Document(s) 8 of 13

Feminist political economy is the small but pluralistic body of literature that I have identified as having most successfully elucidated African gender relations (see Chapter 1, pp. 19–24). The historical materialist method of socialist feminism makes up its theoretical core; its substance also includes studies using a liberal approach. The reason for including certain liberal studies in the proposed new conceptual framework is that they contribute a vital local perspective on gender relations and economy. Through the rigour of their empirical analyses and through their sensitivity to local constructions of gender ideology and practice, these studies work to overcome the Western biases and assumptions inherent in of much of the feminist and nonfeminist scholarship on Africa. The three studies summarized in this chapter and the work of Mbilinyi (1984, 1985a, b, 1986) rely on an adapted historical materialist method. Several studies cited in Chapters 5 and 6 for their clarity on gender relations (e.g., Ladipo 1981; Wilson 1982; Badri 1986) start from but transcend the liberal framework.

Although the feminist political economy scholarship has only treated development issues incidentally, as aspects of women’s loss of power and autonomy in the village and the family, it provides the grounds upon which an understanding of the phenomena discussed in Chapter 3 can be based. In particular, the centrality of women’s organizations to African community life and the gender ideology that empowered women politically can be understood in their historical complexity.

In a recent article on Kikuyu women’s self-help groups in Kenya (Stamp 1986), I used the experience of the women of Mitero village to develop theoretical tools for an understanding of sex-gender systems in precolonial Africa, and of the way in which these systems have been transformed in colonial and postcolonial times. The study draws on many feminist political economy texts, including non-African material, in the development of its theoretical argument Other political economy studies of gender relations in Africa substantiate many aspects of the empirical findings, and point toward the theoretical construct presented here.

The first part of this chapter presents the Mitero study as a case exemplifying the feminist political economy approach. The second part of the chapter summarizes studies by two African scholars, substantiates the case for feminist political economy, and demonstrates the development of this school of thought within Africa. Although details about women’s organizations differ and much more work needs to be done on sex-gender systems (e.g., in matriljneal societies), the categories of analysis developed here (see also Stamp and Chege 1984; Robertson and Berger 1986) provide a valid template for the consideration of gender relations in other African societies.

Gender relations and women’s self-help groups

The Kikuyu are a vigorous, Bantu-speaking, ethnic group of over 2 million that have dominated the Kenyan political economy for much of the postindependence period. They inhabit a fertile hilly region of central Kenya. Patrilineal, polygynous, and horticultural (i.e., tracing descent through the male line and practicing hoe cultivation of crops), they were typical in many ways of sub-Saharan African agricultural societies. Their communally organized political economy and gender relations based on bridewealth were shared by most Bantu societies (and by many societies belonging to other linguistic groups).

A society such as the Kikuyu has traditionally been considered patriarchal, but an analysis of its gender relations demonstrates that the concept of patriarchy cannot be uncritically applied. Many feminist theorists, seeking to explain what they perceive as the universal domination of women by men throughout history, have used the concept of patriarchy to designate the gender system under which all forms of oppression occur. As Rubin (1975:167) states, however, “the term ‘Patriarchy’ was introduced to distinguish the forces maintaining sexism from other social forces, such as capitalism. But the use of ‘patriarchy’ obscures other distinctions. Its use is analogous to using ‘capitalism’ to refer to all modes of production.” Rubin (1975:167) argues that “sexual systems have a certain autonomy and cannot be explained in terms of economic forces.” By contrast, “sex-gender system” is a neutral, overarching concept. It may be used to classify all forms of gender relations, from patriarchal and oppressive to egalitarian. Patriarchy, then, is one of a number of sex-gender systems.

Focusing on the sex-gender system as a sphere of human activity and as relationships separate from, but intimately linked to, material production and reproduction allows the restoration of gender relations to their rightful place at the centre of political economy. More specifically, such a focus contributes to a better understanding of the complex interactions between the economic, social, and ideological aspects of male–female relationships in a society such as the Kikuyu, both in the precapitalist era and today. Rubin (1975) draws on the flawed but useful work of Lévi-Strauss (1969) on kinship to define her concept of sex-gender system. Lévi-Strauss (1969) classified the types of “exchange of women” that are integral to human kinship systems (e.g, women exchanged for women, women exchanged for bridewealth, women accompanied by dowry to the groom’s family). Rubin (1975:177) suggests that “the ‘exchange of women’ is an initial step toward building an arsenal of concepts with which sexual systems can be described.”

There are problems, however, with the emphasis by Lévi-Strauss (1969) and Rubin (1975) on exchange. Kettel (1986:55) stresses the importance of avoiding a view of women as “primordial pawns in the affairs of men” and, specifically, as a form of “capital” controlled by men (as indicated in Chapter 3, it is precisely this view of women, as assets of men, that has stymied development efforts). Leacock (1981:234) is similarly critical of the view of women as passive objects in the marriage game. She questions the current view that men are “the universal exploiters of women, albeit at times gentlemanly exploiters, who graciously acknowledge women as ‘the supreme gift,’” to use Lévi-Strauss’s (1969:65) expression. On the basis of much ethnographic evidence, Leacock (1981:24) makes an assertion that is central to feminist political economy:

The authority structure of egalitarian societies where all individuals were equally dependent on a collective larger than the nuclear family was one of wide dispersal of decision making among mature and elder women and men, who essentially made decisions — either singly, in small groups, or collectively — about those activities which it was their socially defined responsibility to carry out. Taken together, these constituted the “public” life of the group.

These decisions concerned marriage, among many other things. Going beyond Rubin’s idea of woman-exchange, we can view women not as passive objects in their own exchange but as active agents participating with men to “make marriages” (Collier and Rosaldo 1981:278), organizing women and men into social relations for biological reproduction. A categorization of sex-gender systems, then, will examine the different ways in which marriage is organized and seek to link them to different patterns of economic and political organization. In turn, arrangements by which women circulate vary and can be correlated with differences in their autonomy and authority from one society to another. A number of studies confirm Rubin’s (1975) proposition that there are regularities to types of marriage exchange by which we can precisely define sex-gender systems.

To establish the main features of the bridewealth sex-gender system, a simple comparison will suffice. In a society with reciprocal exchange of women between kin groups, such as the Lele of Zaire (Douglas 1963, cited in Rubin 1975:205), to get a bride, a man must have a kinswoman whom he can give in marriage. Furthermore, each marriage incurs a debt The web of debts and schemes for the control of women leaves them little latitude for independent action. Where a woman’s family receives bridewealth (which the family can use in turn to obtain a bride), such a web of debts and staking rights does not exist “Each transaction is self-contained” (Rubin 1975:206); however, it places the bride in a network of “social ties” that constrains her action throughout her marriage. Bridewealth systems vary considerably, and some involve the conversion of bridewealth into male political power (for a fascinating account of this network among the Kikuyu, see Mackenzie 1986:Chapter 5). The fulfillment of the material contract always depends, however, upon a wife’s performance as a procreator and producer; a number of political and economic considerations rest upon her marriage. Conversely, the success of her marriage depends on the ability and willingness of her affinal kin (her relatives by marriage) to fulfill their obligations to her family.

Thus, a marriage, rather than being a concrete, once-only expression of a debt fulfilled or incurred, is the ongoing manifestation of contractual relationships among a web of kin. The advancement of these relationships largely depends on the actions of the woman. As Leacock (1981:241) puts it, “In some societies, women move back and forth as valued people, creating, recreating and cementing networks of reciprocal relations through their moves, which are recompensed with brideprice.” The substantial rights of wives in precolonial Africa to control the means of production and own the product of their labour indicates the power of their central position in the bridewealth system. Conversely, the bridewealth system may have been favoured in political economies where economic and historical opportunity fostered a structure of economic participation for women that allowed them such control In this regard, it is significant that the dowry sex-gender system, with its concomitant poor position for women, is associated with the plough societies of Asia and the bridewealth sex-gender system is associated with the hoe cultivation societies of Southeast Asia, sub-Saharan Africa, and other parts of the world (Bosemp 1970:48,50).¹

The bridewealth sex-gender system is also correlated with polygyny (marriage of one man to two or more women). Contrary to the received truth that polygyny always oppresses women, the polygynous household may offer women a basis for solidarity and task sharing. At the household level, cowives cooperate to organize production, consumption, and child care. Although friction between cowives is widely reported, many studies stress the economic and political advantages of polygyny, including the autonomy made possible by shared responsibility (Boserup 1970:43; Mullings 1976:254; Obbo 1980:34–35). There is evidence that cowife jealousy is a construct of patrilineal ideology, whereby brotherly solidarity among men is the social glue that holds kin-based societies together.

In societies with the bridewealth sex-gender system, there are often organizations that express the political power of women (e.g., Kikuyu women’s age-grade organizations, and the market trading organizations of Ibo women in Onitsha, Nigeria, in the 18th century; Sacks 1982:3). Thus, although women come under the jurisdiction of their affinal kin (often oppressively so), they have, in the bridewealth sex-gender system, the material, political, and ideological base for relative power and autonomy. The relatively powerful position of women in African societies, compared with many other precapitalist cultures, is due to the prevalence of the rich, complex kinship organization based on bridewealth.

The Kikuyu were organized by descent into clans and lineages and by rank into age grades. There were no chiefs or centralized political authorities, although individual men could become influential by manipulating material wealth to create political prestige. Women were affiliated with their husband’s patrilineage through bridewealth, which legitimized the marriage and secured lineage membership for their offspring. Women retained membership in their natal lineage however, and, as lineage sisters, could exercise rights in lineage resources if necessary (see Sacks 1979). Usually, the major economic ties of women would be through their children to their husband’s lineage; however, sisters would be expected to participate with brothers in lineage decisions, and widows and unmarried women would have use rights in their lineage land. As Sacks (1979) clarifies, the position of women vis-a-vis their natal lineage was higher than their position in relation to their husband’s lineage. In other words, women had a higher status as sisters than as wives (see also Mackenzie 1986).

The mode of production associated with this form of social organization is the communal mode of production. In this mode of production, kinship is the basis of production relations. All people are members of a kin corporation (the lineage or the clan), which owns the chief means of production, the land. In principle, all members, male and female, stand in the same relation to the means of production and share political and economic decision making (Sacks 1979:115). Relations of production are thus cooperative rather than antagonistic. The authority to make decisions, however, is vested in elders, who, in practice, exercise ideological, political, and juridical power. Moreover, the male elders have preeminent authority.

¹When considering Asian sex-gender systems, it is important to avoid the kind of simplistic judgments that have the dogged understanding of African society (for a subtle analysis of gender, class, and caste in India, see Liddle and Joshi 1986).

Among the Kikuyu, as elsewhere, elders were organized for the formal exercise of this authority by the age-grade structure (Muriuki 1974; Leakey 1933). Male elders had privileged status and could largely appropriate the labour of women and younger men as well as make decisions on access to the corporately owned land. Thus, the elders exercised considerable control over the means of production.

The counterbalancing rights of different categories of people tempered this control. Sons had rights to bride wealth and to land and stock with which to set up their own homesteads. Daughters had rights that lapsed on marriage but could be reactivated if necessary. Lineage wives had rights to the use of land and livestock, owned the produce they were responsible for growing, and, to a large degree, controlled the distribution of this produce. Furthermore, lineage wives owned their own houses and controlled the resources of their subhousehold within the polygynous homestead (Routledge and Routledge 1910:47; Kenyatta 1938:11–12, 171–172; Middleton and Kershaw 1965:20). Women as elders had collective authority in a wide range of matters (Hobley 1922:274; Kenyatta 1938:108; Kershaw 1973:55; Stamp 1975–1976:25; Clark 1980:360).

Kikuyu society demonstrates the point that the communal mode of production, although fostering unequal relationships between elders and youths and between men and women, is fundamentally a classless mode of production: no group is free to appropriate and accumulate the surplus produced by another group for their own benefit The bridewealth sex-gender system was vital to the communal mode of production among the Kikuyu, and gender relations were a shaping force in the nonexploitative relations of production.

Some scholars have argued that such kin-based societies have a class structure based on the appropriation by elders of the labour of women and young men. I consider this argument incorrect, however, in that it is based on a misunderstanding of class. Class is a category that is self-reproducing through the relations of production (e.g., a bourgeoisie maintaining itself through the production of capital from the value created by a working class). In that all members of communal societies become elders, the ability to appropriate value produced by others is a function of the life cycle rather than of class division. Moreover, the value appropriated is shared through a complex web of kin and associational obligations; it is not hoarded by elders. In communal societies, prestige depends on generosity.

An accurate understanding of the communal mode of production is necessary for a clear perception of the transformations in contemporary African society. Feminist political economists argue that a lack of such understanding is the reason traditional gender relations have been distorted and are now becoming exploitative. It is the past pattern of relative egalitarianism and autonomy that women are now trying so hard to recapture or retain. Much of the behaviour of women with regard to development schemes (e.g., that of the Hausa women in KRP, discussed in Chapter 3) can be explained in these terms.

It is true however, that gender relations were only relatively egalitarian. The bridewealth sex-gender system involved an element of female subsidy whereby female labour could be transformed into male wealth or prestige. Clark (1980:360–365) and Ciancanelli (1980:26) both confirm this for the Kikuyu before British contact. The subsidy was an important factor in the development of athamaki or “big men” among the Kikuyu. Men achieved the position of muthamaki (singular) by successfully manipulating the tangible and intangible assets of kinship contracts. Clark (1980:361) summarizes the means whereby gender relations were organized to yield such assets:

Through the exchange of bridewealth-livestock, marriages were legitimated, and women whose children increased the size of the group were incorporated into the family. These women put more land under cultivation, and enabled the distribution of more foodstuff. The mobilization of wealth in the form of land, livestock and people is a single, though complex, process which collapses the division between subsistence and political economy.

Women could directly enhance a muthamaki’s position by agreeing to cook and distribute the food and beer required to attract work parties of young men to clear new land. These men would then become his tenants and political followers. There was nothing to compel women to contribute this effort: consequently, they wielded considerable bargaining power through their monopoly of the beer-brewing craft. (With the colonial importation of beer factories, women lost not only an occupation but also a valuable basis for social influence.)

It is clear that the constraints and obligations of the bridewealth sex-gender system (to bear children for their husband’s lineage, to produce food and offer hospitality, and to act as the linchpin in a wide network of affinal kin relations) gave women the opportunity to exercise political power and the authority to make decisions. The age-grade system was the main way in which women exercised this opportunity. It provided the base for their strategies to generate resources and the forum for their collective decision making. Being based on the childbearing cycle, the age-grade structure of women was simpler than the male system (Kertzer and Madison [1981:125–128] discuss the different relations of men and women to the life cycle as it pertains to age-grade structure). The two active age grades were nyakinyua (elders whose first child had been circumcised) and kang’ei (women with uncircumcised children; i.e., children younger than 15 years).²

The anthropological data on women’s organizations in former times is meager and contradictory. Mackenzie (1986) thoroughly considers the age-grade and age-set structures of women. In this study, based on recently conducted fieldwork, she has added essential new elements to the understanding of women and age grades, which have been largely ignored in the East African literature. Her interpretive reading of the literature on the Kikuyu is a model for feminist political economy research.

Women elders interviewed in the Mitero village study (Stamp 1975–1976) gave detailed accounts of ongoing organizations known as ndundu that had operated since before their grandmothers’ time and that combined economic, social, and juridical functions. Ndundu is often translated as “council” and it is significant that the same word is used for the council of male elders. A central purpose of the ndundu was cooperative cultivation, but they also provided women with organizational and affiliative bases for nonagricultural pursuits. Kang’ei women operated under the authority of nyakinyua and were required to perform services for the older women to progress through the organization’s ranks. Thus, the control of younger lineage wives by their female elders was a legitimate authority counterbalancing the patrilineal control of women. This control also put considerable human labour at the disposition of the women elders as a group. Clark

²Girls and boys were customarily circumcised among the Kikuyu, although clitoridectomy was banned in Kenya in 1982.

(1980:368) gives an apt summary of Kikuyu gender relations: “Despite an ideology of male dominance pervasive in many kin relations and in areas characterized as the ‘prestige economy,’ Kikuyu women emerge as the actors with control over resources vital in a system in which relations of production enter into political strategies and are built into the social relations of power.” Sacks’ (1979) point about sisters and wives coincides with this position. One could argue that lineage sisterhood not only provided women with material resources they could call upon if necessary but also created a metaphor of “sisterhood.” This concept extended to all women and constrained the overbearing subordination of wives by husbands. In other words, every wife was somebody’s sister.

In the picture that emerges of traditional Kikuyu women’s organizations, we can see the lineaments of women’s contemporary collective activity, activity that was repeatedly described in Chapters 2 and 3 for societies all over Africa. Variations on the Kikuyu experience have been documented in many studies (e.g., Van Allen 1972; Okeyo 1980; Oboler 1985; for an overview, see Sacks 1982). Women cling to the remnants of these organizations, patterns of authority, and practices of autonomy to resist the negative impact of technology transfer or to convert technological innovations to their advantage.

What happened to women’s power and autonomy? The transformation of sex-gender systems is tied up in the transition to capitalism. Whereas in Europe this transition entailed the dissolution of the precapitalist mode of production (i.e., feudalism) and the development of a straightforward capitalist class structure, colonized societies are characterized by the articulation of precapitalist and capitalist modes of production. Precapitalist elements, located in the peasantry, are retained in a dominated and distorted form. These elements include kinship structures and relations of production, age-based organizations, gender relations, and traditional ideologies. The transformed elements subsidize an underdeveloped form of capitalism through the production of cash crops by smallholders and plantation wage labourers. Some of the negative consequences for African communities of such commodity production were chronicled in Chapter 3. One example is the recruitment of elders to promoting cash crop production.

Two important aspects of this underdevelopment are, first, the unequal exchange upon which the sale of primary commodities on the world market is based and, second, the vulnerability of the producing peasants and the exporting nations within which they live to the vagaries of the international market. What makes unequal exchange and an unstable international market possible (i.e., what keeps peasants producing under such adverse circumstances) is the subsidy provided by peasants (chiefly women) who grow food for subsistence and sale on marginal land. Low product prices and low agricultural wages reflect this element of peasant subsidy: the production of the peasant household provides at least part of the subsistence for commodity-producing peasants and wage labourers, so that they are not fully dependent on a cash crop income for survival. Wages or returns to commodity production are rarely sufficient to support a family. In other words, capitalist enterprise in Africa need not provide a “living wage” to workers or producers.

The traditional—modern dichotomy is, therefore, a fallacy: the peasantry, far from being the “traditional” and implicitly “backward” sector of modern African societies, can be seen as an impoverished class created by the relations of production that were imposed on precapitalist societies in the colonial era. It is because of the vulnerability and dependency of contemporary peasants and societies that the present era is labeled “neocolonial.”

With regard to gender relations, elements of the bridewealth sex-gender system have also been retained in a dominated and distorted form. At the ideological level, the dynamic tension between formal patrilineal domination and both formal and informal female power has been snapped, and patrilineal domination has united with Victorian and Christian notions of male superiority (Obbo 1980:37–39). Bridewealth in particular, formerly the key to the power and autonomy of women, has become a capitalist transaction and daughters are commodities whose price can be bargained (see Parkin 1972). Furthermore, with the commoditization of land, women not only lost use rights but also saw their rights as lineage sisters attenuated. If husbands became unwilling to share the cash proceeds of the land now registered in their names with their wives, they would be even less willing to accede to the requests of their lineage sisters. There are also ideological consequences for gender relations. With the weakening of lineage ties and the concomitant strengthening of marriage ties, the sister model for interacting with women has given way to the more subordinate wife model (see Sacks 1979).

The consequent loss of women’s power in Africa at both the economic and political level, a dominant theme in the Mitero study, is confirmed by many writers (e.g., Van Allen 1972, 1976; Conti 1979; Sacks 1979, 1982; Etienne 1980; Oboler 1985). In Kenya, with the new overarching political authority of the state, the political institutions of precapitalist societies withered. Some place was found for male elders; for example, athamaki often became chiefs and subchiefs in the colonial administration. In Mitero, male elders of the Mutego lineage preside over the customary judiciary, which operates parallel to, and in conjunction with, the British common law system (for a discussion of the parallel legal systems, see Ghai and McAuslan 1970). Women elders hold no political positions, however, and women in Kenya are largely absent from formal political power. Direct and indirect pressure by church and state against polygyny and the promotion of the nuclear family have also undermined the former power base of women.

The fact that precolonial institutions and legal structures have largely disappeared does not mean, however, that Africans have turned their backs on the idea of “tradition.” Indeed, as I argue subsequently, as Glazier (1985) has shown, and as recent events in Kenya have demonstrated, the idiom of tradition is constantly available to be manipulated by protagonists competing for status, power, and resources in society.

At the economic level, the element of sex-gender subsidy remains and has, in fact, been increased (outlined in Chapter 3). Women are expected to produce to support their husbands as before; in addition, however, they are expected to produce the petty commodity surplus, which their husbands then appropriate. The network of laws and economic practices that characterize the contemporary capitalist state sanction, and, in fact, require, this appropriation. Two of the most important factors are land consolidation and cash crop marketing organizations. Beginning in the 1950s, land was transferred from lineage ownership to individual male heads of households. Legally, therefore, the product of this land is the property of the individual husband, although women continue to lay strong claim to their subsistence products and, in practice, attempt to dispose of them as they see fit. Whether or not they succeed in retaining this control depends on the nature of their individual relationships with their husbands and on their success in participating in the activities of their self-help groups.

Cash crop marketing organizations, such as the Coffee Marketing Board, facilitate the appropriation of the income generated by women’s labour. As with other parastatal enterprises, these organizations are oriented toward individual male heads of households. Women therefore carry the burden of production for no wage and under conditions where kinship has been reorganized by the new economic structure into smaller units (i.e., nuclear families). Within these units, their former economic independence and political autonomy is seriously restricted. In the past, even where the muthamaki parlayed his wives’ labour into personal influence, he used that influence to enhance the well-being of his homestead and lineage, not for personal material gain. Today, the ideology of personal wealth is a primary motive for accumulation, even if wealth is elusive for the peasant. In many areas of Africa, therefore, an exacerbated form of sex-gender domination has become an important element of the general peasant subsidy of commercial production for the world market.

Considering the double subsidy that peasant women provide, their self-help groups take on a special significance. Rather than being simply organizations for coping with development, which is the overt aim cited by most of them, they are vital organizations for resistance to exploitation. Mitero is a sublocation that corresponds roughly with the territory of the Mutego lineage of the Acera clan, which lies just to the north of the late President Kenyatta’s home village. The descendants of Mutego, unlike many Kikuyu on the plains just to the east, were not dispossessed of their land by British settlers. Mutego’s descendants engage in petty commodity production centering on coffee, which they cultivate on a family basis on a scale ranging from a few hundred bushes to plots of several acres. The community continues to engage in subsistence hoe agriculture on reduced acreage, growing maize, potatoes, and beans of various species for their own consumption and cultivating some food crops for cash.

Whereas many men habitually leave the sublocation for work, in the typical migration pattern of neocolonial Africa, women represent the more demographically stable component of the community. In Mitero, women began to come together in the contemporary form of self-help groups in 1966, with the encouragement of community development officers and the Provincial Administration.³ The original objective was organization for the utilization of new agricultural inputs, such as fertilizers. Informants stressed that the old style ndundu no longer existed; however, it is clear that the self-help groups are successors to these organizations. The groups perform the traditional functions of cooperative cultivation, ngwatio, and cooperative household management for women in childbirth, matega. Significantly, these terms now incorporate additional meanings. Ngwatio is organized to generate funds for self-help projects, such as a nursery school, water piping, and other amenities directly related to reducing the burden of women’s labour, or to community improvement. Funds have also been used to establish small businesses, such as a dressmaking shop. Matega continues to provide group help to members for weddings and funerals, as well as for childbirth. Matega also designates a savings society that collects funds from the sale of surplus food crops and wage labour on nearby plantations and, in turn, provides a lump sum for each woman. With these funds, a woman may buy a major household requirement, such as a cow, a water tank, or furniture. March and Taqqu (1986:60–65) analyze “rotating credit associations” (as well as rotating labour associations), citing them as a widespread phenomenon among women around the world, but particularly among African women.

³Of the 10 women’s groups in Mitero, 8 were studied during field research in 1974,1981, and 1985 through in-depth interviews with the group leaders and members.

Interpreting the activities of Mitero women in terms of the analysis set out earlier suggests two purposes. First, by channeling cash from crops into self-help organizations, women were preventing the appropriation of their product by their husbands. Second, the women were attempting to accumulate capital as a means of protecting and enhancing their fragile incomes and compensating for lost subsistence production. With regard to the first purpose, women sought to counteract the onerous obligation of generating surplus for their husbands that arose with land consolidation and commodity production. Engagement in wage production on neighbouring coffee plantations, in a manner similar to that reported for Hausa women in KRP, can be seen as an integral part of this economic strategy. Although work on their own coffee bushes yielded good returns, it represented cash for their husbands. Wage work provided only meager earnings; these earning, however, could be channeled directly into group funds.

The struggle within capitalism over the acquisition and distribution of peasant-produced commodities has been studied by political economists. The resistance of producers may take many forms, such as “refusal to adopt new cultivation practices…, refusal to grow certain crops or cutting back on their production” (Bernstein 1977:69; also see Cutrufelli 1983:119–120). The women and technology literature records many instances of such subversion by women of new technological processes. Women’s choices in disposing of their labour time and channeling their earnings into self-help groups may be seen as a form of the peasant resistance Bernstein (1977) describes. Specifically, it is resistance to the appropriation of their product by the international commodity market through the agency of their husbands. As such, it is a resistance to dual exploitation: by both the sex-gender system and the underdeveloped capitalist processes.

Informants in Mitero indicated a considerable struggle over women’s labour and earnings. They referred to the male control of coffee earnings: “Men drink the coffee money.” Although coffee was seen as a valuable crop, it involved the loss of control of their labour. Vegetable crops for cash sale in the market were preferred. The objections of men to the appropriation by women of the products of their own labour were evident in informants’ accounts of husbands who beat their wives for participating in the self-help groups. “Men fear women when they are in a group.” Overt hostility between men and women points to the dramatic sharpening of sex-gender contradictions in the contemporary era.

A further dimension is added to these contradictions by the fact that women’s resistance is taking place under the banner of development ideology. Since independence, the Kenyan government has encouraged self-help activity, known as harambee (“pull together”), which has served to supplement state development efforts in the social services. The ideology of harambee is thus a powerful tool for women’s assertion of control over their labour and earnings. A number of informants pointed out that men often disapprove of women’s business activity and seek to undermine it on countervailing ideological grounds. Such activity has become a major focus of tension in contemporary sex-gender relations; the widespread assimilation of the Western ideology of male dominance — by men, in any event — has added fuel to the fire. In a 1981 interview, a prominent women’s leader recognized the power of this ideology and the need for strategy to counter it.

How does a man exercise power as head of the home? So he has to try all means to suppress women’s group activity, to make it not succeed.… We try not to be too aggressive, or to break the link with the family and even community.… We can’t expect to break that myth right away — it must be gradual. If you want to change it abruptly, you encounter a stronger resistance.

It is precisely such practical thinking that leads African women to reject the individualist demands of Western feminists. Use of a discourse of family solidarity and welfare is a sophisticated and tactically sound ideological strategy on the part of African feminism.

Thus, while men protest in the name of “traditional” family values, women cautiously argue for the maintenance of their rights and for the improvement of their economic lot in terms of those same family values. The independent economic activity of women is, they say, in the service of children and the home, and progress in this sphere in the modern nation requires new tactics for the fulfillment of their time-honoured tasks. The ideological discourse in sex-gender relations can draw on different elements of precapitalist sex-gender ideology because of the contradictions in this tradition: the ideal of men’s dominance over women and of women’s primacy in their own realms of authority were held simultaneously. The idea of male dominance is reinforced by Christian and capitalist values, but precapitalist African values regarding the power of women in the political economy of the village remain a forceful weapon in the discourse.

There are problems with the manipulation of women’s cooperative traditions both by the community and individual women. Recent research (Stamp 1987) has shown that the productive capacity of women’s groups may be captured by advantaged women or by male-dominated institutions within the community (e.g., church, political party) and diverted to ends incompatible with the goals of the groups (see the summary of this research in the section on women’s associations in Chapter 5). Nevertheless, women’s groups remain the chief means by which rural women empower themselves politically and economically within the community; indeed, efforts at co-optation over the past few years are evidence of this.

In conclusion, women’s self-help groups have fused precapitalist sex-gender elements (economic, political, and ideological) with contemporary practices to provide women with a means to resist exploitation and counter the negative effects of development programs. Therefore, the sex-gender system appears as a dynamic aspect of the peasant struggle for self-sufficiency. If women, through their organized activity, can retain even a part of the income they produce and convert new technology to the benefit of their community, the peasantry as a whole is stronger in the face of economic uncertainty and inequity. Given that self-sufficiency is now the major goal African governments are seeking to meet, recognition of, and support for, the complex ways in which women contribute to self-sufficiency would seem to be a matter of the greatest urgency. It is in the pragmatic strategies of peasant women that grassroots solutions to Africa’s development dilemmas reside.

Cases in feminist political economy

Land reform and Luo women’s rights

In a case study of a Luo women (a western Kenyan ethnic group belonging to the Nilotic language family), Okeyo (1980, in Etienne and Leacock 1980) demonstrates the value of a synthesis of anthropological and historical methods and provides a model for feminist research in Africa.⁴ Okeyo (1980) sets the transformation of Luo gender relations in the context of colonial imperatives as they evolved in Kenya from the declaration of the East Africa Protectorate in 1895. The chief of these imperatives was that the colony “pay for itself through agriculture.” This was accomplished by the appropriation of African land and the diversion of labour from the autonomous indigenous community to the colonial effort. “The choice to develop the colony by means of agriculture, managed by white settlers exploiting African labor, entailed the disenfranchisement of Africans and the entrenchment of white control over human and natural resources of the area” (Okeyo 1980:187).

Central to the colonial state’s agricultural policy was the system of reservations, whereby racial and ethnic groups were segregated on designated lands; the best land was granted to white settlers. On African reserves, the former owners became “tenants-at-will of the British Crown.” The aim of these reserves was to supply a stable labour force for the export sector run by the European settlers. In the course of the development of colonial land policy, “African culture, tradition, and economic and political institutions were co-opted to aid the administration of political control and economic exploitation” (Okeyo 1980:188), although customary land use patterns were initially allowed to continue.

The focus of Okeyo’s analysis is “the impact of the individualization of land tenure on the traditional precolonial landholding unit (the lineage) and on the position of women. Since Luo women play a key role in the rural economy, especially in food production and reproduction, they are a major category of producers whose land rights are bound to be affected by changes in land tenure” (Okeyo 1980:188). As previously mentioned, the policy to shift land ownership from the lineage to individual male heads of household began in Kenya in the early 1950s; the reform was part of a late colonial effort to stem African resistance to colonialism by creating a conservative African middle peasantry. Following independence in 1963, the reform was continued as a development strategy. The reform process was slower in Luoland than among the Kikuyu; nevertheless, almost all land was adjudicated, consolidated and registered by 1975, with only 6% of women having land registered in their own names (Okeyo 1980:206).

Although the Luo, as a Nilotic people of pastoral ancestry, differ from the Bantu-speaking Kikuyu in their historical experience and culture, they shared the lineage-based communal mode of production and bridewealth sex-gender system described for the Kikuyu. Although Okeyo does not engage in a theoretical investigation of the concept of sex-gender system, the similarities in the experience of Luo and Kikuyu women regarding precolonial political economy as well as colonial and postcolonial land reform confirm my generalizations about sex-gender systems and the position of women, both precolonial and postcolonial. Moreover, Okeyo’s study provides an exhaustive analysis of the means by which women lose their use (usufructuary) rights in land during the reform process.

⁴Achola Pala Okeyo (who formerly published under the name of Achola O. Pala is a Kenyan social anthropologist. A Research Fellow at the Institute for Development Studies, University of Nairobi, and an international consultant, she has published many papers on the status and roles of African women in development

As with the Kikuyu, land rights amongst the Luo in precolonial times resided with the corporate group, the lineage, rather than the individual: men inherited land from fathers; women had use rights as daughters or as wives. Land could not be alienated from the group, and equal access for the purpose of subsistence production was a cardinal principle. The usufructuary rights of individual men and women were complex and well defined. “For instance, each household has a precise knowledge of where fields, pastures, and homesteads are located and to which their use rights apply” (Okeyo 1980:188).

Okeyo draws three major conclusions in her analysis of the changes wrought by land tenure reform. First, the customary land-tenure system of the Luo is a product of a changing political economy. From 1000 to 1400, ancestors of the Luo lived in southern Sudan and practiced transhumant pastoralism. Under this system, men owned and managed livestock; the economic role of women was marginal. Following migration from the Nile valley “cradleland” to the west Kenyan region in the 15th and 16th centuries, the Luo settled down. By the 18th century, they had adopted a mixed economy predominated by agriculture (much like the precolonial Kikuyu). This shift in emphasis drew women into the centre of the economy, as is the case in horticultural societies throughout Africa. “During this period the labor of women and children became critical to agriculture, and the rights of women in land became anchored in their role within the lineage as wives and mothers” (Okeyo 1980:208). As well, control of land became important as the now-sedentary population increased. Consequently, lineage became a more precise instrument for land control, pasture management, and water management. “The woman’s economic position was enhanced by the fact that the house (ot), which is the minimal unit of production and of which she is head, became a major channel for the transmission of agricultural land between male agnates [blood relatives]” (Okeyo 1980:189).

The second conclusion relates to the distortions introduced by colonialism.

The integration of the Luo economy and society into a colonial system had the result of distorting the population-to-land relationships, as well as the structure of the access to land, in a very special way. On one level, the reservation system led to increased demographic pressures on land because it left no option for expansion outside the reserves. Customary tenure adjusted to this artificial population crisis by redefining and restricting the corporate holding of land in such a way that the larger lineage control of land was in some areas reduced to family control. On another level, the reduction of corporate holding also jeopardized women’s usufructory rights which had previously benefited from the flexibility and multiplicity of rights in corporate land holding. The trend toward the individualization of land-tenure reform which was thus set off was further exacerbated by the institution of land-tenure reform which, in effect, negates customary principles of landholding and land use. The reform translates corporate, allocative rights in land (the final authority to dispose of land) into individual male titles to land and creates uncertainty as to the legal status of women’s usufructory rights in land.

(Okeyo 1980:208–209)

In particular, Okeyo notes that tensions between men and women with regard to the control of land were exacerbated by both land-tenure reform and the colonial reservation policy. Regarding the latter, the colonial government demanded space (usually land alienated from the community) to build schools, churches, commercial and administrative centres, and roads. Regarding the former, individual male statutory owners often ceased to observe the customary rights of wives and children in the use and disposition of what had become “their property.”

Okeyo’s third conclusion has special significance for contemporary thinking about agricultural development, technology transfer, and the position of women. It has been assumed (if the subject has been thought about at all), that customary use rights can coexist with individualized land tenure. Okeyo challenges this assumption. On the basis of her contemporary empirical research and historical analysis, she argues that

Customary and statutory rights are different and, in theory, mutually exclusive. It may be predicted that over the next five to ten years [i.e., during the 1980s] the basis and practice of corporate landholding will be eroded and that women as a group will be virtually deprived of their security which had hitherto been protected by the principles of corporate descent and land tenure. In this process the lineage becomes subordinated to the nation-state because the latter assumes authority over resource allocation. By the same logic the house could lose its proprietary control and, therefore, the proprietary link between the mother and son within the house and that of the father and son within the lineage could be severely challenged.

(Okeyo 1980:209)

Okeyo’s case study provides an analysis of the historical and social factors behind the loss of control and autonomy described in the women and technology and WID literature. As such, it is a model for the methodology required for future research. For example, the question of compromised inheritance patterns and concomitant insecurity within the family (for men as well as for women) is invisible in the literature as a factor influencing family decisions regarding the adoption or rejection of a new technology. A more visible aspect of Okeyo’s research is the question of legal title. The large-scale exclusion of women from statutory title to land in which they have usufructuary rights means they have no collateral to obtain loans. This is a factor widely cited as a barrier to the involvement of women in development efforts (e.g., the Mwea rice scheme, pp. 64–67). Why they have the right and, indeed, the obligation to farm land to which they do not hold title is explained by Okeyo (1980). Development planning must take account of this historically created anomaly if local agricultural improvement schemes are to succeed.

Women as food producers and suppliers in Zambia

A milestone seminar, organized by AAWORD and the Dag Hammarskjöld Foundation, was held in Dakar, Senegal, in 1982 (DHF/SIDA 1982). The seminar’s purpose was “to move beyond simple truisms about the situation of women to a more profound analysis of the mechanisms perpetuating the subordination of women in society. The aim of the discussion was, therefore, not to focus exclusively on women but to look both into male-female relationships in society and into how the system of economic organization affects these relationships” (Savané 1982:7).

A valuable contribution toward this purpose was the study of Muntemba (1982b) on the women of Zambia as food producers and suppliers.⁵ Applying a rigorous historical methodology and a broad knowledge of research and action on women’s concerns in Africa, Muntemba (1982b) succeeded in both delineating the outlines of an African feminist political economy and providing a model for an empirical case study within the framework. Her analysis complements that of Okeyo (1980). It reaches many of the same conclusions regarding gender relations, land rights, and production, but focuses on a different aspect of the feminist political economy effort. The analysis of Muntemba is similarly useful in providing a framework within which the problems identified by WID literature may be understood and more effectively tackled. As a historian, she is concerned with a thorough exposition of the policies and practices of the colonial and postcolonial state as they have broadly affected gender relations in all Zambian ethnic groups. This is in contrast to Okeyo’s study, that explored in depth the consequences of changing gender relations within one particular group.

Whereas Okeyo implicitly challenges the traditional anthropological understanding of the position of women in lineage-based societies, Muntemba tackles one of the more recent social science trends in Africa: peasant studies. The plethora of peasant studies during the 1970s was a valuable corrective to earlier neglect of internal socioeconomic structures in Africa. Muntemba faults peasant studies, however, for their neglect of women in production.

Most works conceive of the peasant as a male and use the male gender. They also largely deal with issues affecting male peasants: cash crops, marketing, agricultural education, mechanization. Even such important questions as land dislocations, migration and social stratification, which affect women most poignantly, are analysed in relation to male peasants.

(Muntemba 1982:29)

Three themes frame Muntemba’s inquiry: land, labour, and the sexual division of labour. She develops these themes first in a general African context and then in the context of Zambia’s concrete historical experience. In Zambia, women are the primary producers and suppliers of food. Starting with the premise that the ability of women to carry out these responsibilities has deteriorated, Muntemba examines their position in terms of the social relations of production, distribution, and surplus appropriation.

Control over, and access to, the physical means of production — land or fertile soils, communications, transport — and the productive forces — human labour, implements and inputs — coupled with more efficient methods, ensure labour’s productivity. But that is not enough. To ensure non-appropriation and fair distribution there has to be control over one’s own labour and the product of that labour. At every reconstructible period in history there has been a struggle over these factors at household, village, national and international levels. How women fared in this struggle influenced their ability to produce and supply food.

Evidence suggests that although this struggle may have existed in pre-colonial times, it was not until the penetration of capitalism and the money economy that the position of women was most markedly and devastatingly challenged. Then, the struggle heightened at every level.

(Muntemba 1982b:30)

⁵Shimwaayi Muntemba is a Zambian historian. She has written extensively on the Zambian peasantry, with a focus on peasant women. Currently the Director of the Environmental Liaison Centre in Nairobi, Kenya, she has engaged in development research for several international organizations, including ILO.

Muntemba surveys this struggle throughout Africa, citing the following developments:

• alienation of land to mining and agricultural companies and to settlers;
  
  
• land shortages and landlessness for peasants resulting from intense peasant cash crop production (with constraints upon food-producing land in particular);
  
  
• the struggle over labour as males were drawn or forced away to work for colonial enterprises or as competition mounted within households for labour to grow cash crops instead of food; and
  
  
• a shift in the sexual division of labour, whereby women not only experienced a dramatic increase in their workload as they took on the tasks of men and tended the cash crops but also suffered a loss in control of their own labour.

Using the Zambian case to substantiate her generalizations (and, in doing so, confirming the conclusions of the Mitero and Luo studies), Muntemba divides the country’s history into four stages: the precolonial era; the colonial period from 1900 to the end of World War II; 1946 to independence; and the neocolonial era from 1964 to 1981. In discussing precolonial Zambia, she draws on anthropological and historical evidence to delineate the sex-gender system and mode of production of the predominantly matrilineal societies of the region. Even though male control of women existed in matrilineal societies (fathers and brothers, rather than husbands, exercised this control), inheritance of land through the female line ensured direct access to land for women and, in practice, women exercised considerable control over their own agricultural production. Muntemba describes the complex division of labour between men and women, emphasizing the importance of the gathering of wild foods by women; this was done in poor seasons or when powerful chiefs raided or demanded tribute (gathered foods provided “relishes,” which, despite the connotation of this word in English, provided vital nutrients to complement the substantially carbohydrate diet).

The structure of a mining and settler colony was laid down in the colonial period to 1945. Women’s position and, hence, their role as food producers differed according to the local experience regarding colonial incursion. In the more densely settled and fertile south-central portions of Zambia, men remained on the land but Africans experienced an intense struggle over land. It was here that the colonialists concentrated their communication and urban centres and appropriated land for their own use. A formal land policy was enacted in 1924, when the Colonial Office took over from the British South Africa Company and set up a colonial administration. As in Kenya, the territory was divided into native reserves and crown lands (the latter being for towns, mines, and white settlement, existing or anticipated). Africans were forced to move to the reserves, which were often on poorer land and became severely overcrowded. This was a major factor in undermining the ability of communities to produce food, a problem exacerbated by the pressure to supply food to the mine workers.

The position of women as food producers was compromised by land dispossession in the south-central agricultural region; in the rest of the country, however, it was the migration of males to serve in the mines that had the sharpest impact on women’s production. Most of the agricultural tasks formerly performed by men fell to women. Some tasks could no longer be performed (e.g., lopping and felling of trees and the land rotation required by the poor soils of the region). Consequently, women were forced to overcrop. This, combined with their inability to fertilize, as before, led to serious deterioration of the land. Muntemba’s meticulous investigation of the factors involved in deteriorating food production demonstrates the importance of understanding all the elements in a system of production, including the seemingly mundane:

The men’s contribution to scaring birds and harvesting was important because, although these tasks could be, and were undertaken by women, both were undertaken in the morning and evening. At the latter time, women’s labour was also required for food preparation. During the dry months, relishes were not plentiful and women had to cover huge distances to fetch them. The heavier burden which started to fall on them sometimes resulted in their getting too tired by the end of the day to prepare the major and, in some cases, only meal of the day. As agricultural production became too onerous, women started to rely more heavily on gathering. Paradoxically, on account of the increasing burden, some found it difficult to supplement their agricultural shortfalls through gathering. In an already precarious agricultural system, villagers experienced actual hunger during the three dry months, the “hunger months”.… Another development, which became accentuated later with urbanization, was that as their agricultural burden grew, in some instances they started to shift to less onerous but also less nutritious foods such as cassava.⁶

(Muntemba 1982b:40–41)

Muntemba (1982b) also discusses in detail changes in land, labour, and the sexual division of labour. The period between World War II and independence was characterized by an intensification of commodity production and the entrenchment of a huge urban labour pool, requiring the support of rural production. Men’s control of the purchase and use of any new technology introduced to increase farm productivity ensured that women’s subsistence food production lost out in the competition within households over the allocation of labour. Moreover, the food that they did manage to grow for the family was not sacrosanct: “Some women informed me that direct or indirect pressure was brought on them to sell women’s crops such as groundnuts and vegetables. This was particularly the case if implements [bought by men] were used in the fields” (Muntemba 1982b:43). Muntemba also demonstrates that the question of inheritance is again a factor. Because men owned the implements, their agnatic relatives, rather than their wives, inherited them, even though the wives’ labour had generated the income to purchase them. Consequently, the stability of the rural food supply, particularly in the families of older women, was always threatened.

On gaining independence, the new government committed itself to “rural development.” As the price of copper started to decline on the world market in the 1970s, however, to make up the shortfall in foreign exchange, even more pressure was placed on agriculture to contribute to the cash economy. Peasants were exhorted to grow cotton, sunflower, tobacco, groundnuts for oil, and maize to feed the urban population. In some cases, settler land was returned to peasant production; however, this did little to relieve the mounting pressure on land. In agricultural development schemes, men rather than women were targeted. Asked to analyze their position, women replied, “the government has forgotten us” (Muntemba 1982b:46). Precisely because it controlled distribution and was the agent for increased productivity, the government was the target of women’s blame: “in their view the state systematically operated against them” (Muntemba 1982b:46). Women’s strategy, in response, was to reduce production to avoid having a surplus for appropriation (this could backfire if food was extracted anyway in hard times). Said two cowives: “Our household production has been deteriorating over the last five years. How can it not when we, the women, have decided to work as little as possible?” (Muntemba 1982b:47).

⁶Mackenzie (1986) gives a similar explanation for the shift from millet to the less nutritious maize amongst the Kikuyu. Maize has replaced other grains throughout much of Africa; this change has been neglected as a serious cause of undemutrition in the continent.

Muntemba concludes with the following question: What happens when women’s capacity to produce and supply food is compromised in nations still dependent on peasant production?

Control by women of land, of the productive forces, of their labour and the product of that labour must be viewed as the most urgent priority. Thus land reforms and schemes resulting in privatization as the means of bolstering small-scale production must be challenged: they do not take women into consideration. It is imperative to consider women not because they are women but because, as we hope we have shown, they are central to food strategies. Instead, socialized forms of land systems in which all producers have usufructory rights must be fostered. But this is not enough. Peasant women have to participate in the political machinery to assure equitable distribution of the productive forces and non-appropriation of food from them. Women must be conscientized to challenge the sexual division of labour which subjects their labour to men.… But the forces at national and international levels are so strong that, alone, women cannot succeed and through this success move toward alleviating some of the food problems bedeviling many African countries.

(Muntemba 1982b:48)

Muntemba, like Okeyo, has analyzed a circumstance widely described in the literature: in this case, the decline in women’s food-producing capacity. Consequently, Muntemba has delineated the problem and suggested solutions that go far beyond the technical and individual-oriented panaceas promoted by much of the development establishment Although some might consider that “socialized forms of land systems” are not politically feasible or economically desirable in most African countries, the issues of land-use rights, political participation, and women’s loss of control over their own labour emerge as vital issues to be tackled at national and community levels. Development efforts in Africa, including practical research on technology transfer, require as their groundwork the kind of rigorous historical and socioeconomic analysis demonstrated here.

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