggests that, from a materialist perspective, dowry deaths in India, including both homicides and suicides, are caused by social pressures from the hierarchical relations of production that tie Indians to each other and to the rest of the world. Hierarchical relations of production in three major areas are examined: (1) India's subordinate relations or dependency in the capitalist world market, (2) the class structure which concentrates control of basic economic resources in the hands of a small proportion of the population, and (3) the subordinate and generally dependent position of women in the control of resources. Within this context, dowry demands, that is, the catalysts for dowry deaths, are one of a number of attempts for men to raise their status, at the expense of women. Work of diverse scholars as well as data from fieldwork in Southern India in 1987 is examined.
Abstract: The Algerian War of Independence 1954-1962 has become emblematic of the incompatibility of feminist and nationalist movements. This war represents the victory of the colonized through the sanctioned use of violence. It also represents the undermining of women's roles and rights, and the exploitation of their willingness to shelve their feminist agenda in favor of participation in the nationalist cause. This paper analyzes the Francophobe literature on the Algerian War in order to question these myths. The women's literature does not present women's participation as having been liberating. The men's literature, on the other hand, indicates a growing apprehension on the part of fathers, brothers, and husbands that their women were no longer theirs to control. This paper attempts to reconcile the conflicting notions of women's roles by deconstructing the myth of the post war repression of liberated women.
Abstract: Communication for Child Survival, or HEALTHCOM, is a worldwide research and development project grounded in the theory of health communication a health education approach which attempts to change a set of behaviors in a large-scale target audience regarding a specific problem in a predefined period of time. The HEALTHCOM Project seeks to institutionalize its methodology so that further implementation is sustainable. This paper describes the project's history and methodology, articulating a set of issues regarding institutionalization. Briefly highlighting country successes, the paper also discusses challenges to sustained behavior change from a women-in-development perspective.
Abstract: The current theoretical framework of Japanese work patterns has evolved through extensive analyses of male interactions in Japan's permanent employment system. Against the background of this male-oriented employment system with limited career opportunities for women, Japan's Equal Employment Opportunity Law (EEOL) was passed in 1985 and went into effect April 1, 1986. This paper explores the feelings, values, and goals of individual female department store employees interviewed during this period. Many of these women feared that career success would threaten their prospects of marrying or parenting a child. Other findings presented here suggest that work attitudes and relationships between female colleagues may vary considerably from the commonly accepted interpretations of Japan's industrial relations. Notably, women seem to have a weaker concept of sempai-kohai (junior-senior) relationships, and lack of close identification with other company members entering in the same year characteristically attributed to Japanese company employees.
Abstract: For women to benefit from credit, improved access is not enough. Since monetary transactions traditionally have been handled by men, most women do not understand financial responsibility. Therefore, they must be motivated to accept credit and trained in the management and effective use of credit.
In India, despite government policy directing various credit agencies to give preference to women in extending credit to the poor, women have not benefited. Non-governmental organizations (NGOs) are important intermediaries which help women gain access to credit and understand financial transactions. This paper assesses the work of two NGOs in South India: IDS and Grama Vikas. It concludes that the Grama Vikas model is the more effective because Grama Vikas' collective programs implemented by the women provide them with practical experience in the management of credit and help them understand financial responsibility. IDS brokers loans for the women from commercial banks and relies on group discussions among women about credit use to inculcate responsibility in them.
Abstract: The paper highlights the role of rural women in agriculture in India: (1) their work participation rates in agriculture, and (2) the effects of the Green Revolution in terms of: (a) the rise in the number of female agricultural laborers and the type of work performed by them, (b) marginalization and poverty-prone existence of rural women, (c) technological impact and displacement, and (d) wage differentials. The study looks at rural women agricultural workers at a level where class and gender inequalities coincide. Women agricultural workers are occupying very low positions in the agrarian hierarchy. In terms of gender, rural women bear the burden of poverty and exploitation more heavily than men. The paper also discusses how rural women have been pushed into the category of "helpers." Women's participation in agricultural production is related to the decline in farm size and persistent poverty. The paper argues that women, and all "weaker" groups in general, are virtually inarticulate victims of the principle of equality in an unequal social context. And, so long as gender is an important indicator of economic social and political roles, there will be a need for special policies targeted to rural women for education and training, technology transfer, and credit.
Abstract: This paper demonstrates the importance of indigenous social dynamics to the operation of a planned development organization. It describes the case of a Polynesian self-help organization that successfully redistributed income to rural women through planned income-generating projects; the organization collapsed when, after seven successful years, overseas funding and supervisory support were withdrawn.
The analysis, using an anthropological approach to evaluate the success and failure of the development organization, argues that its success emerged, not from planned income-generating activities, but from long-term socioeconomic processes in village life that allowed women to parlay their traditional prestige into control of a development fund. The analysis demonstrates how, over time, these same socioeconomic processes structured an increasingly divisive organizational atmosphere along with diminishing financial returns which culminated in institutional collapse. The paper ultimately questions the extent to which the development enterprise, with its ability to affect deeper indigenous economic and social processes, can hope to institute or alter a course of social change.
Abstract: The all-female takarazuka Revue, founded in 1914, provides a cogent context for analyzing the relationship between sex, gender, and sexuality in Japan and illuminates the inception and reproduction of socio-cultural norms and the emergence of subcultural styles. Through the refraction and re-contextualization of "male" and "female" gender into Butch and Femme, the takarazuka Revue provoked discourses on the relationship between eros and modernism, and provided a new style of Japanese Lesbian subculture. The general purpose of this paper is to achieve a better understanding of the symbolic, dialogical processes involved in the construction of sex, gender, and sexuality, and, by association, Japanese social organization.
Abstract: Anthropological fieldwork poses certain common problems for every researcher. These problems become exaggerated for indigenous female students who face specific difficulties. This paper is an autobiographical account of the impact of fieldwork in two Pakistani villages upon the personal life of a young unmarried Muslim woman. It relates the familial opposition she had to face and how she managed to appease it. The role of the supervisor in providing moral support as well as practical advice is emphasized. Identity conflicts in being simultaneously a research student, a daughter of an orthodox Muslim family, a village resident, and a university teacher are outlined. The strategies adopted for overcoming villagers' hostilities and securing their cooperation (if never complete acceptance) are discussed, in the hope that this may help the growing number of female anthropologists in particular, Muslims in Pakistan and elsewhere who study their own cultures. The paper concludes by suggesting that such fieldwork, though extremely stressful, constitutes an invaluable experience for indigenous female researchers.
Abstract: This paper focuses on the significance of gender in the survival and development of the "19th of September" Garment Workers Union in Mexico City, an independent union formed in the aftermath of the 1985 earthquakes with an all-women leadership and a rank and file that is 95 percent female. Drawing from 67 in-depth interviews with garment workers and labor organizers, the paper explores the Union's program of action, its projects, and its solidaristic ties with other unions and women's groups. The analysis suggests that although the Union draws great strength from its identity as a women's union, this strength has been difficult to translate into union-related gains such as new work contracts and improved working condition. Gender is a powerful symbol and substantive factor in collective organization and political mobilization of working women who share the problems of the double work day and marginalization in low-paying, low-status jobs.
Abstract: Most previous tests of the religious-minority-group status hypothesis have sought explanations of Catholic pronatalism in more developed countries settled by Europeans or European immigrants. The present pilot study departed from that tradition by focusing on Protestant antinatalism in a lesser developed country settled by Malay and Chinese immigrants. This study of 366 unmarried college students in the Central and Southern Philippines found that Protestant respondents came from higher socioeconomic origins than did Catholic respondents. The Protestant men desired many fewer sons and daughters than did the Catholic men, even when these differences in origins were controlled. The Protestant women did not want many fewer sons but did want many fewer daughters than the Catholic women wanted. Protestant respondents were less likely than the Catholics to view the instrumental roles of sons and daughters as the most salient advantages of having children. Protestants were much more likely than Catholics to think a married couple should start contraception before the first birth and much less likely to think that artificial methods of family planning were against God's will. The results suggest that support for the religious-minority-group status hypothesis is not limited to minorities with explicitly pronatalist creeds or to religious groups in more developed nations or nations with an indigenous European culture.
Abstract: This paper examines how gender subordination is transformed through the study of women's participation in wage labor in carpet workshops in rural Turkey. Examination of social relations of work and practices in the workplace reveals that work organization is based on kinship relations, which recreate the age-based hierarchies among women in the workplace, and that men's control over women's labor power is effective in ensuring the high output and earnings in these workshops. Wage work is shown to have contradictory effects on gender subordination, evaluated in terms of women's control over labor power, control over income, and workload. Weavers' perceptions of their condition also support this conclusion. This evaluation reveals that women become active participants in the processes that subordinate them, not only because of religious indoctrination or the threat of physical violence, but also because they perceive immediate advantages to conformity, in terms of improving the conditions of their lives.
Abstract: All societies have a sex-gender system, which transforms biological sex difference into gender differences which define roles in society. In China the sex-gender system was patriarchal, patrilineal, and patrilocal. Because girls married out of the family it was thought wasteful to educate them, an idea which was in many ways the antithesis of Communist Party ideology. The article discusses this conflict from a historical perspective, with particular emphasis on changes in the strategic area of education policy. While the sex-gender system is undergoing unprecedented, rapid change, the ideological attacks on it have been rejected or only partially successful. Present policies even include retreats by the Party from ground previously thought to be won. The discussion includes: the gap between reform in the cities and in the country; the role of the All China Women's Federation; the Party's reluctance to confront patriarchal practices, particularly patrilocal residence after marriage; and its continued tolerance of discrimination against women in educational and economic institutions.
Abstract: Most of the anthropological literature (Post War through early 1970s) on Afro-Caribbean family and household organization tended to explain those domestic social formations in terms of the West Indian proclivity to stray from the "ideal" family structure, and is firmly entrenched in structural-functional theory. This paper begins with a critique of the structural-functional school's influence on West Indian household/family studies in which kin and kindred were submerged within the cracks of the domestic unit, because of the emphasis on the nuclear family. And, although women-related issues, such as matrifocality, female-headed households, and fertility patterns, were important topics of the literature, women, per se, were missing from the analysis. The role and status of black women in West Indian societies bore the brunt of criticism for supposed malfunctions in those societies, or were chauvinistically dismissed. Next, the discussion turned to research influenced by feminist perspectives on gender and kinship which includes the role of women in their societies without stigma, and which addresses the issue of the missing kindred by locating them in work sites and in domestic networks of local and international spheres. Topics of the feminist discourse examined include sexual stratification and social inequality, female socioeconomic responsibility, and re-analysis of the concepts of women's independence and autonomy.
Abstract: People who establish new settlements, either as pioneering agriculturalists or because they have been forcibly relocated, go through predictable stages of adjustment to the new environment. These typically include periods of recruitment, transition, development, and incorporation. The development stage of adjustment entails not only economic entrepreneurship but also the elaboration of increasingly complex, flexible political structures. Semi-directed or "guided" colonization schemes, such as the San Julian project in Bolivia, attempt to promote the development of social and political ties among colonists through establishing communal orientation programs and cooperatives, and organizing village governing bodies; these interventions may help settlers move into the development stage more quickly. However, women's opportunities for development political linkages may be reduced in settlement communities, in part because women may have little access to capital and income and because formal decision-making structures exclude them.
Abstract: Limited research is available about the role of women as managers in less developed countries. Using Benin, Africa, as a case study, the paper sets out to explore the opportunities and obstacles for native female managers. Male and female managers of public and private enterprises were surveyed about their attitudes toward women as managers. While limited managerial opportunities currently exist for women in Benin, many of the obstacles identified by the respondents are also present in more developed countries. The findings show an unexpected similarity in the attitudes held by men and women in the United States and in the current Benin Sample.
Abstract: This paper analyzes state policies toward women in Zimbabwe and uses the land resettlement (land reform) program as an example of how different policies affect gender relations. Both Model A (individual family farming) and Model B (production cooperatives) are discussed. I argue that state policies have been ambiguous with respect to women, in some respects benefiting and in some respects undermining their autonomy which is, in any case, limited. This ambiguity reflects the instability of the ruling stratum's own position and the differing ideological influences to which it is subject.
Abstract: Through detailed case studies of two community women's groups in the periphery of metropolitan Sao Paulo, Brazil, this paper explores the theory and practice of the Church's mobilization of poor and working class women and examines the long-term implications of women's increased participation in the Latin American People's Church. It outlines the causes and consequences of the post-Vatican II Church's theological reformulation of women's roles and identifies ways in which the progressive Church's failure to critique women's traditional roles constrains women's empowerment as citizens and as women. The study concludes that the new Church strategy of encouraging women to participate in community life is marred by a fundamental contradiction: while the Church now advocates women's participation in the public sphere, women's oppression in the private sphere hinders their ability to fully participate in community life.
Abstract: The paper is a quantitative and qualitative analysis of Islamic ideology and female employment in Iran today. The Islamic regime's ideology regarding women's roles (as well as the inconsistencies within it) are examined and contrasted with women's employment patterns. Also, today's employment patterns are compared with those before the Revolution. The paper shows that much of the initial rhetoric discouraging female employment and attempting to impose an ideology of domesticity has not been successful. Although labor participation rates have declined for women, they have declined even more for men. The female share of the urban labor force has not altered, however, and government employment for women is actually higher today than it was before the Revolution. The paper identifies a discrepancy between ideological prescriptions and economic imperatives.
Abstract: In most countries of the Third World, strategies for development in the health sector include efforts to upgrade the skills of village level health care workers, including traditional birth attendants (TBAs). In spite of several decades of experience, training programs for TBAs have not been particularly successful. Drawing on data from several years of ethnographic fieldwork with Maya midwives in Yucatan and on participation in government-sponsored training courses for indigenous midwives, this paper examines some of the reasons underlying this failure. Paramount among these is the misapplication of didactic modes of teaching in situations where learning in the apprenticeship mode is more appropriate and culturally customary.
Abstract: Participation of women in education, and in science education in particular, is one key concern in developing countries. This concern arises from the fact that women constitute more than half the population and contribute enormously to the socio-economic development of these countries.
The purpose of this study is to analyze the participation and achievement of girls in science and technology education in Kenya. Data for the study were collected through documentation analysis, interviews, and questionnaires. The results of the study show that generally girls in Kenya are under-represented in science and technology education, and their achievement in mathematics and science subjects is inferior to that of boys. Rather the considering biological explanations for this study, environmental factors were advanced to explain sex differences.
Abstract: A study was initiated in 1984 in an area of South Nyanza, Kenya, undergoing a transition from maize to sugarcane production. The study evaluated the effects of the commercialization of agriculture on women's income, time allocation, and child care practices. Results indicate that household incomes are significantly higher in sugarcane-producing households when compared to non-cane producers. However, the percent of female-controlled income (although not the absolute amount) is significantly less in sugarcane-producing households.
Sugarcane-producing households spend virtually no time on the cultivation of the cane crop and, therefore, it is not surprising that the child care patterns of women from sugarcane- and nonsugarcane-producing households are not different. Women from sugarcane-producing households use more hired labor than the nonsugarcane households; this may be an important reason why there is no increased demand for women's labor in these households.
For each of the factors examined in this paper, cash crop production appears to have no dramatic impact.
Abstract: This paper discusses that role of women in the household and strategies for sustaining women's contribution in rural development. Women contribute more than men in terms of labor input in farming and are solely responsible for household management duties; however, the income accruing to women is not commensurate with their efforts in the household. Household income distribution is skewed in favor of men; hence, men are erroneously believed to play a more dominant role in rural development than the women. With the increasing rate of rural to urban migration of youths (mostly males), coupled with Nigeria's fast growing population, there is need to enhance women's effort at sustaining the rural farming sector. Adoption of strategies such as formation of women's cooperatives, introduction of modern farm inputs, diversification of farming enterprise, and intensification of extension services are proposed in this study.
Abstract: Many rural Kenyan women participate in women's associations as a strategy to help meet cash and labor shortages of the household, as well as to gain access to public goods for family members. This study draws on data from two communities in Murang'a District, Kenya, to consider a) the patterns of cooperation, reciprocity, and exchange which these associations facilitate; b) the impact of this strategy on the access of women and other members of their households to productive resources; and c) the effect of this strategy on intra-household decision-making and resource use. Evidence suggests that women's associations provide access to critical resources in shirt supply labor and capital and to public goods. The nature of this access varies according to both the resource base of the community and the socioeconomic position of the household. Women's associations are particularly useful to women in the lowest income groups and to women who are single heads of household, by providing new opportunities for them to earn, save, and invest, and offering them some control over cash income.
Abstract: The nature of underdevelopment is examined for its role in shaping the current structure of women's work in Zimbabwe. Explicit colonial policies that alienated land, created a system of migrant labor, and discriminated against women in formal sector employment have an enduring legacy. The diversity of women's roles in the peasant farming, commercial farming, urban informal and formal sectors are examined. The limited available evidence concerning fertility in relation to proximate determinants and women's socio-economic status is analyzed. While women are still predominantly engaged in the informal sector, age at marriage, women's education, working for remuneration, and partner's education are associated with lower fertility. Despite a precarious economic situation, the social, legal, and economic needs of women are beginning to be addressed through popular initiatives and government programs.
Abstract: Fried's (1967) work on authority in Greek households argues for a problematic relationship between power and prestige. The duality of patterning implicit in this approach, popular in the sixties, constrains our ability to appreciate the subtlety of power plays in homes like these as well as the complex character of the structure of authority. In an analysis of the power dynamics within households in a barrio popular in Quito, Ecuador, I argue that men, in their roles as husbands and fathers, do command in their households, but a description of the power dynamics in the household does not stop there. Men delegate much of their authority over the household to their wives, and this produces a series of contradictions as the developmental cycle of the household progresses. Changes in role behavior and relationships within the home as well as pressures external to the home have their effect and provide a means for women to accrue power. Appreciation of the contradictions within this system should limit disagreement among scholars about the gender of the person who has power, help account for intra-cultural variation, and direct attention to the dynamics of actual power plays within the home in Quito and other research settings.
Abstract: This exploratory study examines how structural conditions and policies in Cuba, which have attempted to implement socialist ideology on gender equality, actually impinge on the everyday lives and perceptions of Cuban women. The paper first outlines the theoretical premises on which socialist policies on work and family were formulated and then presents data on four areas of contemporary state policy with regard to goals and implementation toward increasing women's opportunities. The second section of the paper presents data from in-depth interviews with 61 female factory workers. The results indicate that there are specific structural features that hinder the liberation of Cuban women. The interview data reveal the specific interaction of social class on perceptions of work-family linkages and women's liberation.
Abstract: The problem of interest in this paper is the explanation of the excess of female mortality over male mortality in India. What appears to be unique to South Asia are the changes in mortality from 1881 to 1981 which led (after 1901) to the appearance of and increase in the female mortality disadvantage. Two different explanations for the sex differential in mortality are examined. The common explanations in the literature focus on traditional culture and female roles as factors contributing to the female disadvantage. In this paper an alternate explanation is used to argue that traditional culture and roles do not provide an adequate explanation of the appearance and increase of a female mortality disadvantage over time. Rather, consideration is given to some specific social and economic factors, often referred to as modernization, which changed in the last century. Data on individuals collected over a two-year period were analyzed to explore the two perspectives. Though results fail to support the idea that traditional female roles led to the mortality disadvantage, they are consistent with the modified explanation that changes due to both modernization and certain non-modern, Western influences probably led to higher female than male mortality. Finally, a recommendation is made for more research on this topic using individual mortality data rather than sex ratios or aggregate mortality data.
Abstract: This paper explores some of the processes through which minority women from Third World countries are constructed as "immigrant women" in Canada. The focal point of the inquiry is a community employment agency providing job counseling and placement services for non-English-speaking and black women. Through an in-depth examination of the agency's work process and its relationship with the state and employers, the paper shows that employment counseling and placement is a means through which minority women are organized into particular locations in the labor market. This is accomplished through a "documentary mode of action."
Abstract: Successive military governments in Nigeria from 1966 to 1986 have led to militarization of the state accompanied by a reciprocal degree of civilization of the military. The military has had to ally with different segments of the civilian ruling class in order to implement state power. Since women are not represented in the armed forces and are only marginally represented in the civil ruling class, they are excluded from the state decision-making.
This marginalization of women's political power was similar in the colonial state. Just as colonialism did enhance the legal and economic interest of women, however, the military government succeeded in the enfranchisement of women in Northern Nigeria which the first independent civil government had rejected. The military has co-opted many more women into the state system at subsidiary levels and is committed to the incorporation of women into the militarized state regardless of political and cultural resistance.
The mode of women's political behavior has been constant since the colonial period, namely militant collective action by rural and urban market women on economic issues at the local level and lobbying by urban elite women grouped in depoliticized voluntary associations at the national level. Given the fusion of the two in new politicized organizations, women may safeguard their political interests more effectively by alliance with the militarized state.
Abstract: The works of a number of women writers in the last 20 years in the Arab world have displayed a tendency towards feminism, writing negatively of the situation of women in Arab society and attempting to create heroines that break away from the old molds in which society had cast them. Starting with Mary Daly's definition of the metapatriachal journey, the article traces the path that five major Arab women writers take on their way to feminism: Nawal el-Saadaw, Ilfa al-Idilbi, Qamar Kaylani, Ghada al-Samman, and Etel Adnan. The paper posits three stages in the realization of the Self, and explores how each writer passes through these stages. Using this schema, the author realizes that none of these writers, except Ghada al-Samman, could be said to have successfully reached the last stage, and while acknowledging their contribution, argues that all five writers lack the presentation of a positive alternative to present as a model to the female reader who is looking to them for guidance in breaking away from patriarchal restraints.
Abstract: Within anthropological and historical studies of Middle Eastern women, there are often difficulties in overcoming the assumptions embedded in orientalist knowledge. Many of the arguments in the literature revolve around problems of similarity and difference, and in this paper I argue that a solution to these problems can be determined only at the theoretical level. As a contribution toward a theoretical solution, the historical and sociological framework of world-systems theory is used to interpret the economic changes brought about by the introduction of western European capital into Ottoman lands. A speculative model of the impact of capital on the status of Ottoman women is then introduced. I argue that the economic decline of the Ottoman Empire from the eighteenth century onward affected women in gender-specific ways, and that in general, urban women lost the protection of the law upon which their well-being depended.
Abstract: Higher education has provided women in the developing countries with the opportunity to enter the male-dominated market of higher skilled manpower. Before the Islamic regime of Iran came to power in 1979, women had access to all fields of study except mining. As a result of "Islamization," however, 54 percent of the majors offered by 123 institutions of higher education (91 out of 169) were closed to female applicants by 1985. The affected areas include agriculture, engineering, medicine, law, and some fields in the Humanities. The paper demonstrates that women should be restored to the task of "motherhood," that is, confined to domestic work. The impact of this policy on the social and economic position of women in Iran is discussed.
Abstract: A historical examination of a rural Mexican artisan community reveals that the introduction of new technology can favor and enhance women's position in terms of economic control and community power. Whereas males' occupations as agriculturalists in a mountainous region and as producers of hand-manufactured lacquer works are not amenable to technological innovations, for women's occupations the introduction of plumbing, electricity, and especially the corn mill (molino) domestically reduced their labor time and workload; this allowed them to redirect their efforts into social and economic power in the community, and for some, into positions of authority as artists and heads of lacquer workshops. In the artisan domain of this town, these latter positions are on a par with those of men in authority.
Abstract: The current rhetoric which is disseminated in connection with women in Japan who are thought to be vulnerable to trouble at menopause is examined in this paper. It is shown how this rhetoric is one part of the much larger ongoing internal debate in Japan, in connection with the problems and value changes associated with modernization and internationalization. The ideal middle-class housewife is set up in the debate as the "model" modern Japanese woman. The self-discipline and behavior which are expected of her are based upon traditional values, and women who suffer from the "disease" of menopausal syndrome are believed to be those who no longer follow the traditional "disciplined" life-style or alternatively, those who are neurotically "over-disciplined." The attempted medicalization of women at menopause and its lack of success to date is examined with reference to survey research and interview data.
Abstract: Gender relations of production in Africa are often characterized by differential control over the division of labor, decision-making, and the allocation of resources. Mozambique, through its commitment to socialist transformation, has taken major steps to reorder gender relations of production at all levels. Based upon data collected in 1986, this paper focuses on changes in women's access to land for agricultural production using two case studies from Sofala Province one an integrated cooperative in Dondo District and the other a "women only" rice scheme in Beira. The paper argues that while women have generally benefited from the redistribution of land since independence, access to other resources and control over decision-making vary according to the type of development project in which women participate. Of the two projects discussed, women in the state-sponsored cooperative have better access to the group's resources and decision-making arenas than women in the bi-laterally aided rice scheme.
Abstract: As international contacts increase, more and more people find themselves living temporarily or even permanently outside their own societies. Taking two samples of foreign women married to Nigerian and Japanese men who have returned to live in their husband's countries, this paper explores Hughes' propositions on marginality and its reduction. The experiences of these foreign wives suggest that the same individuals use different mechanisms in different situations, and that different forms of marginality call for different reduction mechanisms.
Abstract: In the late 19th and early 20th centuries, an African peasantry emerged in Southern Rhodesia (now Zimbabwe) in the vicinity of towns, mines, and European farms. In these areas, many African households met their cash needs through increased agricultural production and the sale of produce, rather than through labor migration. As the primary agricultural producers, African women played a vital role in the emergence of peasantry.
As political mechanisms employed by white settlers brought about a decline in peasant propriety, women's labor was intensified. Countless women responded to their lives of increasing hardship by running away to the emerging towns, mining centers, and commercial farms. Although their objectives were different, and often at odds, African male elites collaborated with the colonial authorities in their efforts to regain control over the mobility and sexuality of African women.
Abstract: Equal access to education does not necessarily ensure equal educational experiences of opportunities within the classroom. This paper examines classroom interaction patterns within an elementary school attached to a Nigerian university; it explores whither these interactions vary by student gender, level in school, or teacher gender. The paper concludes with a discussion which focuses on the impact of classroom interactions on academic achievement and career choice.
Abstract: Drawing on a selected sample of districts and villages, this study examines the social relations of livestock production in Bangladesh. Data for interhousehold comparisons come from 209 households in four villages. The study examines the inter-and intra-household differences in household members' participation in livestock-rearing activities. It argues that rates of participation in the different activities vary by household size and household control of productive resources.
Abstract: The United National Decade for Women (1975-1985) officially ended in July 1985 with the conference in Nairobi, Kenya. This conference, the final in a series that began in Mexico City (1975) and continued in Copenhagen (1980), included two separate meetings. One, the official meeting, was attended by government delegates who drafted and voted on a women's agenda to be implemented by the United Nations and its member states. The second, the unofficial Forum '85, was attended by individuals and representatives of non-governmental organizations who discussed the multiplicity of women's concerns, forged alliances, and debated ways to enact real and lasting change in women's lives.
Among the participants at Forum '85 were members of the Zambia Association for Research and Development (ZARD), a group dedicated to the generation and application of research on women in Zambia. Their presentation represented a small cross-section of Third World women's diverse voices. Yet, although it offered an agenda specific to Zambia, the points it raised are relevant to the concerns and interests of rural women throughout the Third World. It is with great pleasure, therefore, that we include their presentation in the Working Papers on Women in International Development as part of the continuing effort to enhance understanding of the female experience and to ensure an equitable development process.
Abstract: Women emerged as important political actors during the Brazilian transition from military to civilian rule. From 1973 to 1985, women of all social classes increased the ranks of the opposition to the military regime and also formed their own, autonomous organizations to advance gender-specific demands within partisan and policy-making arenas. By the early 1980s, women's new political claims had been tergiversated and manipulated by the ruling military regime, endorsed by most opposition political parties, and translated into public policies by opposition-led state governments.
This paper explores the complex relationship between women's movements, political parties, and the State during the Brazilian transition. Through an in-depth analysis of the politicization of gender issues in Brazilian family planning and day care policy formulation and implementation, the study examines how Brazilian political elites and institutions responded to the unprecedented level of female political mobilization which cauterized the liberalization and democratization processes. The analysis of the Brazilian case is informed by a methodological approach stressing the genderic bases of State power and suggests a new conceptual framework for the study of women and politics in Latin America.
Abstract: This paper explores the potential of international human rights documents to serve as catalysts for political, social, and economic change beneficial to women. An analysis is made of some problematic aspects of the documents; these aspects revolve around the primacy given to public morality, public order, and "the unity and harmony of the family" over the rights of individuals. The author argues that as women generally have had little influence over political definitions of "public" morality, the primacy of this value over that of individual rights is detrimental to women. Similarly, she argues that when the harmony of the family unit is valued more than the rights of the individuals who make up the family, the rights of women are likely to suffer. The paper also details a number of positive aspects of international human rights law, specifically with regard to the general principles of equality, economic and political rights, and rights to education and family planning. On balance, the author finds the international documents to be in advance of US law, and with some reservations, urges US ratification of the treaties discussed.
Abstract: In Kurdistan (a land divided among Turkey, Iran, Iraq, Syria, and the USSR) as in other traditional societies, politics and war have been exclusively male domains, though in recent decades, the national struggle for establishing a Kurdish state and achieving autonomy has made female participation in political and military action possible.
This paper examines the sexual division of labor in Kurdish society and female participation in four movements: Shaikh Muhmud's revolt (1918-1924, Iraq), the Kurdish Republic (1946, Iran), the autonomist wars in Iraq (1961-1975), and Iran (1979-1985). Some findings: women activists are mostly urban and literate; the extent of their participation is related to the ideological and political line of the leadership of these movements.
Abstract: Farming systems research and extension (FSR/E) methodology has several phases (pre-diagnostic, diagnostic, technology design, testing, and dissemination) that should include information about the sexual division of labor, resource allocation, income generation, and knowledge of farming practices; yet gender is often left out of FSR/E by both researchers and extensionists. FSR/E practitioners usually rely on extensionists to locate, interview, and select trial cooperators. The extension staff members, who tend to be predominantly men, target male farmers for these and other extension activities. Therefore, there are very few women extensionists women who are not trained, who are concentrated in the lower ranks, and who tend to be assigned to home economics rather than to agricultural programs. A case study from Malawi shows that it was uncommon for women to be included in FSR/E work as trial farmers or in recommendation domains. The Women in Agricultural Development Project conducted diagnostic surveys and trials that included women. It found that women could carry out trials, that they had specific problems that needed attention, that in one situation women tended to be low-resource farmers and fell into a separate recommendation domain from high-resource farmers and fell into a separate recommendation domain from high-resource male farmers, and that male researchers and extensionists could work with women farmers. Subsequently, an extension circular (Appendix A) was prepared that legitimized male extensionists' work with women farmers and suggested techniques for their doing so. Female extensionists also were encouraged to have more agricultural training and to work with women on agricultural topics.
Abstract: This paper deals with state policy for women workers, particularly Japan's sex-blind industrial policy which has had negative effects on women in both the labor market and the family.
Abstract: Using the rural energy crisis as the background, the paper draws on primary data from a micro region in central India in an attempt to evaluate the burden of fuel scarcities faced by households and women, and adaptation to the changing resource situation, including response to new energy options offered by the government. The microdata confirms the acute shortage of firewood as the traditional fuel, in search of which women continue to trek miles, spending major parts of their daily work day. Popular alternatives to firewood are animal and crop waste, which also have become scarce as the demand on them has grown due to scarcity of firewood, and as raw material for the Biogas technology.
The households also suffer shortages of kerosene as a substitute to electricity available only to a group of affluent households. The poorer households, particularly women, have thus come to bear the major brunt of the domestic fuel crisis.
The investigation brings to light several government plans to develop non-traditional renewable energy sources. But, so far, all are directed toward the urban, industrial, and upper class requirements. The plans of community-sized biogas operation, or improved Chulas, from which the poor and needy could benefit, seem to be still a low priority in state plans. A strong grassroots movement is required to draw attention to this sector that needs to be salvaged from sinking into despair.
Abstract: In highly sex-differentiated societies, it is probably that the benefits of development may more easily bypass women than men. This research examines the social and cultural factors which economists tend to ignore in formulating their development models. The study of the social status of women is relevant not only as it leads to a fuller understanding of the needs of the local community but also as it is focused on socially and economically relevant planning and policy making. This case study of Palitpur village shows that with development, women's social status has not improved and in some cases has even regressed. In fact the status quo maintained in women's position in society vis-à-vis men's is positively related to higher incomes, increased agricultural productivity, and modernization.
Abstract: Concepts of economic wealth and Gross National Product exclude and devalue women's work and hence violate principles of appropriate methodology. A feminist framework suggests the need to develop an alternative conceptualization based on women's experience. Using feminist writing on development and on women's project activities as starting points, women's conception of wealth is found to include: material resources, social and cultural resources, and human resources. This feminist conception of wealth is based on alternative assumptions requiring a new calculus. It is multi-faceted, relational, collective, people-oriented, and equity based. Implications for scholarship, feminist strategies, and interpretations of project "misbehavior" (Buvinic 1984) are briefly discussed.
Abstract: This paper reviews the major aspects of African women's contribution to food and cash crop production and offers some suggestions to improve their participation in intensification in the smallholder sector. An examination of the sexual division of labor shows that so-called "traditional" patterns have given way to expediency with women involved in all aspects of production either routinely or when male labor is unavailable due to a change in marital status or to out-migration. The semi-autonomous nature of women within the household and the diverse types of households are detailed in order to show the diverse responsibilities of men and women for the procurement of food and other commodities. Although some women earn a good living from agriculture and can assure family food security and/or generate surplus sales, most women tend to be among the lower resource farmers. This is not because they are deficient in farming skills, but because they lack access to labor, land, credit, training, and mechanization, especially in years of agricultural intensification. Stereotypes about women's place often prevent planners and implementors of development projects from incorporating women into plans and programs. Furthermore, agricultural intensification may increase the time women have to spend in farming without providing adequate remuneration. In order to include women in agricultural intensification, certain solutions are given such as disaggregating data by gender, recognizing intrahoushold dynamics in farming research and extension, studying farming roles, reorienting training and extension programs, mainstreaming income generation projects, intensifying capitalization schemes, and researching the farming enterprises associated with women.
Abstract: All issues of India Abroad from January to June of 1983 and 1985 were perused to pick out stories pertaining to women. These women's stories were then coded in such a way as to ascertain the topics covered, the presentation of women's stories, and their overall treatment by the paper. It was found that there are very few stories on women, relative to the number of stories overall. Also, stories on women often appear as idiosyncratic events, unrelated to a larger perspective or to social causes. Women rarely speak for themselves in the stories about them; rather, bureaucratic males are usually used as sources. Women's stories are dispersed throughout the paper, but there are very few front page stories about women. In general, the tone of the stories is positive. After assessing the results, the potential for improvement is explored.
Abstract: It is widely assumed that the improvement of nutrition is determined by economic factors alone. Yet such a perspective fails to explain why pregnant women, regardless of their socioeconomic status, consume less food. In view of the inadequacy of economic models, we propose a culture analysis of the dietary beliefs and behavior of pregnant women of rural Bangladesh. The notion of humoral disposition has been found to be practiced in dietary and health values among rural women. The common referent of the humoral properties lies in the cognition of a "hot" and "cold" dichotomy in relation to the properties of food and body-state. The transition from puberty to pregnancy signifies changes from a relative "cold" body condition to a "hot" state. Pregnant women are viewed as particularly susceptible to variation in hot/cold disposition in body-state. In order to neutralize the undesirable heat and to attain equilibrium, women prefer diets containing elements of coolness. Health is believed to depend upon the careful maintenance of this balance in food habits. The practices originating from this belief system are the delimiting factors of rural women's dietary habits, and therefore should be reckoned with in any effort of directed nutritional change in Bangladesh.
Abstract: In the first part of this paper women's crucial role in development processes of developing countries is acknowledged. In the second part of the paper the case of Iran as a male-dominated society under the Pahlavi and the theocratic regime of Ayatollah Khomeini is analyzed. It is argued that both regimes failed to resolve the issue of women's democratic participation in the affairs of a male-dominated society. It is further argued that the revolutionary Marxist-Leninist forces in Iran have posited the issue in the context of infra- and super-structure mechanism without due consideration for the element of power differentials between the sexes. Finally, the position of the Islamic left, that is, that of the People's Mojahedin Organization of Iran, is discussed. It is argued that this Organization by adopting a dynamic stance with respect to the Quranic verses and proclamations has not only attracted a record number of Iranian women to its rank-and-file but also has posited the problematic in the right direction, though its resolution is far from any concrete eventualities.
Abstract: This paper presents the
background, some of the conceptual issues, and preliminary findings of an
informal survey of cooperative activities of poor women in Kenya as a means
of achieving their goals. The paper examines a variety of contexts in which
cooperation among women becomes a significant economic variable, focusing
on such questions as
(1) Do cooperatives actually help women get out of poverty?
(2) What makes some cooperatives succeed while others fail?
(3) Does the key to the success or failure of a cooperative lie in its functioning as a resource-creation, resource-mobilization, or resource-exchange mechanism among the members, or are other more significant kinds of interactions and exchanges going on?
(4) How are the benefits (and liabilities) of cooperative membership distributed among the members?
(5) To what extent do cooperatives act, subtly or not so subtly, to reinforce status and class distinctions by reproducing these independently within subsets of women (quite apart from their articulation in other social structures and institutions of the wider society)?
(6) If cooperation can be shown to have a potential for alleviating poverty, can this be capitalized on and systematically enhanced by change agents as a deliberate development strategy more effectively and on a larger scale than is currently being tried?
Abstract: This paper, based on anthropological field research in Lusaka, Zambia, first in 1971-72 and again in 1981, concerns the sexual divisions of the labor force and the system of social reproduction that reinforces the expectations and behavior patterns of women and men. While race and gender were dominant in shaping a person's work prospects during the colonial period, factors such as regional background, ethnicity, class, education, and religion also affected the terms on which an individual entered the labor force. They continue to do so today. Each person's job position represents the impact of a combination of these factors, without one alone being determinant. Yet, even within the constraints of these factors people make choices. Such choices come to differ as the labor market changes and as institutions and role expectations become altered. How these factors intersect cannot be disaggregated from statistical sources. Indeed in Zambia very little, if any, can be read from official statistical sources, as employment figures were not broken down by sex until the first census taken after independence. This paper introduces the "work history," an extended interview topically oriented to retrieve details about the interaction of home work and petty trade with wage work. Illustrations of such "work histories" collected from the same women in 1971-72 and 1981 are included. The source material in these "work histories" provides an opportunity for a dynamic analysis of how, when, and why women have played different roles in Lusaka's changing economy. They thus help correct the static view of Lusaka's labor force as a male institution against which women's opportunities have been negatively measured.
Abstract: Has the condition of women in Nicaragua improved since the Somoza regime was overthrown by the Sandinistas? Or has the revolutionary process only brought superficial changes while leaving the inferior position of women essentially unchanged? The author addresses these questions, by examining the condition of women in Nicaragua both before and after the Triumph. His conclusion is that, while there is still much to be done, the condition of women has improved politically, socially, and economically. Comparatively speaking, the revolutionary process has in many ways been more beneficial to women than to men. This progress has been all the more remarkable given the extreme constraints imposed by the military and economic aggression directed against Nicaragua by the Reagan administration.
Abstract: European international labor migration during the 1960s and 1970s resulted in female-headed households throughout rural areas of Mediterranean Europe. Migration to northern Europe widened the economic activities of women who remained in the villages and towns of the Mediterranean region. The paper looks at shifts in the economic activities of women who head households in three villages of northern Portugal. Increased participation of women in agriculture is discussed in relation to the widespread emigration of men. Expanded women's participation in local commercial activities is also discussed in a context of extensive migration. An ideology of emigration is examined as a belief system which legitimizes modernization of women in northern Portugal. Case histories of five women illustrate their shared understandings about emigration as a lifeway strategy.
Abstract: This paper discusses symbols of feminine gender and sexuality as they intersect economic and sociological aspects of urban Taiwan today by examining kinship and marriage, participation in the paid labor force, and the development and persistence of sociocultural notions of femininity in each new generation. I argue that the roots of women's subordination in Taiwanese society are located not in the politico-economic order, but in the patriarchal kinship system which upholds that order. The meanings of gender and sexuality arise out of the interaction of women's position in the social structure and the cultural ideology which helps to create and maintain that position. To create and produce more satisfying visions of their own and their daughters' femininity, women must become full participants in the social discourse which creates and maintains the current narrow vision.
Abstract: This paper examines the relationship between health, the technical and social processes of production, and the conditions for reproduction of labor power. The labor process, the family, and the state are seen as key mediating factors in affecting health outcome. The findings suggest that the technical means of production are somewhat more important than the social organization of work in determining health outcomes, and that the process of reproduction is largely shaped by the dictates of life on the production line. The findings also suggest that the women of the workplace are changing as are the concerns of these workers, in their new identity as women industrial workers.
The paper begins with a brief sketch of industry development and a review of the literature on women workers of that industry in Asia. The second section suggests both the general framework and specific aspects of experience that shape the patterns of workers' health and illness. The third section presents the empirical findings of a study conducted in five factories among 900 workers in Singapore and Malaysia. The paper will conclude with an analysis of the political, economic, social and cultural forces that shape the lives of women workers in the periphery.
Abstract: This paper is about the introduction in 1976 of Universal Primary education in Nigeria. The effect of sending Hausa Muslim girls to school on 1) popular perception of women's proper role in an Islamic society, and 2) the girls' perceptions of themselves and their own life prospects are the central themes explored.
Abstract: This article examines the unionized teaching profession in Mexico and explores ways in which female subordination is maintained in the field of education. In particular, the article shows how cultural and material factors within the family affect women's participation in union politics and the educational profession. Focusing on the Ninth Section of the Teachers' Union, which includes preschool and elementary school teachers in Mexico City, the article shows how the situation of women in the family relates to the structure of female employment in education. The question of why women do not enjoy equal access to decision-making or leadership positions is explored by delving into the career paths of the women interviewed for this study, to examine the relationship between their life cycle and their careers within the profession. Building upon insights expressed by the interviewed women, the article describes the channels of mobility and the constraints that women face as they achieve leadership positions. These realities of gender, family life, and institutional constraints are mechanisms through which the continued division between men and women in educational employment is reproduced.
Abstract: This paper is based on research in a rural Taiwanese village in which married women with children are a major source of labor for local industry. Responsibility for job and home expose these women to repeated stressors that can lead to increased susceptibility to illness. Existing explanatory models linking employment and women's health, however, do not adequately explain the women's response to their work. A refined model incorporating political and socioeconomic structures is constructed and discussed.
Abstract: Obstetric high technology is increasingly exported to developing countries and, more often than not, eagerly espoused. The replacement of indigenous, ethno-obstetric low technology, however, often has unforeseen consequences which may lead to new health risks for mothers and babies. High technology is also instrumental in redefining "authoritative knowledge" in childbirth and favors a hierarchical distribution of decision-making power and consequent transformation of social relationships. It is argued that the appropriateness of this technology for the Third World should be examined.
Abstract: Based on field data obtained in a traditional urban ethnic group in northern Afghanistan, the paper views gender as symbolic meanings mediated and interpreted through social experience and social discourse. Analysis indicates that a crucial component of gender ideology includes the idea that reason and desire struggle for control of a person. Sexuality must be controlled so that desire does not subvert the social and moral order. Two interrelated sets of gender concepts are also discussed: symbolic statements about the "nature" of men and women and symbolic statements about the "interaction" of men and women. The latter includes ideas about marriage, veiling, and adultery. An indigenous symbol of female power and sexuality, the almasti, a witchlike figure, is linked to concepts of pollution from menstrual blood and makes a statement about women's passionate and uncontrolled nature. Throughout the analysis the focus is on traditional norms, values, and attitudes which have particular salience given the Islamic resurgence in Afghanistan today.
Abstract: In recent years there has been considerable speculation on the part of both scholars and policy makers about the effects of maquila work on participants in the labor force of Mexico's Border Industrialization Program (BIP). Within that general context, the specific concerns of this paper are to examine (1) which work-related experiences enable maquila workers to expand the traditional female role and (2) which work-related experiences enhance the development of women's consciousness of their status as workers in the new international division of labor. This empirical investigation examines the larger theoretical issues of the interconnections between gender relations and class processes. Following an overview of the interrelations of gender, class, and export-oriented industrialization, and using Mexico's BIP as a case in point, the findings of a field experiment carried out among maquila workers in Ciudad Juarez are discussed. The data suggest to caution in attributing characteristics such a passivity and submissiveness to these women workers, since they appear to be far from docile and unorganizable. The conclusions highlight issues for policy makers who are concerned with furthering women's treatment as equals in society and enhancing women's capacity to author their own development.
Abstract: The failure of Tanzania's socialist education reforms to redress regional (ethnic), class, and gender inequality is examined from the viewpoint of family strategies of educational investment. A comparison of the two regions, Tabora and Kilimanjaro, reveals a contrast in the historical and material conditions which influence values and behavior concerning education for male and female children. Differential patterns in household budget allocations by men and women for the education of children are seen to vary as a result of the regionally situated class position of the household. Directing the focus of family educational strategies to investment in persons enables us to identify a female pattern of surplus allocation formerly submerged in the study of male-headed households.
Abstract: Two cases of income-generating strategies in rural Egypt are examined in the context of issues in development, particularly those related to women's status and power. The cases document the development of income-generating strategies, through local initiation in the first case and with outside encouragement in the second. These strategies differed in type of commitment, capital requirements, responsibility, and training requirements. It is argued that, over the long term, having funds enables women to participate in decision making in a capitalist economy.
Abstract: The majority of urban studies assume that urbanization effects both sexes in more or less the same way. This paper attempts to correct this picture by investigating the impact of urbanization on indigenous women in Latin America, taking the pastoral Guajiro of Venezuela as an example. The discussion focuses on three critical areas: 1) educational and occupational opportunities; 2) kin-group and other social networks; and 3) the marital relationship. Relevant material from studies on women and urbanization in other parts of the world is used to gain deeper understanding of the effects of urbanization on women in general.
While the Guajiras are unique in some ways because of their matrilineal/pastoral background, they share with other indigenous women in the cities the loss of important traditional support systems without regaining new opportunities and resources in a world oriented towards and dominated by males. Cross-cultural data indicate that women respond to these losses in very different ways. A potential for improving the Guajira's situation is seen in strengthening her economic position, which must be linked to a new form of social bonding among women.
Abstract: I propose that contradictory analyses of the effects of transnational corporation employment on women should be examined in the context of the world-economy and women's economic marginalization during underdevelopment. Our evaluations of the costs/benefits of transnational corporation employment should be based on two criteria: the long-term effects of transnational investment on the level of undervelopment and the effects on women's economic independence relative to men, their families, and the state. In the short-run, transnational corporation investment may lead to economic growth and increase in female employment. In the long-run, such investment may perpetuate underdevelopment while the instability of and low wages from such employment may lead to continued dependency of women on men and the state.
Abstract: This paper uses interview data from samples of male and female legislators and defeated female candidates in Taiwan to test three theories about the barriers to women's political participation female socialization, role conflict, and voter and elite discrimination. All three theories appear applicable in Taiwan. Socialization barriers can be seen in the fact that women legislators come almost exclusively from a narrow spectrum of society. There are significant role conflicts between family and political obligations, and there is also strong evidence of discrimination against female candidates by both political leaders and voters. Yet continuing modernization should progressively undermine the elements in traditional Chinese culture that support a subordinate status for women, especially because the "reserved seat" system in Taiwan provides an important incentive for getting at least some women involved in politics.
Abstract: This paper documents aspects of the contemporary life and contribution to development of Vietnamese women living on the periphery of Ho Chi Minh City. It offers a comparison with the situation of rural women in Thailand, Malaysia, and the Philippines. Simple linear correlations between the relative time and money contributions of women, compared with their husbands, on such factors as personal expenditure, mobility, household decision-making, attitudes of women to equality, and participation in political life and government development programs are attempted. The relative contributions of women in terms of input and hours of work and household income is documented.
In Vietnam, only the commune development index is correlated with the time contributions of women. In Malaysia, a decision-making index is correlated with monetary contributions. In the Philippines, there are correlations between time contribution and development, and also between monetary contribution and political participation. In Thailand, only the monetary contribution is correlated with development, attitudes towards equality, and participation in government development programs.
Abstract: Throughout history, African women have had a different relationship to the state than have men. While women in certain classes and ethnic groups may have had a greater access to the state, in general women have been under-represented in African state affairs. In precolonial Africa, a few societies awarded women some power, although even this tended to be informal rather than authoritative. But during the colonial period, western gender stereotypes combined with patriarchal traditions to reduce female power and autonomy. Despite women's active and important role in the nationalist struggles, decolonization has been primarily a transfer of power from one group of men to another. Many women have reacted to this inequity by withdrawing from the state. Others have sought solutions such as working through influential men, joining organizations, and gaining better education and employment. Increasingly, women from all walks of life are becoming aware of and dissatisfied with sexual injustice in Africa. This renewed activism is all the more important because it is occurring when many African states have been in decline, thus reducing the power of those who benefit from the state, namely men. Women's reproductive and productive labor is ever more important. It is possible, therefore, that women will be able to parlay their pivotal role in the current crisis into a more active part in state affairs.
Abstract: This paper examines the status of female participation in formal education in Africa at the close of the International Decade for Women. In-school dimensions of the equity issue are also outlined as a conceptual framework for future studies. Trends of the past two decades indicate that increased numbers of African girls have gained access to a primary level of education to acquire those basic skills and attitudes considered necessary to support general development goals. The combination of low enrollment growth projections and generally unfavorable economic forecasts for the foreseeable future suggest, however, that as countries differ along the dimension of economic development, these past efforts are now entering phases of stabilization, stagnation, or regression.
Abstract: Data from the program participants of eight randomly selected rural extension centers in the Baghdad, Iraq, area are used to examine factors associated with rural women's participation levels in extension programs and to assess the fit between stated and implemented social policies related to extension programs. Findings suggest that: (1) family-related variables and those indicative of social customs surrounding the female status are most closely related to women's participation levels; and (2) there are discrepancies between written and enacted social policies related to extension programs. Possible explanations for findings are offered as are cultural, political, and structural directions for aligning policy and practice.
Abstract: A number of researchers have demonstrated a relationship between West African women traders' autonomy and social power (Ottenberg 1959; Cohen 1971). This paper shows how women's bargaining power is not enhanced in a situation of market expansion. Data is presented on emic and etic definitions of appropriate domains of market activity for men and women and on gender differences in access to market activity for men and women, and on gender differences in access to market, domains of market activity, and income. Women's savings associations (Lewis 1976) are described and analyzed in relation to men's business management institutions. In this case, restrictions on women's access to the market give men a business advantage. Data are based on fieldwork in a Bambara village in 1982-1983.
Abstract: The historical development of garment production in Hawaii from precontact to the present is described and analyzed in terms of the continuities and changes that have occurred in its labor process (i.e., the organization of the process of garment production). Both primary and secondary data are used in this historical analysis; the pre-1965 sections in this paper are a re-analysis of historical data gathered on the industry by Fundaburk, while the analysis of current conditions relies on data recently collected from interviews with owners and managers of garment manufacturing firms. These data show a recurring tradition of women as the producers of garments and the connection between household production and industrial production. But they also show several changes in the process of production. Most notable, changes are seen in the decline of certain craft-based production techniques, in the ethnic backgrounds of the workforce, in greater state involvement in the industry, in the differentiation and specialization of the parts of the industrial production process, and in the relationships between production and marketing functions.
Abstract: The case studies in family resource management document the living environment and daily lives of three low-income families in an urban labor colony in Hissar, Haryana, India. The migrant families, which have moved into an urban environment seeking economic mobility, were studied to understand their resource availability and allocation. The cases presented in the paper illustrate variations in resource flow, resource constraints, and utilization. Families, though living in similar physical and socio-economic environment, adopt individualist strategies of family resource management. These case studies can be used to analyze family resource management problems of low-income Indian families in an interactive perspective.
Abstract: This is a report of a survey of 900 mothers under 50 years of age in two Igbo villages in Nigeria, which were identified in an earlier survey as having very high mortality. The present work was undertaken to decipher the factors responsible for the high mortality. The study found that the mothers were aware of the causes of illness and death; they spaced their births using breast-feeding and sexual taboos. Most of them gave and received advice about children's illnesses and the contents of such communication emphasized the use of modern medicines. Only a few patronized traditional healers or believed that children's death was due to recurring birth and death of a spirit-child (ogbanje). Given their positive attitudes towards modern health care, the explanation of the high mortality is neither institutional nor cultural but environmental and technological, that is, lack of clean water, toilet facilities and modern medicines. We conclude by stressing the role of environmental conditions and affordable and effective modern health care as a package in reducing death rates rapidly even without further gains in income per capita. A policy in this direction should include educational programs on the proper use and maintenance of the facilities.
Abstract: The necessity for diachronic study of changing patriarchal family structures is borne out by this study of the Fujianese Chinese community of Hong Kong. In the mid-1970s, the community appeared to be in the midst of a profound revolution in family structure and gender status. Female-headed households were seen to presage an imminent rise in the status of women as female reliance in the absence of overseas husbands increased. More recent research, however, has revealed how premature this conclusion was. Upon the maturation of the sons of those husbands and wives, the family situation "corrected" itself to a patriarchal focus. The seeming female emancipation of the early fieldwork is seen as but a passing and superficial reflection of a peculiar social, economic, and demographic situation. Such female gains as there were proved tenuous and fleeting; thus offering a cautionary word on the persistence of patriarchal structures and ideology.
Abstract: The status of women in Bangladesh is a product of many years of cultural, social, and religious traditions. The practice of purdah in this predominantly Muslim society with its condition of female dependence and gender segregation has provided a strong historical basis for establishing women's roles and attendant division of labor within the household. In rural areas, women's activities are limited primarily to the home and homestead. Overall, the inferior status of women has been detrimental to their access to education, nonagricultural employment, and participation in political activities. The system, however, is being challenged as poverty is forcing destitute women from traditional roles, and, even in the urban middle class, economic pressures are pushing women into employment outside the home. Employment options are restricted by the slow pace of economic development and the critical absence of job skills. Education for women is seen as a priority element in Bangladesh's development strategy.
Abstract: This paper presents three cases in which African women, although lacking formal political power in their societies, organized in defiance of male and colonial authority. The three cases are: the Harry Thuku Disturbances in Kanyah in 1922; the Anlu Uprising in the British Cameroons in 1958-59; and the women's War or Aba Riots in Nigeria in 1929. Although the three examples presented are from different parts of Africa and from different time periods, there are several commonalities including: 1) the adaptation of a traditional form of sanction; 2) relatively egalitarian social structure with emphasis on achieved status; 3) traditionally well-established rights and areas of jurisdiction for women; 4) traditions of collective action; and 5) the failure of male leadership to confront an unpopular colonial government.
Abstract: In much of India, especially in the North, son preference is very strong. Newly available technologies now permit at least some families to express this son preference by sex-selective abortion. Son preference is also expressed by the neglect of daughters and the preferential allocation of key household resources to sons. This paper briefly describes the patriarchal context of rural North India which promotes son preference and daughter disfavor, and then presents information on prenatal sex-selection and postnatal sex-selection. The major ethical and public policy implications of both forms of sex-selection in India are reviewed in the conclusion.
Abstract: The introduction of Western notions of social work and philanthropy to Japan provided an arena in which able Japanese women could exercise their talents on behalf of the nation. In the Meiji Period (1868-1912), wealthy women patronized Western-style charities such as the Japan Red Cross. A few unusually able women followed the model of heroines such as Jane Addams of Hull House and founded orphanages and kindergartens for the poor. As social work expanded in the Taisho Period (1912-1926), a few well-educated women found employment as experts on women's and children's problems. Many more women became support staff for welfare facilities. The international crisis of the first decade of the Showa Period (1926- ) thrust Japanese women to assume the role of patriotic volunteer. Through social work, a wide variety of Japanese women became active in public affairs and a few women became known as public leaders. Because Japan experienced industrialization as a late-developing nation, the role of women in social work was somewhat different in Japan than in Great Britain or the United States. Women ventured only a limited social distance from their homes and the state played a major part in defining the proper place for women in social service. Nevertheless, the concept of social work provided a legitimate public role for women.
Abstract: Previously segments of Third World populations are increasingly being incorporated into new forms of production, market, and credit relations as part of capitalist development processes and as a consequence of capitalist penetration. This point is analyzed and illustrated in the case in Bangladesh where rural women constitute new sources of labor and capital in the economy. The analysis of how and why this is occurring is placed in the context of local conditions and relations that shape and direct, as well as respond to, capitalist forms of penetration. The role of the state and the particular saliency of development aid and assistance are also analyzed for the critical part they play in shaping and directing the incorporation of rural women in present day Bangladesh.
Abstract: This paper recounts the experience of the incorporation of women into heavy industry during the employment boom of 1974-1979 in Ciudad Guayana and the decline in female employment in the years following the boom. The first and second sections of the paper outline the features of female incorporation at a specialty steel plant and at the state-owned steel mill which, combined, account for over 70 percent of all manufacturing employment in the city. The third section presents the characteristics of the discrimination to which two groups of women, laborers and engineers, were subjected. The fourth and final section analyzes the effects of discrimination on worker behavior and suggests that both male discriminatory behavior and female coping mechanisms are not only the result of the structural factors of power, opportunity, and numbers identified by Kanter in her classic 1977 study, but are also associate with factors of class, age, and culture. Thus, it is necessary to include considerations of both structural factors and individual or personality characteristics to develop corrective programs in a particular organization or culture.
Abstract: This paper describes birth planning policy and its implementation in a rural village setting in Guangdong Province, People's Republic of China, during the years 1979-1984. The significance of policy and its implementation and the villagers' responses to them are analyzed from a cultural point of view to expose the implicit assumptions about human relationships that are being enacted. The paper describes the contradiction between the extraordinary pronatalism of Chinese culture and more strictly rational analyses of the relationship between population and resources; both sets of ideas are actively present. Cultural forces are currently in the ascendant, with potentially devastating results.
Abstract: This paper examines the extent to which discrimination against women in Zambia is the result of discriminatory laws. The author began to explore this question as the result of a personal experience of discrimination, which led to the question of whether discrimination existed only in administrative practice, in defiance of law, or whether the law itself was discriminatory. An examination of the Constitution reveals that, although it provides protection against discrimination on such grounds as tribe and race, there is no general protection against discrimination based on sex. This means that the Constitution allows laws and administrative practices that discriminate against women.
In fact, the Constitution itself, in the law on citizenship, provides an example of discriminatory law. This paper does not attempt an overall survey of all the discriminatory laws of this statute book, but considers some notable examples of discrimination against women in the Employment Act and in the Income Tax Act. It then goes on to consider some examples of discrimination in the Government's administrative practice in such areas as women's access to credit facilities, extension services, and education. The paper also briefly considers the extent of discrimination in customary law. It is noted that, although there is a strong element of patriarchy in customary law, women nonetheless had definite rights in precolonial times. It is noteworthy that, although Zambia has recently ratified the UN Convention on the Elimination of All Forms of Discrimination Against Women, much of statutory law, and even some of the Constitution, would have to be rewritten in order to conform to the provisions of the Convention.
The paper concludes with a brief consideration of the line of action that Zambian women must take if they are to make some headway against the weight of discrimination against them.
Abstract: Among urban elite Zairian women, friendship networks substitute for the kin networks that socially construct the illness episode in rural Zaire. A participant observation study, conducted in two Zairian cities, shows that friends make important decisions concerning the illness and act as a therapy management group. The friendship networks are defined by mutual rights and obligations. By their activities in the illness episode, the friends satisfy previous obligations to the sick person and incur new obligations towards themselves. These new obligations further strengthen the ties among the members of the network.
Abstract: The experience of Hispanic immigrants to the United States has been primarily documented for the unskilled and semiskilled labor force. Yet post-1965 migratory trends point to a diverse composition in terms of social class backgrounds. This paper presents a life history of a middle-class Hispanic immigrant as a methodological step towards theory formulation. A model depicting the interrelationships between social class, social identity, and social mobility is presented and tested against life histories of informants at various social class levels. To explore the impact of gender on well-being, two variables employment status and family composition are examined using another data base. Testing themes extrapolated from a unique life history against larger samples provides validity to the life history and contributes to the understanding of the impact of structural change on personal biography. Major issues affecting Hispanic immigrants, stemming from the data presented, are outlined and their applicability to the knowledge base central to informed policy makers and program planners dealing with issues affecting immigrant populations are discussed.
Abstract: A content analysis of prime time television in Puerto Rico revealed that women are cast in very traditional and stereotypical roles as compared to men. As in prime time television in the US, women in Puerto Rican television are grossly under-represented and tend to be younger, richer, and more frequently married than men. Women are also less involved in violence but more involved in sexual episodes than are men. The study discusses the possible effects that this stereotypical portrayal of women in television may have on viewers.
Abstract: This paper focuses on the participation of women in two types of decentralized agencies set up by the Malawi government, namely Local Councils and District Development Committees. It deals with educational, economic and attitudinal impediments that restrict women's access to these institutions and, then, limit the effectiveness of those few women who manage to enter the male-dominated domain of formal local politics. The paper argues that we can learn about gender relations by focusing on formal political institutions and, in the conclusion, attempts to demonstrate the sort of contribution this kind of research can make.
Abstract: In the total world food supply, small farmers play a crucial role, particularly in less-developed countries and in production of food for the poor. Smallholder systems are being undermined by many forces, of which migration is a major ingredient. Women's participation in the smallholder sector, always central, becomes indispensable when men leave to work as wage laborers. If they are overlooked in development efforts, the implications for future food supply become ominous.
If there are cash remittances, the family left behind may shift production and consumption patterns. If a dependency on remittances develops, there may be a loss of self-sufficiency in the production of food and other necessities. Even if migrants return, there may be a reluctance to take up agriculture again. This paper argues that policies designed to increase food for the poor cannot succeed unless they take into account the problems faced by the women left behind as food producers.
Abstract: The Lemba of southeastern Shaba in Zaire have retained a distinctive form of matrilineal social organization that emphasizes the social value of women. Although they are not full equals of men in the present period, women continue to control important resources and retain considerable autonomy. The high status of Lemba women is correlated with greater nutritional equality among men and women than among neighboring groups with different social organization and lower relative status of women. Changes taking place in the present, however, cast doubt upon the continuing survival of the distinctive Lemba culture.
Abstract: The general pattern that emerges from this study is that women's situation in Mexico generally improves with increased development level, while fertility declines at higher development levels. The author reviews literature relating aspects of women's status to development and places the study in Mexican historical context. Specific findings indicate that women's situation in each state and the Federal District measured by relative access to resources is strongly positively related to general development level of the state and weakly positively related to state longevity and education development level. The first relationship is "U-shaped" when data from the Federal District is included, but linear otherwise; the second relationship is also "U-shaped," but weak. Women's situation measured by relative access to basic services is strongly related to life/education development level. The former relationship is inverse "U-shaped" when data from the Federal District is included, but positive and linear otherwise; the latter relationship is linear. Fertility is most strongly negatively affected by general development level while being positively related to women's access to services and life/education development level. The author discusses the special cases of the Federal District containing Mexico City, and two Mayan states of Yucatan and Quintana Roo.
Abstract: The effects of the recent internationalization of Egyptian labour have been analyzed primarily from the perspective of macroeconomics and regional politics. The ethnographic approach adopted by anthropologists in the study of the relation between migration and rural transformation provides an important complement to macroanalytic studies. This paper offers such a complementary perspective. Beyond a general account of the effects of migration on labour exporting Egypt, this study focuses on familial adaptations. Emphasis is placed on the family within the broader context of agrarian transformation.
Abstract: This paper examines the anthropological concepts of reciprocity and altruism in close kinship relations, particularly the mother-daughter relationship. It is argued that Malay mothers manipulate cultural values to ensure that their daughters, who are engaged in factory work, comply with obligations to support their households and discharge the debts owed to mothers for their "milk." Where this strategy fails, magic may be used in attempts to ensure the "protection" of daughters as well as the flow of goods and money from them. This is contrary to Sahlin's model of exchange, which argues that the expectation of a direct return for the suckling of children is unseemly (1974:165). For peasant Malays undergoing difficult transitions in the development process, material returns "for the milk" are expected.
Abstract: Studies of migration in Mexico have proliferated over the years capturing detailed socioeconomic aspects of migrants such as sex, age, education, occupational status, income, place of origin, and destination. These descriptive studies of migration have fallen short, however, in that they fail to explain why men are the migrants in some regions and women in others, or why some migrants choose destinations within Mexico and others head toward the United States. This paper argues that an examination of class and household characteristics offer significant insights into these questions. The household's class position explains not only what groups have the greatest propensity to migrate but also where they tend to migrate. An analysis of household structure, including the sex and age division of labor, sheds light on who within the household is most likely to migrate.
WOMEN'S LEGAL STATUS
AND ROLE CHOICES IN SIX LATIN AMERICAN SOCIETIES: A CROSS-CULTURAL, LONGITUDINAL
ANALYSIS (1950-70) AND A SINGLE-CASE UPDATE (1980)
by Ilse A. Leitinger
Working Paper 91, August 1985
Abstract: On the assumption that the laws of a society represent norms which govern the behavior of its members, this study analyzes the relationship between the legal status of women in six Latin American societies (Costa Rica, Nicaragua, Panama, Argentina, Chile, and Mexico) and women's participation in public and domestic roles, as well as changes in this relationship from 1950 to 1970. The Legal Status Score for women which sums 21 legal criteria serves to assess the legal status of women for each decade. Data on female participation in the labor force, education, family maintenance, and procreation document women's participation in the public and domestic domain. Based on these data, the study explores the hypothesis that the Legal Status Score for Women is positively related to women's participation in public roles and negatively to their participation in domestic roles. It examines the relative importance of different components within the Legal Status Score, as well as discrepancies between the cross-cultural and longitudinal analysis. An update to 1980 for Costa Rica suggests that a "revolution of rising expectations" for legal equality is taking place which future analyses of women's legal position will have to take into account.
Abstract: This paper examines the possibilities for and constraints to change in the agricultural sector in a Luo community in Kenya. This community is not participating in any major development "project" but is like most rural communities in that the development that occurs will come from the interests and efforts of the people themselves, will be based on information available to them, and will be under the normal administrative apparatus of government agricultural extension agents and community development officers. The research examines particularly the major role of women in agriculture and the division of labor that allots women major responsibility for the support of themselves and their children. The author outlines national policies and programs, analyzes their potential impact on women, and suggests modifications in the provision of assistance to the women who are responsible for agriculture production.
Abstract: This paper starts from the perspective of the international debate on Women in Development of the Seventies and focuses on a specific instance of this issue, that is, the implications of rural development for women in Ghana. The author examines the position of women in traditional societies with regard to their access to the means of productions and the changes brought about by the commoditization of the economy and the incorporation of such groups in the national society. The analysis points out that the process of "development" has negatively influenced women's opportunities for economic improvement and self-determination, and terminates with a recent example of the impact of planned "development" on women as small-scale farmers. This example is the MIDAS Project, implemented by USAID in Ghana between 1976 and 1981 for the development of small-scale agriculture, with particular emphasis on credit, fertilizer, improved seeds, small-farm system research, marketing and extension service.
Abstract: This paper presents the results of a labor market study conducted for India, more specifically for the state of Punjab. Estimates for different versions of two models of earnings functions, a basic model and a generalized model incorporating a large number of explanatory variables relevant in the Indian context, are presented. The results are compared with those of the existing studies. The large estimated differentials in the male versus female earnings are further investigated on the basis of productivity related characteristics and labor market discrimination.
Abstract: The Lagos Plan of Action is the first document by African leaders that recognizes the centrality of women to the development process. It raises important questions about the status of women and calls for real change. Gains are being made, but the problems facing women will not disappear with good intentions or even specific projects. Sexual equality challenges one of the most fundamental aspects of human society the sexual division of labor. To encourage change, development plans must acknowledge the link between women's problems and society. While the Plan goes further than any previous African document towards recognizing this fact, it still underestimates the difficulties facing advocates of sexual equality in Africa and elsewhere.
Abstract: Evidence from the 1983 survey of 1,706 home businesses in Lima, Peru, shows that 908 home-based retail stores, restaurants, cafes, bars, and the like, generate as much or more output with about the same amount of input as home businesses that produce manufactured goods or other services. The store-cafes that do badly (yielding a low income), like other unproductive home workshops, are often those operated by women and selling only in the neighborhood. Low productivity is, therefore, not generally due to the inherent nature of some product or service, but to the inferior job opportunities for women.
Abstract: This paper examines women's contribution to farm household income on small farms in three areas of Zambia. Data collected from a sample of 112 women show that females contribute more than half of the hours of agricultural labor done by their households as well as more than four-fifths of the hours of household labor. In addition, females contribute more than half of the average household's off-farm income (gained from wage labor and small-scale trading). When net farm income is allocated on the basis of hours contributed and this is added to off-farm income, females generate 55% of the average household's cash income.
Abstract: Impoverished women have different networks depending on the configuration of work patterns, degree of poverty, and household composition. Drawing on a case study in Salvador, Brazil, network origins and effects are delineated and related to the larger socio-cultural context. Self-employed women who work at home and housewives, and single women and couples are compared, based on a two-level measure of poverty. Self-employed women in couples are found disproportionately below the poverty level, and have more heterogeneous and complex networks than single female heads of household or housewives. The cumulative effects of self-employed work and living in a couple appear to explain these results. Different types are related to more egalitarian couple relationships, neighborhood participation, and location in politically important neighborhood communication networks.
Abstract: The paper describes a course on women in international development developed as a team-taught effort at West Virginia University involving the women's studies coordinator and a faculty member in technology education. The paper includes information on course planning, course content, organization and strategies, and course evaluation.
Abstract: This paper examines factors that affect women's participation in the market sector. The data were collected in Morocelli, Honduras, in 1981. Participation in the market sector was divided into three categories: not working outside the home; participation in the informal market sector; and participation in the formal market sector. The analysis included cross-tabulation and regression. A women who works in the informal sector is likely to be part of a female-headed household, single, or part of a free union arrangement. She is likely to be part of an extended family and to have more young children than her counterpart in the formal sector. She will be relatively old and have no education. The formal sector participant is likely to be young and also to be a member of an extended family. She is more likely to be married. She will have fewer young children in total but more toddlers than the women working in the informal sector. Participating in either sector increases the level of living for the household.
Abstract: This review of 13 Latin American agrarian reforms shows that most have directly benefited only men. It is argued that this is largely because of the common designation of "households" as the beneficiaries of an agrarian reform and the subsequent incorporation of only male household heads to the new agrarian reform structure. It is shown that a necessary, but not sufficient, condition for rural women to be benefited on par with men is that they too be designated as beneficiaries. Women as well as men must be given access to land or the opportunity to participate within the agrarian cooperatives or state farms promoted by an agrarian reform. This comparative analysis of the Latin American agrarian reform demonstrates that this has happened only in countries where the incorporation of rural women to the reform is an explicit objective of state policy.
Abstract: This essay suggests, on the basis of information from Barma in Chad and a number of other societies, that marriage ceremonial, of which bridewealth forms a part, may under certain conditions partially socialize younger men into their mature economic roles. Further, insofar as bridewealth performs this function, it contributes to the reproduction, in a Marxist sense, of labor in these economies.
Abstract: This article addresses the epistemological problem in anthropology of women as Other the subordinate, the muted, the peripheral with particular reference to the ethnographic literature on Oceania. The ideas and images that form the value-loaded premise of women as Other reflect ongoing controversies about power, sex, and gender in the West controversies that influence the discipline of anthropology in ways that feminists have yet to consider systematically. My purpose is to examine, from a feminist perspective, the paradigmatic problems of gender and politics in anthropology and to illustrate these problems with selected works that have influenced anthropological theory and Pacific ethnography. This discussion will help provide feminists in other disciplines with background necessary for understanding the diverse contexts of gender relations across cultures and for assessing the epistemological problems confronting current anthropological research and discourse about women.
Abstract: This paper is concerned with the current position of women in Pakistan, focusing particularly on the changes that the current program of Islamization undertaken by the Pakistani government has had and potentially may have on women's lives. After providing some background on Islamic legal theory and the historical conflict of interpretation of that theory in South Asia, I address the relationship between the new Islamic laws (both decreed and proposed) and women's position in Pakistan. The implications of the implementation of the government's program of "nizam-I-islam" on women and the variety of responses to these actions are analyzed, as well as the effects of these laws on the social environment they are attempting to shape.
Abstract: This essay outlines essential elements of a WID course, including possible texts, supplements, and projects. It also discusses the integration of WID into other courses, focusing on development and development administration courses. Appendices contain numerous references for instructor preparation and/or for assignment, as well as sample syllabi.
Abstract: It is hypothesized that labor availability and related low levels of demand for women in agricultural work explain the high incidence of nuclear family formation in some Caribbean slave societies, as well as occasional high birth rates. Three paired comparisons, reflecting differing levels of labor supply, are examined: The Leewards and the Bahamas; Marinique and Barbados; and Cuba and Jamaica. As hypothesized, women were drawn more into field labor with increasing labor shortages. There is no relationship, however, between labor surplus and nuclear family formation or high crude birth rate. The hypothesized relationship between labor shortage, mother-child domestic units, and low crude birth rate is confirmed in only one case. Nor is family organization consistently related to reproduction patterns for the six slave societies. It is suggested that Caribbean slavery is structurally different from other social systems studied by materialist scholars, who have found fairly constant relationships between women's contributions to production and their conjugal and reproductive experiences.
Abstract: The paradigm of the ideal and real model that anthropologists apply cross-culturally can be used to analyze the discipline itself. The ideal model of anthropology is one which is non-ethnocentric, comparative and, by implication, free of gender bias. The reality of anthropological study reflects an androcentrism which is observed in the treatment of female anthropologists by the discipline, in the collection of anthropological data, and in the analysis of ethnographic material. A feminist approach in the research setting and the classroom enables anthropologists and anthropology to overcome this inherent inconsistency in traditional anthropological thought and to approximate more closely the ideal model of anthropology.
Abstract: Women's rights have come under attack in many Muslim countries, particularly those where the state relies for support on fundamentalist religious elements among the clergy. The response of women to such attacks and their capacity to defend themselves is determined by the nature and level of women's organizations that exist within a particular social formation. In this article, the author examines the particularity of one specific case: that of Pakistan. The antecedents of women's mobilization and the transformation of their organizations over time are traced through their interface with political trends in the country. Particular attention is given to a new women's organization, the Women's Action Forum.
Abstract: Anthropological studies of women's roles in agrarian societies generally have relegated women to the domestic sphere of the household. Women's involvement in reproductive and child rearing activities have been portrayed as more closely aligned with nature, in contrast to men's access to the public sphere and male alignment with culture. These analyses tend to view women as blind followers of tradition rather than as decision-makers. This study shows that the process of weaning in central Mexico involves a series of decisions by each mother on the basis of principles that guide weaning. The principles inform a mother of the effect of continued lactation, under specific conditions, on the child, at certain stages of biological and psychological development. The theoretical implication is that women's traditional activities involve discourse and decision-making on the basis of abstract principles. The pragmatic implication is that women could learn modern medical methods of evaluating child health, that could then be incorporated into their weaning decisions.
Abstract: This study examines the attitudes of male and female students toward the wife, mother, and father roles. Data were collected from a sample of 210 university graduate students in Andhra Pradesh, India, in 1982. Fourteen independent variables are correlated with the three dependent variables for males and females. On a 20-item sex role attitude scale, 12 statements elicited traditional attitudes while six elicited liberal attitudes from the sample. In general, the students expressed traditional attitudes toward the wife role and the father role. Females' attitudes toward the mother role were more liberal than those of males. Stepwise Multiple Regression analysis reveals that, for females, father's education was the significant predictor in explaining the variance in the wife role attitudes and the mother role attitudes while caste was the salient variable in explaining the father role attitude variance. For males, number of brothers explained the greatest variance in the mother role attitudes. In terms of the amount of variance and the number of predictors explaining the variance in the three set role attitudes, the independent variables did not explain the variance as expected.
Abstract: Many Malawian civil servants will readily admit that women in many cases are responsible for most work related to food production and that they are vital to the rural economy. Yet by the time government programs emerge, and are executed, they generally reflect a far more limited evaluation of the role of women, as homemakers. This paper provides documentary evidence of the restrictive nature of these policies, and then sets out to suggest explanations for this, giving primary attention to bureaucratic attitudes and perceptions. It notes, for example, the paucity of women in policy-making positions, "patriarchal" attitudes (and some of the ways they are justified) among male civil servants, and the effects on rural women of negative official attitudes towards "non-progressive" peasant farmers in general.
Abstract: For women around the world, involvement in urbanization can demand behavioral adaptation. One of the less visible but often serious adaptations is finding support in the form of friendships with other women. This paper draws on anthropological fieldwork to consider the friendship issue for a segment of urban women in Malaysia and to address the questions: How do newly urbanized women make friends with other women in the city? How do urban women's approaches to the problems of same-sex friendship compare with men's?
Abstract: General Zia-ul-Haq's martial law regime in Pakistan has gradually reorganized many secular institutions to bring them into conformity with his advisors' view of Islamic ideology. The government's Islamization program, which many observers believe to be directed at political rather than religious ends, has touched women's lives in the areas of civil law, educational institutions, and employment. This paper stresses the concrete and symbolic consequences of the government's Islamization program for Pakistani women. The concrete impact of these policies has directly affected only a minority of women, largely articulate urban women. Their responses to government activities through both the Women's Division of the Zia Government and women's voluntary organizations are reviewed here. The author suggests, however, that government policies have indirectly affected all women through the minimal financial resources committed to women's potential role in economic development.
Abstract: This paper examines the division of labor in the households of 172 female factory workers in Bogota, Colombia. All of these women played crucial roles in what can be considered the family wage economy. They contributed substantially to the total income of their households and participated in domestic labor as well. There were notable differences among the respondents, however, with regard to the responsibilities they shouldered. Widows and separated women had the heaviest burden, married women had a somewhat lighter burden, and single women bore the least responsibility for supporting their households. Overall, the respondents seemed to be satisfied with their jobs though they did not strongly advocate women's employment outside the home. They performed wage labor within a context of strong, traditional family commitments.
Abstract: Since the early 1970s, China has made diligent efforts to end the country's "reproductive anarchy." To keep the total population within 1.2 billion by 2000, the revolutionarily unique policy of "one child per couple" has emerged as the family-size ideal. This policy is explicitly fair in both principle and procedure, but does generate problems as it reduces population growth. This paper reviews and assesses the misgivings and reservations of the critics and examines the major ramifications of the confrontation between society and the family implicit in China's population planning programs. The analysis goes beyond the commonly noted issues of old age, security, infanticide, and the "marriage squeeze" to speculate on how the policy of minimal reproduction will affect the life cycle of women. Will women be more able to contemplate and conduct their life in different terms? What will be the nature of married life when sex and reproduction become separated under this policy? The policy of minimal reproduction devalues women as mothers but simultaneously makes men unnecessary beyond their first or second impregnation. Will this not mean the ultimate emancipation of women? Answers to these questions must await the passage of time, but the behavioral and sociological impact of the one child policy or even two-child ideal should be considered with much more imagination and foresight than at present.
Abstract: This paper presents information on cesarean section and the factors affecting variations in cesarean section rates for three states in the Northeast Region of Brazil, the poorest region of the country. Data were collected in household surveys carried out in 1980. Cesarean delivery rates are for "last babies" born between January 1978 and the date of the survey. For the region as a whole, the cesarean birth rate is 15% but if only hospital deliveries are considered the rate of 19%. Cesarean section rates are highest in the major urban areas and lowest in rural areas. Within each residence category, the cesarean delivery rate increases with increasing education, is higher for women receiving early prenatal care, and is higher in private hospitals. The correlation of education level with whether a women receives prenatal care and when she receives that care as well as with the type of hospital in which she delivers indicates that social class factors affect variations in the rate of cesarean delivery.
Abstract: This paper describes the role of women in communal labor among Quechua-speaking peasant farmers in the Potosi region of highland Bolivia. Elements of equality, reciprocity, and hierarchy in the sexual division of labor in the area are discussed and their relationship to the work of women and men in collectivity is explored. The paper attempts to demonstrate that the relatively egalitarian relations that exist between women and men in the region under analysis have a firm basis in the equitable evaluation of male and female labor contributions to the social group. It reveals as well some of the channels through which elements of hierarchy in the larger social order can affect local conceptualizations of male and female.
Abstract: This paper discusses the findings of intensive interviews with a small sample of single and married women workers in the electronics industry in Singapore. The monotonous, repetitive nature of the tasks discourages women's commitment to their jobs. Further, the fluctuating nature of employment presents the workers with a high degree of economic insecurity. All the working women regularly contribute part of their income to their families. Subjectively, they realize that the roles of women are rapidly changing and that a woman's place is not solely in the home. Nevertheless, changes in the economic roles of women have not brought about commensurate changes in familial roles, particularly for married women. In this paper, the social impact of the trans national corporation (TNC) is also examined.
Abstract: In this study 112 farm and 30 market women were interviewed almost 20 years after Zambia gained independence to ascertain whether or not these women perceived development occurring, whether they had influenced its path, and what kinds of development would most assist them. Women also were asked what amount of time they contributed to farming (or their market activities) and to household tasks. Results showed that farm women contributed 53% of the total agricultural labor on their farms and 82% of the household labor.
Fifty-one percent of the farm women and 57% of the market women believed that development had occurred in the areas where they lived and, of this group, 88% believed they had benefited from this development. Only one-third of the farm women and one-half the market women, however, believed they had "influenced" the direction of development.
When asked what kinds of development would most assist them, the farm women's responses were farm improvements, credit, clinics, wells, and transport. Of the 53 responses describing farm improvements, 20 wanted labor saving devices (oxen and ploughs, tractors for hire), 14 wanted higher farm prices, 9 lower input prices, and 6 more cattle. The market women wanted improved markets, cooperatives for women, and clinics.
Abstract: The paper addresses the question of the changing modes of women's subordination during the transition to capitalism, comparing experiences from Europe and Latin America. In spite of the historical differences between the two areas, it is possible to infer that capitalist development had some similar effects on the structure of the family and on family transactions. Social ideology equated the loss of productive functions of the family to the weakening of its economic role in the society. This approach ignored the new integration of the family in the reproductive cycle of the economy. The family unit became unilaterally symbolized as emotional and parent-child, husband-wife relationship were represented only as love relations. Effectivity became the medium through which oppression and power within the family were concealed. The family maintained the inequality of rights and duties between husbands and wives albeit in a new form. The essential feature of the new mode of women's subordination was the ambiguity of the position of the mother-wife. As she became more emotionally subordinated, the women gained more centrality in the family life. This centrality provided some women the alternative of defining themselves as subjects and gaining ideological control of children, a possibility that did not exist to the same degree before industrialization.
Abstract: This paper examines the relationship between women's roles and capitalist development through a study of 208 lower-class and working-class households in Ciudad Guayana, and planned industrial city founded in 1961. The study concludes that the process of industrialization and selective investment in the construction of urban infrastructure has led to an exaggeration of women's domestic roles and of the occupational segregation that characterizes women's participation in the labor force throughout Venezuela. Specifically, planners assigned women a supportive role as housewives responsible for the reproduction of male labor power. Bolstered by cultural values and a Civil Code that legally established female subordination to men, the planners set up a structure of opportunities and benefits that reinforced female dependence on men. The primacy of women's domestic roles is reflected in the rate of participation in the labor force, in occupational segregation, in a greater concentration of women in the informal sector, and in female poverty.
Abstract: Incorporation into the modern economic sector has had an impact on the status of women among the Siona Indians of Colombia. The position of Siona women has not been adversely affected as long as they remain important producers of items consumed by the household. Many young women leave the community and emigrate to the cities to work as domestic servants. The paper examines the motivations for migrating and the networks of migration as well as the possibilities for upward mobility offered by migration. Comparison with other studies on domestic servants suggests that modernization and urbanization do not always lead to improvement in women's status. Emigration of women may also have negative consequences for the Siona community as a whole.
Abstract: Based on 1971 census data, this paper addresses the question of variation in the level of female labor participation in the urban population of districts of Madhya Pradesh, India. Areas in which large numbers of high caste women work also are areas of high labor force participation by females of scheduled castes and tribes. Conversely, areas recording low rates of labor force participation by females are characterized by low proportions for both the groups. These women, irrespective of their hierarchical position in the traditional social order, seem to follow broad regional norms which may have (or may not have) constrained their access to public activities. I contend, then, that regional culture plays an important part in influencing the level of female participation in the urban labor force, and leaves open the question of the possible origin of the regional culture in the ecological circumstances that have customarily been proposed by scholars like Boserup.
Abstract: This paper attempts to measure the magnitude of discrimination against women employees in an urban labor market. The data for the study come from a sample survey conducted by the author in an urban area of India. The findings show that the average earnings of women are lower than those of men, even when women are equally qualified and efficient, and that wage differences are due to deliberate discrimination against women in the labor market. The findings also indicate that deliberate wage discrimination against women is not entirely responsible for differences in earnings between males and females; unequal distribution of education and other economic characteristics which influence earnings cause substantial wage differences between the sexes.
Abstract: Major changes in the technology and economic organization of Indian agriculture have had far-reaching effects on other aspects of social life. A critical but neglected area has been the effect that the changing technology and accompanying social relations of production have had on women's role in agricultural production and on gender relations. Since the publication of Boserup's Woman's Role in Economic Development (1970), there has been a concern with critically assessing the effects of economic development and social change on female status. One of Boserup's main contributions was to begin to delineate the negative effects that colonialism and the penetration of capitalism into subsistence economies has had on women. The major objective of this paper is to undertake a review of what has been learned thus far about class and gender formation and apply it to an analysis of women in India. Preliminary work analyzing statistical trends affecting the lives of Indian women under capitalist development reveals: a declining adverse sex ratio; a declining proportion of women in industrial categories; a drastic decline of women in secondary sectors (industry, trade, and commerce); a decline in the number of female cultivators; and a lower rate of proletarianization (i.e., absorption into the work force) for women than for men and, hence, greater pauperization. This paper concretizes the general view of focusing on research carried out in a single village. It was found that female participation in production activities mirrored caste and class position. Further, this differential participation by the two main castes-cum-classes of rural women directly affects, and is intimately related to, other aspects of their lives. The paper also discusses some of the major contradictions for women's status stemming from the transformation of agrarian relations.
Abstract: The paper raises some of the unsettled and controversial questions in the basic needs debate. Among them are: Who determines what needs are basic? What substance can be given to the slogan "participation" which, together with adequate income and well designed public services contains the essence of basic needs? What are the politics of basic needs? Is it a revolutionary or a conservative approach? What is the relation between meeting basic needs as an end in itself and as a means to raise labor productivity? Why are humanitarians and human capital school adherents at loggerheads? How should international support for a basic needs strategy be mobilized? And what is the empirical relation between poverty eradication and reducing income inequalities?
Abstract: Future work on issues concerning women and development requires an internationally oriented scholarship on women that is closely tied to both research and practice. American universities have not served us well in building that scholarship both because of failures to include international orientations and teaching and research concerning women. In the growth of an internationally oriented scholarship on women, several important groups have also remained aloof from each other instead of joining forces. Women in "area studies" were responsible for the first major United States academic conference on international feminist issues in 1976, but this initial effort did not lead to the integration with feminist scholarship and development studies that organizers had hoped for. The formation of the new Association of Women in Development in 1982 drew on other groups of academic researchers and practitioners, building on regional networks supported by USAID's Office for Women in Development. Although there is some overlap between the academic researchers primarily concerned with development research and practice and academic researchers focusing on teaching and research about women internationally, these two groups have not yet sufficiently linked forces to develop a body of research on both theory and policy. In development-assistance institutions, which play an important role in supporting both research and projects oriented to women in development, female staff are still few and lack power. This makes it difficult to consolidate critical and adversary research with activities that more directly serve the interests of development-assistance institutions. Developing the common ground of theory and policy is not the same thing as achieving consensus nor is consensus needed to carry forward our common enterprise. An important element in this common enterprise at the present time is to achieve better integration of findings and analyses about women and gender in the ideas prevailing in the development community. Far too many people concerned with development planning and research still consider that "women's issues" are simply a matter of advocacy by a few activists who can be satisfied by a few token gestures. This usually means that action and research concerning women are subjected to "false specialization" the creation of a special niche where women in marginal positions and small budgets lack institutional influence. It is crucial for the development community to realize that "women's issues" have arisen as a result of vast changes brought about by development. These changes represent fundamentally new problems for researchers and planners that must be approached in new ways. On the practical level, introducing "women's components" into projects, while important, should be seen only as steps in a broader process of integration. Women's projects are often needed because policies affect women adversely. Why not focus equal attention on achieving policy changes? This requires common efforts by many different individuals and groups concerned with women and gender relations. The internationalization of Women's Studies, the development of research paradigms that make gender central to analyses of social change, and rethinking development issues from a new perspective on women are all essential to meeting the challenges of the immediate future.
Abstract: The modern state artificially divides society into public and private spheres, actively creating that reality through both political participants and policy itself. This paper reconstructs that process, focusing first on the pre-colonial relevance of "women's issues," and then early colonial policies and programs which defined women's issues outside the public agenda. Following that, the paper outlines the partial extension of that public agenda to include women on certain terms, but in the name of domestic feminism. The final part of the paper analyzes how public-private distinctions are maintained through political activities and demands which accommodate themselves to those state-imposed boundaries, both nationally and in the name of international feminism. Throughout the paper, public-private distinctions are discussed in terms of how they create the proper setting for capitalist transformation and the long-term interests it serves.
Abstract: The purpose of this paper is to quantify the contribution of economic development to observed fertility decline, with specific reference to the recent experience of Indonesia, Japan, Korea, and Thailand. Economic development is conceived as including such factors as education, urbanization, and child mortality, in addition to income itself. The analysis proceeds in two stages. In the first, recent rates of fertility decline in the four countries are compared to those generated by a system of equations fitted to a cross-section of the world's nations as of 1970. Whereas the equation system provides a plausible account of fertility reduction on a worldwide average, it accounts for only one-third to one-half of that observed in the Asian countries under study. In the second stage of the study, fertility change is analyzed using survey data from Korea and Thailand. Although the results indicate a clear association between fertility decline and development factors, again, one-half to two-thirds of the fertility reduction must be attributed to something beyond economic development, even taken in its widest sense.
Abstract: This article is both a description and an exploration of the place of activist women in the indigenous, nationalist political movement of Native Hawaiians. The analysis is rooted in the author's own experiences, but significant larger connections are made with the development and power of political women in general. Insights from contemporary feminist theory are applied toward an understanding of the many conflicting conditions under which activist women participate in indigenous struggles. Questions are raised about the relationship between feminist and nationalist struggles in the day-to-day living through of those struggles. The author argues that how we feel about our political commitments is as crucial as how we enact them, and in turn, how they merge with other commitments to redirect us. She concludes with the judgment that indigenous women must fight for their own liberation as women even as they fight for the liberation of their people. Her attempt, through a single example, shows just how difficult that imperative can be.
Abstract: I will propose a Women's Studies method for an Asian American Studies curriculum which incorporates a women-centered feminist historical approach and a holistic feminist anthropological approach with the feminist politics of American women of color. My emphasis will be on the inter-connectedness of sexism, racism, classism, and homophobia in American social systems and cultural ideologies. I believe that an Asian American Women's Studies method must be founded on feminist politics as it is defined by Asian American women themselves and be based on their multiple consciousness raising and multiple identities of gender, race, ethnicity, class, and sexual politics.
Abstract: Anthropological fieldwork conducted during 1981 reveals some effects of irrigation on women in a northwest Indian village. The arrival of irrigation in 1954 marked the beginning of significant changes in the life of the villagers. Its benefits, however, have not been felt equally by women of different castes. Irrigation has increased household income, provided new employment opportunities, improved domestic water supply, and allowed women to maintain more productive livestock. This paper describes the different affects of these changes on upper and lower caste women both in a) on-farm agricultural labor; and b) domestic activities within the household.
Abstract: This paper describes research undertaken to determine the relative mortality due to reproductive causes and nonreproductive causes in a developing country. Preliminary data on 1135 deaths to married women 15 to 50 years of age in the governorate of Menoufia, Egypt, during 1981 and part of 1982 are described. Causes of death were diagnosed by a Medical Panel from data collected by nonmedically trained persons who interviewed the families of the deceased. Preliminary analysis suggests that the practice of contraception in a developing country is safer than the alternative.
Abstract: A variety of factors shape patterns of breastfeeding, and in societies where lactation has a major effect on birth spacing, the configuration of breastfeeding practices ultimately affects demographic rates. In two central Mexican villages, interviews and observations reveal that breastfeeding patterns are determined by traditions governing mother-infant contact, maternal precautions to ensure adequate quantity and quality of breast milk, and by rules guiding weaning. Culture-specific meanings of demand feeding, supplementation, and abrupt weaning are evident from interview data collected in two Mexican villages, Tepetlaoxtoc and Amanalco, during 1976 and 1977. Because of the situational nature of beliefs and rules surrounding lactation and weaning, women vary considerably in timing the phases of weaning.
Villagers are generally unaware of the contraceptive effect of lactation. In Amanalco, lactation contraception is the major mechanism of birth spacing, thus constraining population growth. Another constraint is the high rate of child mortality. In Tepetlaoxtoc, additional contraceptive techniques apparently are used to increase birth spacing. Breastfeeding patterns, then, are the product of traditions of maternal decisions. They result in considerable variation in the timing of weaning, affect rates of fertility and possibly child mortality, and act to constrain population growth.
Abstract: To maintain political stability and a cheap, elastic labor supply necessary for contemporary capitalism to operate in Taiwan, the government allocates a large share of its budget to national security, a small share to a social welfare infrastructure, and encourages an ideology of patriarchal familism. This paper examines how women facilitate Taiwan's comparative advantage in the world economy by considering: (1) the ways in which women from a small village community act in defense of the patriarchal family; (2) what their interests may be in maintaining such a family; and (3) how development affects their lives.
Abstract: Attention has focused on the demographic process underlying the urban transition in the Third World, but disproportionately on the economic costs and opportunities for men. We turn our attention to women. Using data on the 148 major cities of India in 1971 we examine factors which contribute to greater female labor force participation in urban areas and the role which opportunities for labor force participation play in bringing women to the city. Among these factors we include measures of the status of women: literacy, infant mortality, fertility, and age at marriage. We find that the share of the labor force in different industries is an important factor: the higher the proportion of the total labor force of a city employed in construction work or household industry, the higher the proportion of women employed in that city. Location in the South of India and higher status of women scores also contribute to higher rates of female employment in the city.
Female labor force participation in turn relates to more balanced sex ratios in urban areas. Women migrate to the city in part in response to their own economic opportunities there. Other factors contributing to more balanced sex ratios include smaller city size, a smaller proportion of migrants in the male population, and location in the South. More balanced sex ratios in the cities may improve the quality of urban life and offer women the benefits of urban advantages in literacy and life expectancy, but whether these hypothetical advantages are realized in practice remains to be seen.
Abstract: This paper examines the different responses of Eskimo men and women in northern Alaska to wage work. Oil development in the north created high paying, culturally adapted job opportunities in many fields such as government operations and construction.
A 1977 survey of the northern Eskimo population found that women surged into the labor market. Indeed, northern Eskimo female labor force participation rates approximated national norms. Northern Eskimo men, in contrast, chose to participate in the wage economy at levels substantially below national norms. Men, including younger men, preferred a bicultural pattern of economic activity that combined wage work with hunting.
This paper points out that the kinds of jobs northern Eskimo women entered provided much greater informal education and much better prospects, should the present oil economy collapse. Implications for the cultural roles of men and women are discussed.
Abstract: This paper describes male and female migration patterns in Sri Lanka, identifying commonalities and differences. Census data on sex ratios in the population of each district are the main data employed. The paper begins with a discussion of the data and their strengths and limitations. Next a picture of inter-district migration is presented, followed by an examination of sex ratios by age group. Five districts are then examined in greater detail, using available direct census information on numbers of male and female migrants. In conclusion, social correlates of the internal migration patterns are noted and suggestions are made about the directions for future research on the subject.
Abstract: Although Mexico's Border Industrialization Program (BIP) was formulated to relieve unemployment in northern cities, critics claim that it has not served this end. The main reason for this failure, many maintain, is that unemployment in the North, as in the nation as a whole, is a male problem. Yet, women constitute the bulk of the BIP labor force. This paper employs aggregate data on men's and women's labor force participation to demonstrate that this claim is based on several inaccurate assumptions. Average unemployment rates for the Northern region, as for the nation as a whole, are higher among women than men of comparable ages. Joblessness is especially pronounced among younger women, that sector of the labor force from which the majority of BIP workers are recruited. The program does not appear to have enhanced women's labor market situation relative to men's; rather, the same conditions which weaken women's employment status in other parts of Mexico also operate in the North, despite any job opportunities the program might offer. This essay draws upon propositions from Marxist-feminist theory to interpret these empirical trends.
Abstract: This paper evaluates two methods for collecting time allocation data to describe women's and children's activities in two modernizing societies. Drawing on ethnographic field studies by the authors, it compares the research questions, data, results, and interpretations that can be made by means of spot versus day-long narrative observations. This paper, written jointly by a psychologist and an anthropologist, thus compares two methods and varying results obtained on the effect of different cash/occupational choices of mothers on their household activities and interactions with children.
Abstract: In a regime of high mortality, parents may have a greater number of births than their desired family size as an insurance against the possibility of losses in the future, at a time when fecundity loss or health hazards would make further births inadvisable or impossible. The log-linear probability model and data from the Malaysian Family Life Survey are used to explore this relationship quantitatively. The results suggest that perceived child survival probabilities affect husband's desired fertility significantly, in the expected direction, but have no impact on the wife's desire for further births. Important husband-wife differentials in the response of desired fertility to changes in other variables are also uncovered.
Abstract: In 1970 a one-year prospective study of birth interval dynamics for a group of 200 women in Matlab, Bangladesh, was done. The present paper reports on an extended and enlarged study of natural fertility in the same area. During the prospective period of 52 months (1975-1980), 2300 women were asked each month about their reproductive status, presence or absence of the husband, family planning use, and breastfeeding practice. During the first year of the study, anthropometric measures were taken and blood specimens were collected for biochemical analyses of the nutritional status of the women. During the last year of the study when interviewer-respondent rapport was well-established, a question on intercourse frequency was added.
These analyses of patterns in the components of the birth interval are an important step in understanding the intermediate fertility variables, provide insights into the reasons for less than maximum fertility in this population, and enable predictions of how fertility could change with changes in mortality and breastfeeding in Bangladesh.
SOCIAL DEVELOPMENT AND
1960 TO 1980 FERTILITY DECLINES AMONG LESS DEVELOPED LATIN AMERICAN, ASIAN,
AND ALL LESS DEVELOPED POPULATIONS
by Phillips Cutright, with the assistance of Richard Adams
Working Paper 39, October 1983
Abstract: A review of theoretical and empirical studies of national fertility declines in more developed countries (MDCs) concludes that fertility adjusts to change in indicators of development, but little empirical evidence exists to favor one specific indicator over another. Among less developed countries (LDCs) theoretical and empirical evidence support the hypothesis that recent fertility transitions are aided by innovations in the form of organized family planning program, in addition to increases in levels of development.
Analyses of 1960 to 1980 change in crude birth rates in Asian, Latin American, and all LDCs found a significant impact of social development, but no significant impact of economic development, net of family planning program activity. Social development indicators were narrowed to life expectancy and adult literacy. Implications for policies to reduce birth rates in LDCs are discussed.
Abstract: Law is a social standard of what is right or what is not right and has historically been an important source of social cohesion. For many of the newly developed states of the Third World, however, law is often a principal means for creating social change. In this sense then, law has a political as well as an ideological function. In late nineteenth and twentieth century Iran, law has been used not only as a powerful ideological vehicle of social cohesion and stability, but also as a force to bring about desired change. This paper attempts to show that the efforts of the twentieth century Iranian state to develop laws improving the position of women in that society have been both ideologically and politically motivated. I argue that most of the new legislation regarding the position of women did not radically violate Islamic laws; it simply interpreted them in the light of new socioeconomic developments in society. In light of the Agrarian experience, law can be seen as an instrument that was moderately helpful in improving the lot of women but that still lagged behind in creating a comprehensive change in social values that would guide the position of women in that society.
Abstract: When the contribution women make in production is not taken into account by development agencies, the introduction of technological change and large-scale projects may result in the destruction of the domestic economy and the impoverishment of families. Increasing rates of infant mortality are evidence of the polarization of wealth and the limited access to the means of production women and children in developing countries are permitted with the penetration of capitalism. As the ultimate unit of production in resisting the encroachment of capitalism, the domestic unit has subsidized the costs of capitalist production. Theories of the domestic mode of production are discussed in relation to development planning. Models focusing only on economic factors are seen as too limited to assess the outcome of development planning because of the cultural imperatives motivating behavior. Nine cases of development grouped according to type of innovation, e.g., the adoption of cash crops and mechanization; large-scale development projects such as dams, craft, and industrial production; and forced migration, are discussed in relation to the following variables: (1) changes in the composition of the household, (2) changes in the division of labor within the household, and (3) migration of members of the family. The author concludes the article with a series of propositions about the relationship between these variables and the success of the projects measured in terms of their contribution to human welfare.
Abstract: This paper explores the changing concepts of male and female and changes in the structural position of gender categories themselves in the three major periods of Sami history: a semi-nomadic "traditional" period, based on hunting and fishing; a "pastoral" period, involving extensive migrations with large herds of domesticated reindeer; and a "modern" period of considerable Sami involvement in a Western market economy. A focus on gender allows the development of a more comprehensive theory of Sami history as a series of cultural systems of very different kinds. Each system is characterized by its own primary relations and categories, organizing not only gender relations but also intimately related construction of the self and social whole, ecological patterns, mode of historical reproduction, and the overall relation of men and women to the symbolic order. Broader implications of this Sami analysis are also suggested for theoretical issues in the study of gender and culture and for practical assessments of the situations and needs of women and men in non-Western societies.
Abstract: Policy makers and social scientists envisioned a role for educators in development based on "human capital" theory. In the Brazilian Amazon frontier community of Itaituba, female educators do contribute to community, human resources, and economic development in ways consistent with gender and class expectations and constraints. Their overall impact on economic development, however, is negligible because the extractive economic system favors cheap, unskilled labor rather than a better-trained, more productive local labor force.
Abstract: This article provides an empirical test of differential processes affecting female employment in medical professions. Clues to these underlying principles are sought in the earliest prototype of medical practitioner the shaman. A worldwide random sample of societies is used to test ten basic hypotheses. Social structural findings indicate available child care is moderately associated with female employment. Medical structural findings indicate training is a significant barrier to female employment. Results support recent international modern comparisons regarding women physicians.
Abstract: This paper argues that the minimal political participation of women in Japan before World War II was determined by systematic state policies aimed at rapid industrialization, rather than by the mere persistence of premodern values and attitudes in society. In particular the Public Peace Police Law of 1900, which barred women from attending political meetings until 1922 and from joining political organizations until 1945, is examined in terms of its promulgation, ideology, and enforcement. The law was aimed first of all at textile workers, who were over 50 percent female and essential to the success of Japan's industrialization and export promotion. While attempting to bar women from political participation and self-interested demands, the state actively promoted their new social roles in factory labor and in educated motherhood and social service.
Abstract: For many years, social scientists have debated the ideological positions on the population-development equation. What has been absent from these discussions is the role played by multinational corporations in perpetuating both adverse population processes and economic under-development in Third World counties. This paper first examines the impact of Latin American countries. Second, it examines the impact of multinational corporations on Latin American women and how the globalization of capital undermines some widely accepted propositions concerning the role of women in economic development. Finally, it describes the impact of multinational corporations on internal migration pressures.
Abstract: The roughly egalitarian position of women in Kelantan, Malaysia, contrasts strongly with the comparatively low position of women in traditional Chinese society. In both societies the statuses of men and women increase with age but while extra-domestic economic activities best account for a gradual increase in the status of middle-aged Kelantanese women, a dramatic improvement in middle-aged Chinese women's status is due primarily to alterations in their domestic situation. The result of these changes reduces the contrast in the position of middle-aged women in these two societies.
Abstract: This paper extends the author's earlier research on the proportions of the sexes among the juvenile population in rural India. In India, boys predominate in the juvenile population of the Northwest, but numbers of boys and girls are quite equal in the South and East. Here, census data, materials on mortality among children, and ethnographic data are examined for Pakistan (to India's northwest) and Bangladesh (to her east) and compared with findings on India. It is demonstrated that patterns in Pakistan bear many similarities to northwestern India, as those in Bangladesh do to eastern India. Nevertheless, some interesting differences are revealed which help shed light on the question of sex ratios on the entire subcontinent.
Abstract: Much recent research centers on the failure of policies to incorporate women in the development process. While at the national level this assessment may be accurate in Zambia and elsewhere, it overlooks genuine achievements in specific instances. Offered as a case study of success, this paper describes the creation of a class of female white collar workers in Zambia, made possible by Zambian government manpower training policies. It details the impact of employment opportunities in the modern economic sector on the daily lives and social position of those women who achieve the new status.
Abstract: Following the pioneering efforts of the sociologists Park and Stonequist, this paper focuses upon two questions germane to the explication of the "marginal man" theory: whether marginality is an ascribed characteristic and whether the sociological limits of applicability of the theory go beyond those of cultural or racial contact. Focusing upon African cities, it is suggested that marginality is engendered by social circumstances but triggered by individual consciousness; only the individual aware of exclusion can become the "marginal man." Moreover, male/female interaction, in its hierarchical ordering, can serve as a basis for marginality. As women gain privilege in social, economic, and political areas previously reserved for men, they are regarded as competitors and experience the discrimination similar to that leveled at minority group members. The paper concludes that African women's marginal status may not only be a consequent of social change but an antecedent as well, thereby making such carriers of marginality agents of change.
Abstract: The participation of women in Central American revolutionary movements has surpassed, in quantity and quality, all previous examples from the history of the Western hemisphere. Any attempt to understand this participation theoretically should take into account four developments: (1) the international context of women's movements and feminist discussion; (2) contradictions in the social structures of Central American societies that directly affect women (migration, male unemployment, rise in female-headed families, influx of women into higher education, etc.); (3) conditions for women within revolutionary organizations; and (4) the revolutionary strategy of people's war. The argument for the importance of these factors is developed in terms of the Nicaraguan revolution, but they are held to be valid for El Salvador and Guatemala as well. Numerous examples of women's experiences in the revolutionary process in Nicaragua are cited.
Abstract: This paper presents a critique of the neoclassical economic assumption that joint utility functions are exogenously given and vary randomly, if at all, across households. It proposes an alternative approach based on the proposition that changes in bargaining power between men, women, and children in the family may be a primary determinant of changes in household behavior. The effects of increases in the bargaining power of women and children on the costs of children are described. The approach is illustrated by an empirical analysis of time and goods allocation in rural Philippine households.
Abstract: Using survey data, the study examines conventional democratic political participation among women in Bogotá and Montevideo in the 1960s and early 1970s. It concludes that male-female differences in participation levels were small in the areas of formal and socially supported activities, under the special stimulus of a presidential campaign or in the case of less political, more particularistic action. Status and age were found to be important intervening variables tending to reduce but not eliminate female-male differences in level of participation, although women were somewhat more likely to participate in Montevideo than in Bogotá, a finding attributed to Uruguay's higher level of development.
Abstract: The growing size of the elderly population in both developing and developed societies raises questions about the complex nature of family and household structures and their impact on the well-being of older persons. This paper presents analyses of existing cross-national data, though limited and far from ideal, that permit us to assess variations in certain dimensions of family and household structure. The results clearly reveal that the one-family nuclei is the predominant household pattern, with the notable exception of India. One-person households are common in Western societies. This trend toward increasing independent residence patterns is especially evident in the United States where extensive living arrangement data are available. Overall adult household indexes provide additional evidence of the lack of multi-generational households, even those specific for older persons, although variations are noted by level of national development. Important differences in headship rates may be noted between males and females. This reflects the fact that older males tend to be currently married, while older females are widowed. Remarriage is more commonly found for older males (who tend to marry younger females) than for females, but this does not account for the large differentials. Differences in survival between the sexes, however, certainly provide the main explanation for these findings.
Abstract: This paper examines the writings, public statements, and speeches of the protagonists of the Indian "women's movement" from its inception in the nineteenth century to the 1980s. It argues that in India the leadership of the "women's movement" and the definition of the "women's question" initially came from Western-educated, urban, upper class/caste men whose primary concern was to build a strong "modern" India fit for self-government. The "women's question" became defined within the context of the changing goals and strategies of the emerging Indian nation, and the women's movement became an appendage of the nationalist movement. Political independence, therefore, also marked the paternalistic "granting" of gender equality in the Constitution. The patriarchal social system that had remained untouched by the women's movement, however, continued to demand and expect gender hierarchy, thus negating the legal equality embodied in the Constitution. The paper notes that in the last ten to twelve years the deterioration of economic conditions and the resulting intensification of caste and class tensions have given impetus to the formation of several women's groups of varying degrees of radicalism and autonomy. The mainstream, more permanent women's organizations continue to be extensions of male-dominated political parties, but there is growing evidence that some groups are autonomous. These groups operate on the local level using issues like police rape or dowry "murder" to mobilize women and raise people's consciousness of women's oppression in a patriarchal, capitalist system of relationships. As yet there is no national umbrella organization to coordinate the activities and concerns of such women's groups, nor do the groups constitute a widespread, broad-based movement by and for women.
Abstract: The more common forms of female genital mutilation and the consequences of these operations are described. Justifications for genital mutilation performed in the traditional and modern sectors are analyzed. It is concluded that in all cases the major reason for the existence and continuation of genital mutilation is "sexual politics" the control of women in order to control sexual and reproductive behavior.
Abstract: The key issue concerning "women in development" is not their lack of integration but the forms of their integration into the national and international economic processes. This paper investigates changing forms of Korean women's economic activities according to the dominant pattern of capital accumulation that characterized the rapid economic growth of Korea in the past two decades. Analysis of labor statistics and a sample survey revealed the following changes in Korean women's economic activities: (1) rapid absorption of the female labor force into the industrial sector the proletarianization of female workers has been faster than that of male workers; (2) intensification of agricultural work for rural women due to the increasing shortage of labor in rural areas; and (3) active involvement of married women in various forms of informal earning activities class differences in types of informal earnings exist but both middle-class and working-class women are active in informal economic activities. The paper demonstrates that the form of women's work is intimately affected by the inter-connection between capital accumulation and gender relations in society.
Abstract: This paper proposes that the influence of economic development on the status of women and fertility behavior can best be understood within the context of the world economic system. Foreign investment and trade dependency are hypothesized to lower the economic status of women. In turn, efforts to reduce fertility may be stymied by the lowered status of women and economic disdevelopment generated by investment and dependency. Cross-sectional regression analyses on a sample of 105 nation-states indicate that foreign investment and dependency have negative effects on women's economic status. Net of the level of development and the educational and economic status of women, investment and dependency through the effects of income inequality and infant mortality also operate to raise fertility behavior in 1975. Family planning programs are likely to be less than effective if the influence of the world economic system and the declining economic status of women on fertility are not taken into consideration.
Abstract: This paper analyzes the processes of social change in Kaduna, Nigeria, utilizing the approach of role theory and is based upon research conducted among Muslim Hausa women in 1980-81. The context is a high density, low income area of the city in which Hausa live in frequent contact with residents of other ethnic and religious backgrounds. Various roles of adult Hausa women are described as they are defined by Hausa actors; examples of individual adjustments to stress or conflict among roles and of role change over successive generations are provided. Analysis of behavior patterns suggests several strategies widely used by adult women dealing with role conflicts involving conjugal seclusion and norms for other roles. From this analysis suggestions which recognize the distinctiveness of behavior patterns from cultural norms are formulated for use in social and economic development.
Abstract: Food deficits, malnutrition, and associated nutrition-deficiency diseases in the Caribbean are topics full of uncertainties for policymakers. Many studies have been carried out over the years on the nutritional status of specific population groups, based on vital statistics, clinical data, and dietary and anthropometric surveys. This paper suggests alternative ways to advance our knowledge of why people in the region are undernourished and where planners might direct their energies in seeking solutions. Rather than focusing on nutrition surveys, the paper sketches a series of interlocked "scenarios" that analyze the larger systems generating hungry people: in particular, out-migration from rural areas, the decline of smallholder agriculture, and the feminization of farming.
Abstract: The purpose of this paper is to investigate whether the pattern of sexual wage differentials among academics at the University of Lagos in 1980 was primarily due to overt sex discrimination on the part of university authorities or, rather, was a reflection of academic productivity differences. Information concerning economic and status characteristics of the University of Lagos Academic Staff for four faculties in 1980 was provided by the administration. The sample included the entire female staff of the Faculties of Science, Social Science, Arts, and Education, a total of 36 women, and a random sample of every third male recorded by the administration in these faculties, a total of 82 males. In 1981, 15 of the 36 women in the sample also were interviewed in depth.
Quantitative analysis of academic rank differentials by gender attributed 89 percent of the gross difference to a variation in average productivity characteristics by gender and only 11 percent to employer discrimination. Analysis of the qualitative data showed how the social definition of women's roles and the structure of families affected the female scholars' productivity.
Abstract: The subordination of rural women as a concomitant of the conventional division of labor is a subject being widely researched. It is a crucial question in societies where ideological factors are of paramount influence. Development per se, while changing or blurring the traditional gender-based work boundaries, does not necessarily enhance either rural women's economic role or social status. Even when the development process is ideologically oriented, results are often disappointing. Studies have shown China, as well as Eastern Europe and some Latin American countries, to be a case in point. Israel, with a rural system actually founded on ideology, provides a pertinent case study. Despite the highly cherished value of equality of the sexes, the central ideological tenet of cooperative villages (as opposed to collective villages) was the supremacy of the family. These two ideological principles proved to be mutually exclusive. The reform of women's economic role did not suffice to ensure their equal status because no attempt was made to restructure female and male roles within the family. The authors conclude that the implementation of ideology in Israel was incomplete.
Abstract: Research conducted in the city of São Paulo with female workers in textile and garment industries showed that each had its own specific characteristics in terms of the work process and labor force. It is argued that these differences are a product of the technological sophistication of the textile industry vis the handicraft nature of the garment industry. The purpose of this paper is to examine some dimension of the effect of late industrialization in Brazil on female workers' lives. Census data are presented to show how economic growth affected the evolution of the female sector of the labor force. Then empirical data are presented to provide a picture of the life of a part of this population.
Abstract: The women's movement around the world takes many stances, including women's rights, feminism, women's research, women's auxiliaries of political and religious organizations, and socialist feminism. Because of its unique political and economic history, socialist feminism is the dominant emergent stance of the women's movement in Latin America. The movements in Brazil, Peru, the Dominican Republic, and Chile are examined, and socialist feminism related to both the international women's movement and to the political trends and constraints of the current political situation within each country. Women's movements in other Latin American countries are also briefly discussed.
Abstract: The traditional development model has been severely and effectively criticized by those who emphasize growth-with-equity as well as those who emphasize women-in-development. Both approaches aim to achieve greater equality; but in the former it is overall equality and in the latter it is equality between men and women. This paper argues that the success of either approach depends upon the success of the other and that both require an appropriate family theory. The family, in its critical role in the articulation of the individual and the economy, must be fully understood in policy planning and program implementation. An appropriate family theory as well as an effective family policy is a necessary ingredient for the achievement of both kinds of equality. Previous development policies with inappropriate or no family theory have resulted in severe problems for families and, especially, for women and children. Past mistakes may require immediate attention to women who lead families alone, but future policy should examine effective alternatives that bind men together with women in the task of providing for children.
Abstract: The present study examines Korean male and female familial sex role attitudes, with emphasis on structural and ideological factors in the formation of such attitudes. Based on a sample of 266 Korean college students, the data reveal that along three dimensions of familial sex role attitudes men are more traditional than women. Socioeconomic status and ideological factors have a differential effect on men's and women's sex role attitudes, while the demographic effects on both sexes are relatively low. Comparison to a similar American study is discussed to provide a cross-cultural perspective. Interpretation of results focuses on sex role socialization and the cultural conditions of the Korean society.
Abstract: Previous research has supported the hypothesis that greater education of women reduces population growth. Increased education of women is hypothesized to depress fertility by raising the value of women's time in activities competing with child rearing. Also education is associated with an increased knowledge of, and an improved attitude toward, using more effective birth control techniques. In addition, education tends to delay the age of marriage. Schooling represents exposure to different types of experiences that may affect preferences and formation of tastes. The relationship between education and fertility, however, is likely to be quite complex and may not operate, at least with equal intensity, throughout the educational continuum. In low income settings where supply factors may constrain family size, more education may release supply constraints. Thus, the result will be better knowledge of health practices, enabling women to have more children and to avert child deaths. On the other hand, the impact of education on fertility through the participation of women in the labor force depends upon the fundamental assumption that the role of women as mother and worker are mutually exclusive and that there is a high cost of obtaining alternatives to the mother's time in the household.
This paper attempts to untangle some of these relationships using data from a large household survey in Belo Horizonte, Brazil. The model employed takes account of the relationship between raising a family and the allocation of women's time in the labor force. Child deaths are defined as an endogenous variable, since they are considered to be a proxy of supply constraints on family size. The estimation is undertaken by using the two-stage least squares regression estimation technique (TSLS).
Abstract: The United Nations declaration of the decade of the 70s as International Women's Year focused attention on integrating women in economic development. Increasing awareness of the adverse effects of economic development on female populations calls for comparative studies of cultural frameworks. This study is an answer to that call. Based on extensive field work conducted in three different crop regions along the culturally varying border areas of Madhya Pradesh, India, the study revealed (1) a high degree of female participation in agricultural production and decision-making, (2) a gradual elimination of female roles in the wake of mechanization, and, finally, (3) a cognizable level of indifference in governmental services and prospective plans for integrating female roles in the development effort.
Abstract: This paper is about women from a Taiwanese (Chinese) community which, over the past 20 years, has changed from an economic system based almost purely on agriculture to one founded predominantly on off-farm employment. During this period, women have moved from the domestic sector to join the men of their families in the public sector. Yet, their participation in work outside the home has not been accompanied by a significant redefinition of their status. It is argued that the women's failure to achieve personal autonomy and authority on the basis of their "productive" labor derives from a system of patriarchal capitalism in which traditional ideology maintains and reinforces the subordination of women to the interests of the family, the state, and the international market economy.
Abstract: In rural areas of developing countries, the most common mode of birth control is lactation contraception. Under natural fertility conditions, lactation contraception is the major restraint on population growth. This study examines reproductive histories of rural Mexican women to analyze the effects of lactation on birth intervals. Women report beliefs about breast-feeding that encourage practices strengthening the contraceptive effects of lactation. Analysis of their birth intervals shows that infant mortality diminishes the duration of lactation and thus contributes to high birth rates. Under these conditions, diminishing infant mortality would result in a simultaneous demographic transition to lower birth rates. The result, however, would be greater rates of population growth.
Abstract: Kinship relations of educated and uneducated women change in the passage from childhood to adolescence, young adulthood, and maturity. Socioeconomic and demographic changes have caused a widening of kinship networks and individualizing the uses to which the kinship network is put in contemporary life. Women who achieve economic autonomy change from childhood dependence to early adult independence to mature interdependence. Economically dependent women, overwhelmingly the poor and uneducated, remain lifelong dependents on blood kin. Brittle marriages and the absence of state welfare benefits ensure the survival of blood kin ties as the major form of social security for both educated and uneducated women.
Abstract: The economic crisis confronting Peru for the last six years has been marked by the government's increased difficulty in keeping food prices at a tolerable level. In an apparent effort to turn attention away from its own responsibility in the crisis, the government launched a campaign against petty marketers and street vendors, an occupational group composed in large part of poor women. Based on interview data collected in 1977 in the city of Huaraz, along with national news reports from Lima, dating from 1977 to the present, this paper analyzes the emerging conflict between the national elite and impoverished marketers in Peru.
Abstract: In this paper we formulate and test a cultural ecological model to explain cross-societal variations in female contributions to agricultural subsistence. The model includes two kinds of variables labor allocation constraints and technological factors. We assume that the male contribution to agriculture increases with societal complexity primarily because (a) women's labor gets redirected to other tasks such as the care of domesticated animals, and (b) men's labor is pulled into agriculture by the increase in the total daily agricultural workload.
The importance of domesticated animals to subsistence emerges as the single most powerful predictor of male participation in agriculture. Population pressure and a long dry season also act to increase the relative contribution of men to agricultural subsistence. Both increase the amount of work to be done per unit of land and time and hence increase the amount of agricultural work that men must do. The plow also acts to decrease female participation in agricultural subsistence, presumably through its effect on land ownership and the form of marriage, but it does not have the strength of relationship to female subsistence participation that often has been claimed for it.
Abstract: Household energy consumption continues to account for between 40 and 60 percent of total energy budgets in the Association of Southeast Asian Nation (ASEAN) countries with Indonesia, Malaysia, and Thailand using traditional fuels for nearly three-quarters of their total energy. Most of this burnable energy is used for cooking.
The acceptance of new energy technologies requires time and money both of which are in short supply among rural villagers. Their strategies for survival require very long days, with women everywhere working more hours than men. Women have the least amount of time since they are responsible for most production activities and household chores. Thus, the introduction of new technology at the household level is generally attractive only to those few villagers with some money and considerable free time with resultant income differentiation, displacement of labor, and further impoverishment of the poor.
Abstract: This article examines women's occupational careers and socioeconomic adjustment in Lusaka, Zambia, an area marked by high rates of urban migration and restricted opportunities for formal employment among women. The exclusion of women by virtue of education and opportunity from the urban wage labor force has resulted in the creation of alternative occupational options in the informal sector, including self-employment as petty traders, craft producers, and small entrepreneurs. Entrepreneurial activities initiated by unemployed squatter women in the city are usually intended to fulfill economic needs on a temporary basis and reflect a pattern of commercialization of "traditional" skills. An in-depth analysis of these women's socioeconomic adaptations in the Zambian case suggests an important conceptual link between urban and rural development processes and emphasizes the necessity for policy planning that takes into account the short-term entrepreneurial options that migrant women generate in the urban context.
Abstract: A major assumption of modernization theory, the perspective which has directed US development policy in recent decades, is that socioeconomic development leads to women's equality, liberation, and material well-being. While socialist-feminist sociologists have repeatedly challenged this thesis, they have yet to present a comprehensive, empirically grounded theory of women in developing societies. On the presumption that the fruitful starting point for such a theory is the separation of women's remunerated from household work, this paper outlines these two contrasting perspectives on this process and suggests a research paradigm for studying women's roles in Third World societies.
Abstract: In 1965 the authors initiated handknit sweater production among 40 women in Mira, a village in northern Ecuador. The Mireñas have developed a cottage industry with 1,000 families producing 6,000 sweaters monthly in 1979. The industry has spread over two provinces as Mireñas extended employment and credit to even more isolated rural women. Women in Mira are economic actors in their own right who make important contributions to local and national development. Entirely dominated by rural women, Mira's sweater industry is an example of autonomous community development based on the elaboration of extended family exchange networks. It is argued that the nature and organization of the industry together with the high levels of earnings make it an example of "non-oppressive" development by rural women.