Globally, the African continent has the largest percentage of workers in informal employment. Based on data collected in 2016 by Bonnet et al. (2019: 10), 89% of workers in the sub-region work in informal employment.The figure is higher for women than it is for men, standing at 92% and 86% respectively.Workers in informal employment are…
Category: Feminist Africa 2023, Volume 4, Issue 1 : African Women Workers in a Changing World
Feminist Africa Volume 4, Issue 1 (2023) African Women Workers in a Changing World
This issue on African women workers in a changing world discusses several themes that have long been the concern of feminist scholars with an interest in women’s work: transnational capitalism and its implications for women’s productive activities, the debilitating impact of land tenure arrangements in Africa on women’s productive and reproductive responsibilities, as well as…
Land Grabbing: A Big Toll on Women Farmers – a Case Study of Segou Region in Mali
by Asmao Diallo In the wake of multiple crises, including economic instability, food shortage, energy crisis, and climate change, African farmers’ land relationships have under- gone remarkable changes in recent years. These changes in land relationships were initially brought about by the Structural Adjustment Programmes (SAPs) of the 1980s imposed by theWorld Bank and the…
Fishmeal Production and the Dispossession of Women in The Gambia
by Fatou H. Jobe This paper examines how large-scale fishmeal processing impacts women’s work in The Gambia. Fishmeal factories use bonga (Ethmalosa fimbriata), a staple fish inThe Gambia, to produce fishmeal for the global aquaculture industry.The Gambian government yearns for FDI in fishmeal factories to industrialise the fisheries sector, increase fisheries contribution to GDP and…
Women Farm Workers in Zimbabwe: The Social Policy Outcomes Two Decades after the Transformative Fast Track Land Reform
by Tom Tom and Resina Banda Women farm workers have so far received limited scholarly attention in Zimbabwe’s agrarian and labour policy literature. This is in a context where a conscious understanding of land reform as a social policy instrument is paltry. Taking women farm workers as the prime focus and using an empirical case…
“That Woman is a Farmer”: Gender and the Changing Character of Commercial Agriculture in Zimbabwe
by Newman Tekwa Female participation in commercial agriculture as part of women’s work in Zimbabwe remains inadequately documented and theorised. In a context of land reform and framed within the Transformative Social Policy framework, this paper seeks to highlight commercial agriculture as a new work role for women that challenges the existing gender system characterising…
Workplace Experiences of Infrastructure Sector Participants in South Africa’s Expanded Public Works Programme
by Ramona Baijnath The dominant narrative of Expanded Public Works Programme (EPWP) ben- eficiaries in South Africa has been largely documented through government communication channels under the titles of Beneficiary Stories and EPWP Changing LivesTestimonials.These stories indicate that PublicWorks Programme (PWP) beneficiaries are able to save or invest towards the realisation of short- term goals…
Continuity and Change:Women’s Work in the Kente Economy of Bonwire, Ghana
by Dede Amanor-Wilks Asante weaving traditions have survived relatively unchanged for more than 300 years.Yet the productive role that women once played as cotton growers and spinners has been eroded while a traditional ban on women entering the loom has proved difficult to overturn conclusively. Kente has been studied as an art form but rarely…
All That Glitters is not Gold: Formal Work Deficits on the African Continent
by Bashiratu Kamal Ghana, my country of birth, has a population of about 30 million out of which 51% are women. The majority of these women in the workforce (85%) can be found in the informal economy. This situation is not unique to Ghana. According to an International Labour Organization (ILO) survey conducted in 2015,…
Wangari Maathai, by Tabitha Kanogo. Athens, OH: Ohio University Press, 2020
-by Patricia Kameri-Mbote Reviewing this book is an honour for me.The subject –Wangari Maathai – is a woman I knew personally and admired greatly. She and I shared a cup of tea and buns at an international symposium that she had officially opened as an Assistant Minister for environment law on the morning of the…