Document(s) 3 of 13

Introduction

In the foregoing survey of conceptual frameworks and findings regarding technology, gender, and development. I have raised a number of issues that bear further investigation. Chapters 5 and 6 organize these issues into categories and indicate some interrelationships that the literature and development policy have not addressed.

The overarching issue is the serious problem in conceptualizing development accurately and recognizing appropriate paths to its attainment in the Third World. Much of the WID literature criticizes “developmentalism,” attributing its flaws to inadequate attention to women and gender relations. This critique is, of course, valid: any vision of human progress that is based on an ancillary, dependent status for half of humanity is bound to be epistemologically paralyzed. The WID studies, too, however, accept fundamental Western assumptions about gender relations. The possibility that non-Western societies conceive of family, household, work, and even gender subjectivity differently is rarely contemplated. Furthermore, the WID literature seldom challenges developmentalism on the grounds of its economic premises. Consequently, the literature sabotages its own attempts to clarify relations of women and gender. As long as a faulty conceptualization of economic and political processes in the Third World prevails, whereby relations of dependency are ignored and falsely conceived “tradition” is viewed as the obstacle to “modernization,” there is no theoretical space into which to insert a more accurate understanding of gender issues.

It is particularly important to expose the ideological biases and political interests inherent in much development thinking. It would be unrealistic to expect donor countries to abandon their political interests; it is reasonable, however, to require that these countries be clear about the consequences of their policies for Third World societies and that damaging, development aid programs are not justified through a process of mystification. The stark reality is that “development,” as commonly construed in the West, has meant underdevelopment for women and, consequently, for children and communities as well. Acknowledging the benefits of many aspects of technology transfer in the fields of health, nutrition, and agriculture, I would argue that the worsening of the quality of life for African women (economically, socially, and often physically) is an indictment of Western attitudes and actions toward Africa that cannot be overlooked. The culpability of African governments also poses serious dilemmas for the protocol of donor noninvolvement in national political affairs. Given that much aid unwittingly supports negative political practices, aid givers must recognize the uncomfortable fact that noninvolvement is a political stance and, as such, needs examining.

The six categories

My call for clarity about technology, gender, and development in Africa is given a concrete form in the following six categories. These categories organize the new issues and interrelationships I have identified. The task of addressing these new issues and interrelationships is the work of future research; some practical guidelines for this task are given in Chapter 7. This chapter discusses the first five categories (A–E), with illustrations where appropriate, to demonstrate the importance of the questions raised. Chapter 6 explores the six conceptual problems outlined in category F.

Category A

A synthesis of feminist political economy and the WID approach, overcoming the limitations of each, will generate a powerful research tool for investigating the precise ways in which technology disadvantages local communities and the ways in which communities are sometimes able, in spite of the liabilities of dependency, to turn new technology to their advantage. Identifying the success stories and the reasons for that success will lay the groundwork for replicating positive experiences. Identifying the reasons for negative results will facilitate a more critical assessment of current technology-transfer schemes. Past mistakes may then be avoided in the future.

Category B

To facilitate the endeavour in category A, a more rigorous investigation of community structures and processes and, in particular, the relationships between village organizations and sex-gender systems, is needed. An important part of this investigation will be research into relationships among women. Women have tended to be treated as a homogeneous group in the literature; there are indications, however, that serious contradictions exist between categories of women. Realistic development planning must account for the impact of these contradictions upon research priorities, policy-making, and implementation.

Category C

Certain foci of societal transformation have been neglected, both in feminist political economy and WID literature. Effective development policy depends upon a clearer understanding of the following factors:

• Women’s rights, both political and economic;
  
  
• The role of the media (traditional and modem) in disseminating appropriate new technology;
  
  
• Social dimensions to the participation of women in family health care and nutrition;
  
  
• The logic of traditional technology, both social and physical, and indigenous technological innovation; and
  
  
• The “conscientization” of men: how sexist bias and practice at the level of nation and village may be overcome.

Category D

The boundary problem in research and policy has prevented the diffusion of insights and information between research/action loci and even between branches of a given locus (e.g., within an aid agency). The most brilliant understanding of issues concerning technology, gender, and development will have no impact upon Third World societies unless the boundary problem is overcome.

Category E

Who does the research? Is the answer to this question as straightforward as insisting that only African women, and any African women, are capable of generating valid analyses of technology, gender, and development in Africa? Africa is unique as a region of the world: the major portion of knowledge about its peoples and societies has been, and continues to be, generated by outsiders. For Africa, therefore, more than for any other region of the developing world, the issue of who does the research is politically sensitive and methodologically complicated. African researchers themselves are beginning to address this question.

Category F

An aspect of more rigorous inquiry into gender and power in the village and family is the identification of certain conceptual problems in the literature. These problems contribute to the dilemmas identified in categories C, D, and E. Although the following subjects have been debated occasionally in the cross-cultural or feminist scholarly traditions, the challenges to them have not been drawn together into a coherent, sustained critique; rather, the criticisms have been piecemeal, or, in the African context, absent:

• The public/private dichotomy;
  
  
• The nature of the “family” and the “domestic realm”;
  
  
• The economic as the determining factor in society;
  
  
• The nature of the “traditional” in society; and
  
  
• The nature of “nature.”

Misconceptions of these topics are embedded in the literature, particularly in WID writing, and these misconceptions have had a negative impact on development policy.

Inherent in all five conceptual problems is an epistemological dilemma that remains almost invisible in the literature: the subjugation of local “knowledges” to a dominant Western “knowledge” about Africa and, in particular, about African women. Flawed development policies can only be corrected if the flawed nature of our knowledge is addressed.

Toward a new synthesis

A requirement of a good WID study is fieldwork that goes beyond describing the declining power and increasing workload of women (as much of the WID literature does) and does more than document statistics on health and nutrition correlated with women’s status (as much of the social medical literature does). It is essential to investigate sex-gender systems and women’s groups, and an attempt to record, through oral history and other means, changes from the past to the present. Meanwhile, political economists should be prepared to apply their theoretical insights to concrete contemporary development issues. Two examples of a synthesis of WID and feminist political economy concerns are cited to demonstrate the value of this approach.

The first is a concrete case study. Badri’s (1986) study of women, land ownership, and development in the Sudan is important not only as an example of synthesis but also because it focuses on a category of African women that has been neglected in the literature: pastoral women. Much is made in the WID and political economy literature of the connection between horticultural women’s production and their concomitant rights and autonomy. Pastoral women have been characterized as having a comparatively low position, in that they are believed to have had little control over the major means of agricultural production: livestock. Traditionally, men “owned” livestock, although the Western concept of ownership does not apply, given the complex communal web of rights and obligations in livestock and the practice of placing animals in age mates and relatives’ herds.

Once again, however, Western bias has focused (rather romantically, as endless television shows about the Masai attest) on the connection between men and cattle; the substantial stake women held in livestock has been overlooked. Recent studies show, however, that the difference between the status of pastoral and horticultural women was less marked than has been thought (e.g., Kettel 1986). Evidence is emerging that pastoral women, like men, have age-grade associations, despite the lack of reference to women’s age-grades in the anthropological literature. Llewelyn-Davies (1979) has recorded the bases of solidarity among Masai women. Balghis Badri, a sociologist at the University of Khartoum, has conducted research and drawn on the fieldwork of several University of Khartoum dissertations to generate an analysis that demonstrates the importance of women’s rights in livestock. Her study (Badri 1986) shows how contemporary neglect of the collective economic contribution of women through dairying has had serious consequences for Sudan’s food self-sufficiency.

The first part of Badri’s work deals with two cases involving agricultural communities and documents the connection between the loss of rights in land and control over labour and the exclusion of women from the development process. The second part of the study deals with pastoral women. Badri (1986:90) asserts that “this case shows how planners’ assumptions that women’s domain is primarily private has an adverse effect on development” There are 55 million head of livestock in Sudan and the country is self-sufficient in meat; in fact, meat accounts for nearly 13% of export earnings. Men are chiefly responsible for the herding of livestock, moving with them in search of pasture and water. Women are responsible for milking, milk processing, and marketing of dairy products. Given the potential of the dairy industry in Sudan, both for domestic consumption and export, it is surprising to discover that SDP 11 million is spent annually on importing milk powder and other dairy products (in October 1988,4.4 Sudanese pounds [SDP] = 1 United States dollar [USD]). Badri sees the problem lying in the government’s neglect of the dairy industry — a business monopolized by women, based on their traditional use rights in livestock (these rights parallel those of horticultural women, who have use rights in land owned by the patrilineage).

I think that if policy makers had concentrated their efforts on helping women to construct woman-run dairy farms and on introducing only appropriate technology for milk processing, a better situation could have been achieved. However, the government policy makers attempted to solve the problem of milk shortage by importing milk and giving licenses to big companies to invest.… Women’s traditional work is being taken from them as these companies introduce advanced technologies which women do not know how to use. Any expansion along these lines means a loss to women. The present situation of starvation compels us to take more notice of nomads in general and nomadic women in particular. Instead of introducing handicraft projects to nomadic women…our priority should be given to milk in order to save ourselves millions of pounds annually and to better the situation of women whom we should consider not as belonging to the private [realm], but as part and parcel of development plans.

(Badri 1986:90)

Badri’s study sets the agenda for synthesizing, development-oriented research on dairying technology in Sudan.

The second example demonstrating the value of the synthesis proposed is the excellent review article of Beneria and Sen (1986) assessing Boserup’s (1970) contribution to women and development. (I agree with Beneria and Sen’s [1986:14] assessment that “probably no single work on the subject of women and development has been quoted as often.”) I do not wish to engage in yet another round of “Boserup-assessing” by reporting their critique; however, it is worth summarizing their overview of the issues of population control and birth control, issues intimately tied with health technology transfer. Their conclusions are particularly relevant to Africa, where governments are facing increasing pressure to tackle the stupefying birth rate.

Beneriá and Sen’s (1986) pragmatic assessment of population control and birth-control policies and practices is grounded in a wealth of feminist political economy literature. They argue that even though issues of (biological) reproductive freedom were openly pursued in the West during the 1970s, in the Third World, the issue was much less clear (Beneriaá and Sen 1986:154–156). Complicated by the question of overpopulation and by resistance to imposed Western values and schemes for population control, the question of reproductive freedom has not been directly addressed in literature on the Third World. Beneria and Sen (1986) assert that feminist analysis must modify conventional approaches to population control and birth control. In the course of their discussion, they raise the question of women’s rights: the right to bear or not bear children and the right to space childbearing. Decisions about childbearing not only affect the woman, however; they also affect her household and the class interests of her community (even the propertied classes, who depend on the reproduction of labour, have a stake in decisions about birth control for peasants). In particular, the social strategies of the woman’s peasant class place powerful constraints on her choices.

For example, in very poor peasant households that possess little land and that are squeezed by usury and rent payments, the labor of children both on and off the peasant farm may be crucial to the ongoing ability of the household to subsist and maintain land. Pronatalist tendencies in rural areas may have a clear economic basis.

(Beneriá and Sen 1986:155)

After surveying the economic analyses, both neoclassical and Marxist, that point out the conflict between economic rationality and social goals, Beneriá and Sen (1986) discuss the impact on women of both community norms and imposed policies. Their summary assessment is succinct and worth quoting at length:

While leftists have correctly opposed forced sterilization and have pointed to the social causes of unemployment — the real population problem — there has been a tendency to ignore a critical aspect of childbearing: it is performed by women.… In conditions of severe poverty and malnutrition where women are also overworked, this can and does take a heavy toll on the mother’s health and well-being. The poor peasant household may survive off the continuous pregnancy and ill-health of the mother, which are exacerbated by high infant mortality. The mother’s class interests and her responsibilities as a woman come into severe conflict.

The result of this conflict is that a poor woman’s attitude toward birth control, contraception, and even sterilization are likely to be different from those of her husband or mother-in-law. Research on these problems in the Third World should address questions such as: (1) Who makes decisions about childbearing and birth control within rural households, families, and communities, and on what basis are the decisions made? (2) What indigenous forms of family limitation are available to poor women, and how are they used? (3) Are there differences of opinion and interest between the childbearers and other family members? (4) How does childbearing affect women’s participation in other activities?

Answers to these questions require careful empirical research of a sort that is barely beginning in the Third World. The insights gained from empirical research must affect one’s assessment of birth-control programs, especially the more enlightened programs that focus on the health and education of the mother. Reduction in the infant-mortality rate, improvements in health and sanitation, and better midwife and paramedic facilities can give poor, rural women more options than having to resolve class contradictions through their own bodies. Such programs, however, clearly cannot be a panacea for the basic problems of extreme poverty and inequality in landholding; the contradictions of class and capital accumulation in the countryside can be resolved only through systemic social change.

(Beneriá and Sen 1986:155–156)

Underpinning this analysis is a sophisticated understanding of the contradictions inherent in contemporary sex-gender systems as well as class contradictions. Beneriá and Sen (1986) have not lost sight of the heart of feminist concern: the well-being, rights, and autonomy of individual women. Their list of research questions provides a ready agenda for research by health technology planners in Africa.

Women’s associations and sex-gender systems

Chapter 4 defines a model for the concerns that researchers may fruitfully address to create an understanding of the interrelation between sex-gender systems and communities. Other studies, such as Sacks (1979;1982) and Mackenzie (1986) have engaged in a similar exercise. WIN (1985a:94-107) identifies women’s associations and networks as focal points for social and economic transformation in Nigeria and argues that they should thus receive the concerted attention of researchers and aid donors. Feminist scholars have not, however, charted the influence of community organizations, including women’s organizations, upon the introduction and sustained use of new technology. Conversely, technology-transfer studies mention women’s organizations only in passing. Cooperatives, which receive some attention, are usually discussed in terms of the impact of technology upon the organization rather than vice versa. An exception is Ladipo’s (1981) study of two Yoruba women’s cooperatives. Lapido (1981) determined that cooperatives attempting to adhere to government guidelines do not succeed as well as groups that create their own rules. “Cohesion, personal development, and financial growth were found to be greater in the self-regulating group” (Lapido 1981:123). Even though a few other studies mention the importance of the contribution of women to decision-making, Lapido’s study is exemplary in the context it sets for understanding successful adoption and adaptation in one set of circumstances, and failure in another.

In 1976, women sought to overcome their disadvantage in cash crop production by asking the Nigerian government to include them in the Isoya Rural Development Project, founded in 1969. The project gave access to agricultural training, technology, adult literacy, home economics programs, and, later, new cash crops, particularly yellow maize. In a familiar fashion, however, women had been relegated to the “welfare” aspects of the Project. In requesting inclusion in the economic aspects of the Project, they argued that “as a bird uses two wings to fly, so must a family use the progress of its husband and wife to get ahead” (Lapido 1981:124). The organizations being promoted by the Project were multipurpose cooperatives designed to facilitate agricultural extension efforts, the introduction of new technology, and the distribution of credit. Following permission to form such organizations, the first women’s cooperative to constitute itself, Irewolu, attempted to meet the guidelines set by government policy and regulations. By the time the second group, which named itself Ifelodun, decided to organize, Irewolu had failed to live up to the guidelines. Consequently, Ifelodun was allowed to formulate its own, more appropriate set of rules. “Thus, an experiment was begun wherein there were two groups trying to reach the same goal of government recognition by different means” (Lapido 1981:125).

Ladipo’s discussion of the different experiences of these two groups is intricate and intriguing. It is impossible to convey here the richness of her analysis. The following summary, however, places Lapido’s findings in the context of the synthesizing framework I have developed in this book. In an initial assessment of the findings I would assert that the prognosis, according to developmentalist criteria, would have been for greater success for the first group, Irewolu. It was a larger group, it followed government guidelines, and its membership was younger. It selected a leader who was “literate and well traveled and had a keen sense of the events which were modernising the country” (Lapido 1981:127). The group’s name translates as “good things come to town”. From the feminist political economy perspective, however, Ifelodun had the greater chance of success. The Ifelodun members, being of an older generation, had more experience with other organizations, such as “religious groups, trade associations, savings societies, and associations of household (lineage) wives” (Lapido 1981:126). Surprisingly, the literacy rate was slightly higher among the older women. Being freer of responsibility for small children and having had the opportunity to build enterprises, the older group had a higher proportion of produce buyers and were generally more prosperous; in contrast, the majority of Irewolu members were petty traders.

The pattern of wage work identified by myself for the Kikuyu (Stamp 1986) and by Jackson (1985) for the Hausa in the KRP also applied to the Ifelodun women. Given the evidence from these studies, it is likely that Ifelodun members pooled their income from agricultural labour in the group enterprise. Half of the Ifelodun membership worked as agricultural labourers; none of the Irewolu membership did. Furthermore, 20% of Ifelodun prepared meals for sale; in Irewolu, only 3% of the membership engaged in this enterprise. Finally, more members of Ifelodun had secure title to land, providing them with a source of income.

Ifelodun’s president was seemingly more passive than the Irewolu president:

She had never learned to read or write, rarely left the village, and never voiced an awareness of any event outside her own community. She practiced her religion, Islam, within her home. She was rarely seen to exercise any influence on the conduct of meetings, but it was apparent that she had considerable authority, probably stemming from her role as the village’s traditional midwife. It seems she was elected to ensure harmony and stability to a group whose name can be translated as “Friendship is Sweet.”¹

(Lapido 1981:127)

Ladipo (1981) identifies other factors important to her conclusions, including the fact that Ifelodun was allowed to restrict its membership to its own village (Irewolu membership was drawn from six villages), and to withdraw its savings in the “hungry season.” Ifelodun members were lineage wives and, I would add, were organized as age mates. Irewolu members, however, were prevented from organizing along such traditional community lines. They wished to divide amicably into three groups, six villages being too dispersed a community for any successful group effort Furthermore, Irewolu members resented the domination of Isoya town in the group’s affairs. The members’ husbands, however, prevented the group members from carrying out this decentralization. The men of Isoya, who wished to retain the prestige of the town’s leadership, were particularly stubborn.

This description is almost a casebook of how to, and how not to, organize for development. Because the Ifelodun women were the decision-makers, they turned to the skills and practices that had worked for them and for their grandmothers in other associative contexts. Elements of the traditional sex-gender system and the associative structure and practice of women both adapted to the modern context This facilitated the successful adoption of new technology, the acceptance of new farm methods and materials, and the use of credit to expand their economic activities. Even though the Irewolu women were socially and economically less equipped to handle the communal effort, they had a sense of what would work organizationally. However, they were prevented from making the necessary structural changes. Policy that aims to draw women into cooperatives for the purpose of rural development needs to be based upon this kind of community-specific, sophisticated analysis of community and gender. It must also recognize the necessity of giving decision-making powers to the village women.

¹This is a slogan women’s self-help groups across Africa would approve of— focusing on the prerequisite for group effort. The younger women’s “good things come to town” is revealing, by contrast, of a more “modernist” approach. How are good things to come, if not by sweet friendship?

Lapido (1981) identified problems of mistrust among lrewolu members. These problems suggest contradictions in relationships among women; Lapido touches on these contradictions but does not explore them. She also does not discuss contradictions with in nlfelodun. Such contradictions inevitably exist, however, and may undermine self-help efforts. Mbilinyi (1984:294) expressed concern about the lack of attention to differences between women. Wealthier peasant women are in a position to hire labourers; these labourers are usually other women. However, few studies focus on this labour group, their working conditions, and their family life. The same problem applies to the treatment in WID literature of entrepreneurs. The liberal approach is concerned with obstacles to the success of these women rather than with the ways in which they exploit other women. Mbilinyi (1984) set out a research agenda for the consideration of such class contradictions among women.

In a recent study, I explored these contradictions in terms of ideological discourse among the village women of Mitero (Stamp 1987). The study demonstrates how women’s egalitarian ideal of shared resources is sometimes violated in practice. Mate ga, in both its traditional and modern meanings, is a powerful word in the Kikuyu lexicon: it stands for the ideology and practice of sharing among women. As explained in Chapter 4, in the past, mate ga stood for women’s aid to women at childbirth. From collecting firewood to tending her children and fields, village wives would rally around each childbearing woman. In keeping with the spirit of modern development, mate ga has taken on a new meaning. It now designates the savings activity of village women’s self-help groups. The communal savings account, in addition to funding community projects (e.g., primary schools), is intended to contribute a lump sum to each woman in turn. With this, she can afford an otherwise financially inaccessible household improvement.

Recent research in Mitero indicates that enterprising women enhance their material well-being and prestige by exploiting the tradition of mate ga. They receive a disproportionate share of the group savings and possibly divert resources intended for community-development projects for their own use. It is these enterprising women, however, who have played the greatest role in creating the modern idiom of cooperation.

Urban elite women have also adopted the practice of mate ga. They hold parties at which guests are expected to contribute substantial sums of money to their hostess. A recent report from Chad indicates a similar process at work amongst the elite women of Ndjamena, where the pari vente (“a gamble to sell”) has become an important substitute for an inefficient banking system and where popular or influential women gain unfair advantage. It appears that the traditional credit club system found in many parts of Africa, of which mate ga is an example, is everywhere facing manipulative pressures of the kind identified in the Mitero study.

Mate ga is not only coopted by individuals: certain male-dominated rural institutions are also manipulating the concept for their benefit. The Catholic church holds regular mate ga to raise funds. The Catholic women’s self-help group has been absorbed into the church structure and women no longer practice typical group functions; instead, they devote their energies to fund-raising according to the instructions of the male leadership. The local administration used the women’s groups to fund its own events and projects, as well as weddings. As the local subchief said, “for every one of these functions the group is told how much money it will contribute.” The resource-generating power of mate ga has not been lost on the village men, some of whom have pushed their way into group membership. Finally, the district-wide umbrella organizations of the women’s self-help groups have engaged in a massive transfer of group capital from the countryside to nearby cities by investing in urban rental buildings. Our research charts the mismanagement and even embezzlement of the groups’ funds, as well as the lack of return on women’s mate ga activities.

In its focus on the ways in which the “common language of custom” is used to subvert the goals of self-help groups, the Mitero study draws important insights from Parkin’s (1972) monograph on economic change among the Giriama of coastal Kenya and Glazier’s (1985) work on the uses of tradition regarding land acquisition among the Mbeere of central Kenya. The study also draws on the growing body of literature on gender relations in East Africa, and on certain concepts from theory on discourse and ideology. We hope the study contributes to the theoretical understanding of ideological discourse in contemporary African society and that it will join useful works such as Ladipo’s to increase the understanding of the problems and the opportunities provided by women’s self-help activity.

Neglected focal points for social transformation

Women’s rights

Women’s rights are one of the aspects of development that have been neglected in the push to understand women’s economic role. Case studies presented here have charted ways in which women have lost customary rights, particularly in land. There is some important work on the consequences for women of changes in land tenure (as the synopsis of Okeyo’s study in Chapter 4 attests); the WID literature, however, does not address precolonial legal systems as thoroughly as it should.

There needs to be a much more specific focus on the question of women and the law (for the direction such enquiry might take, see CWS/cf 1986). There are often glaring inequities in the national laws of African countries: a legislative attempt to criminalize wife-beating was laughed out of the Kenyan Parliament several years ago. Apart from these obvious inequities, there has been a drift in recent years “into de facto attenuation of women’s rights” (Guyer 1986:415). While discussion of women’s rights in Africa is often linked with concerns about importing Western “women’s liberation,” claims that the rights issue is just another form of ideological imperialism are specious. As Howard (1984:46) says, “While the provision of women’s rights cannot be separated from the attempt to develop sub-Saharan African countries, neither can women’s rights be put aside until such a Utopian time as the government of a newly developed society sees fit to grant them.”

Rights are more pertinent to the issue of technology and development than may appear to be the case. The ability of women, individually and in associations, to adopt and sustain new technology for development depends on their civil rights. Many studies show that women rationally choose not to invest energy and income in the application of new technology to productive resources that are no longer theirs by right Female assessors on customary tribunals, for example, could ensure that customary rights² are not whittled away further (Guyer 1986:415). One aspect of women’s rights, addressed by some feminist political economists, is the issue of use (usufructuary) rights. Especially in patrilineal societies, where most property was collectively owned by men and inherited through the patrilineage, use rights were the preeminent form of rights in productive resources. The imposition of Western notions of the primacy of property ownership has rendered these indigenous rights invisible or illegitimate. There is an urgent need for research into appropriate legal reform to protect and enhance the rights of women under the adopted British common law or French Napoleonic law. At present, the parallel operation of indigenous and Western legal systems works to the disadvantage of women. Bridewealth remains legal, for example, as a touted cornerstone of “traditional” marriage. Yet there are no modern laws to control the violations of indigenous law that are often practiced with regard to such customs.

A valuable conference on women’s rights in Zambia in 1985 made a number of these links (ZARD 1985). For example, Chintu-Tembo (1985) examined women’s rights and health and concluded that, although women have the same rights as men with regard to health care, a lack of education regarding these rights has seriously undermined the delivery of health care to women. Chintu-Tembo (1985) also examined dilemmas with regard to rights and health that are unique to women. For example, the law does not insist on hospital delivery of babies; a woman’s right to choose between hospital and home birth is subverted, however, by the lack of facilities for home delivery and policy of the University of Zambia’s Teaching Hospital “to achieve 100% hospital delivery or medically supervised delivery” (Chintu-Tembo 1985:65). Provision of some training for traditional midwives appears to be at odds with hospital policy.

A particularly sensitive but important area for future research on women’s rights is the impact of new, Draconian versions of Shari’a law on Muslim societies in Africa, in the context of the modem fundamentalist movement (see El Naiem 1984). Apart from basic questions of human rights, there are serious implications for the ability of women such as the Hausa of KRP to contribute meaningfully to the development of their societies. Again, sensitivity to the historical aspects of the oppression of women under Islam is required. As Muslim women at Forum ‘85 in Nairobi insisted, the view of Islamic ideology as unchanging and primordially sexist is ethnocentric and unscientific. These women expressed resentment toward Western feminists for the condemnation of their religion in the name of Western-defined human rights. Feminist reform within Islam depends upon interpretation of the Islamic tradition and upon an appeal to aspects of its texts that are supportive of women.

² use the term “customary rights” with reservations, as the term connotes a dichotomy similar to the formal/informal dichotomy discussed in Chapter 6. The implication is that thpre is “law” (Western law introduced with colonialism) and then there is “custom,” which does not have “the force of law.” Present customary law is subordinate to common law; yet, it is another example of ethnocentrism to assume that Africans in the past had “customs” but no “laws.” A woman’s use right to the milk of her husband’s herd or to a plot of land from her husband’s lineage was as legally binding and as litigable as a title deed to an office building today.

Role of the media

Little attention has been paid in either the WID or the feminist political economy literature to the relationship between the media and women. There are two issues that need to be addressed: first, the dissemination of negative stereotypes of women; second, the use of the media for the transmission of information about new technology and techniques. In the past, African women’s organizations, notably AAWORD and WIN, have drawn attention to the problem. AAWORD has focused its attention on the first issue. It hosted a meeting (funded by CIDA) of professional media women and researchers in Dakar, Senegal, in 1984. A similar meeting for women journalists of Eastern and Southern Africa was held in Nairobi, Kenya, the same year. Of particular concern to the Dakar meeting were the “trivial images of women in the media.” The conclusions, substantiated by an ATRCW research project on the mass media in Africa (ATRCW 1985b), indicated that Western images of women as housewives and dependents, reinforced by appeals to a reconstructed and false African “tradition,” were common. Clearly, the media trend undermines an accurate perception of the real position of African women in society and hampers efforts to have women taken seriously by policymakers.

WIN has identified a disturbing trend in the media with regard to the portrayal of Nigerian women (WIN 1985a:108-125). In addition to the perpetuation of erroneous stereotypes of women, there has been a misogynist tendency to report negatively about women’s activism and to neglect their achievements.

The Nigerian media tends to give disproportionate prominence to reports of negative activities.… The news that a female engineer has been elected to head an international body, or that a female scholar has been awarded an honorary degree abroad, is tucked away in the inner pages. Women in the establishment are given news space (although hardly headlines), when they appear at important functions as gracious hostesses, giving charity, or performing one welfare role or the other.… However, on any occasion that female activities indicated that they (normally regarded as exceptions) could be a rule, the media embarks on a trivialisation campaign. Witness the contrast between the awed reports of the first set of women in civilian government 1979-83, and the boisterous jokes bandied about [regarding] the female upsurge in the Legislature and Executive post-1983.

Condemnation and ridicule are meted out to female activism that does not emerge from the ruling classes. For instance, market women who adhere to their traditional locations of trade, are portrayed as “stubborn,” while as tail-ends of the middle-man chain, they are reported to be “economic saboteurs.” When they try to let the government know how they are affected by various policies, they get less coverage than statements by women of the upper classes who urge them to obey government’s directives.… Whenever an issue concerning women crops up, the overwhelming majority of editorials, cartoons and news analysis bring pressure on women to conform. For instance, crime is not only seen as a societal ill, but as a direct result of women neglecting their homes, husbands and children, in their “inordinate” pursuit of wealth. Male criminals are actually pitied for having succumbed to pressure of greedy womenfolk, who demand what their men cannot afford to supply.…

In the main, attention is paid to the worst side of women, witness the series introduced by the Sunday Sketch at the tail-end of the UN Decade of Women: “The Wickedest Women in History.” Media opinion also reinforces the societal unequal status of women, pays grudging lipservice to benefits granted women, exhorting them to be grateful for the “concessions” and not to regard them as rights.… Perhaps the most startling indication of the deep-seated antipathy to women was the furor over women in drug trafficking. Relentlessly the editorials, cartoons, and news analyses harassed women to the extent that by January, 1985, the word “cocaine” was synonymous with woman, and female criminality was analogous to women’s liberation.

(WIN 1985a:108-125)

The concern with media imagery, which has remained a preoccupation of African women alone, is an important area for investigation by research/action loci.

The role of the media as a development tool is a less thorny issue. Studies have revealed that the media have been underused as such a tool, chiefly because of poor planning and inadequate research on the media-related behaviour of women. For example, Subulola and Johnson (1977:107), in a survey of beliefs on infant feeding and child care among 143 Benin City mothers in Nigeria, found that only 5 mothers cited radio and television as a source of information. This in spite of regular programs on nutrition and child care. Odumosu (1982) reached a similar conclusion. Both these studies identified the use of English rather than the vernacular as a barrier. As well, Odumosu (1982:108) discovered that “women’s programs” were broadcast in the middle of the day, when most women, who were petty traders, were occupied away from the home.

Odumosu (1982) put in a plea for “the traditional media,” i.e., word-of-mouth method of disseminating information, and the use of bell-ringers dispersed to strategic points. In a survey of 200 pregnant women, Odumosu found that over 90% had received tetanus shots. Although 79% possessed radios, only 4.5% heard about the immunization program via this medium. The rest learned of the program via word of mouth. Odumosu’s conclusions are suggestive of the kind of research on media that might yield a significantly higher return for technology-information programs. It is also worth noting that concern for the media as a tool appears to be restricted to health and nutrition researchers, a fact that social scientists and development planners should remedy. Correcting program times, using the right language, and researching methods to utilize the “traditional media” would seem to be among the more easily solved development dilemmas.

Social dimensions of health care

Several examples of the importance of social context were given in the section of Chapter 2 dealing with health technology. The discussion of women’s rights also draws attention to the wider context of health-care delivery. The issue of health must be connected with other development concerns: for example, health cannot be separated from agricultural issues. If women are disequipped economically and socially, then their ability to retain control of family health maintenance will be undermined. “Appropriate technology” for childbirth is a particularly pressing social issue. Several studies in the social health literature have pointed out that Nigerian midwifery, if improved with a better understanding of cleanliness and of pathology requiring a physician’s intervention, is the most suited to low levels of state-provided health care. Given the supportive social conditions prevailing in the village, midwifery also makes the most efficient use of society’s resources, including women’s familial and community organizations. In particular, obstetrical practices that are under criticism in the West but have been introduced to Africa (such as the use of the lithotomy position, where a woman gives birth on her back) are criticized. Problematical in a context where high-technology inputs are available (such as fetal monitors), such practices are even more problematical where such equipment is not available.

Pamela Brink, a nurse-anthropologist who conducted a detailed study of Nigeria midwives involving observation as well as statistical methods, reported that women will attend hospital or community health centre antenatal clinics but are reluctant to deliver there, preferring their local midwives. They give the following reasons:

The hospital will not allow them to squat for delivery and that the midwife is not in constant attendance upon them during the entire process as their village TBA [Traditional Birth Attendant] is. When asked why they attend antenatal classes if they do not intend to be delivered by the nurse-midwife, they state that they attend antenatal clinics to receive the medicine and the vitamins necessary to make their baby healthy.

(Brink 1982:1887)

Brink’s report of sound midwifery techniques and the supportive family environment substantiated the women’s choice of home delivery.

Another social aspect of health care is the importance of involving women’s organizations in health development. In Nigeria, Feuerstein (1976) compared a cholera-prevention program in one community, where traditional Western methods of attempting to influence people individually were used, with a program in another community that aimed at obtaining community approval for the health policy. In the first community, only 45% of villagers reported for immunization; there was 73% participation in the second village. Feuerstein (1976) discovered, however, that the medical profession showed little appreciation of the contribution communities could make to health care. She found a sentiment among doctors and nurses that public health was secondary to hospital medical care, and that training professionals was more important than training health leaders. “[These] attitudes are as difficult to change as traditional health beliefs because of their cultural and psychological aspects” (Feuerstein 1976:52).

A survey of 400 Kenyan village women by Were (1977) to determine their attitudes toward equal rights and their opportunities within the community yielded a clear consensus. The women felt that their organized groups were the appropriate basis for managing health care. They felt that they could achieve more through collective action than through individual effort in moving toward what they called “healthy living” (Were 1977:529).

These findings, when combined with the tools for analyzing social and economic process developed in Chapter 4, show a possible direction for future work on the social context of health technology transfer.

Indigenous technology and invention

Given the success of Africans in populating a continent and creating a culturally rich and diversified civilization over several millennia, it would seem self-evident that indigenous technology was well adapted to African conditions. However, little has been done to determine what aspects of the indigenous technology should receive active encouragement for retention. Indeed, little is known of inventions and technology that lost out to cheap industrial imports over the last 100 years. The Haya of East Africa were making steel in blast furnaces almost 2000 years before it was invented in Germany; the decline of smithing of all kinds as a result of colonial trade in implements from Sheffield is a better known phenomenon. Mackenzie (1986) has recorded in detail the sound agricultural practices of Kikuyu women (use of fertilizer, contoured fields, windbreaks, etc.).

Many case studies presented in this book imply the appropriateness of indigenous technology in physical terms, social terms, or both. Charlton’s (1984) case of the rejected oil-palm presses (see p. 59) demonstrates both. The account of new stove technology (see p. 59-60) illustrates the great social significance of traditional cooking technology. The starting point for research into this important issue is the assumption that African technology is adaptive, not inherently “backward.” The conditions to which the technology was adapted — social, economic, and environmental — may have changed and, thus, new technology may be required. However, it cannot be assumed that, in every circumstance, a new way of doing things is better than the old way.

For example, I doubt if any researcher has considered the possible connection between the short-handled hoes of women, which are often decried for the way they make women bend over for hours every day, and the women’s strong backs and necks, necessary for carrying heavy head loads. In a continent where draught animals have been historically barred by tsetse fly or where terrain or economy has made the use of such animals difficult or impossible, the human head has been the chief means of transportation. Yet back problems are not common among African women engaging in traditional work patterns (unless the women are overworked). It is unrealistic to assume, given the conditions of poverty in Africa, that head loading will be abandoned in the near future. Changing other aspects of women’s physical work, however, such as providing them with hoes that do not require them to bend over, might prevent the development of strong backs that are not injured by heavy head loading.

Given the discovery that our own unexamined assumptions about our artifacts and our bodies have caused problems in technology transfer, to break free of our biases, imaginative connections such as this need to be made (see discussion of Kirby [1987] in Chapter 6). One might wonder, for example, what effect Western attitudes to women’s muscular strength might have had on “appropriate technology” design. The idea that anything weighing over 20 Ib (9 kg) would require a man’s help in carrying would flabbergast a Kikuyu woman, for whom loads of 100 Ib (45 kg) are possible over long distances. The point of thinking about interrelationships between technology related tasks and about such questions as muscular strength is that we cannot assume to know the connections between one kind of technological practice and another unless we conduct the research.

As for invention, a phenomenon observable in any African village or town is a perfect example: a child running down the street with a marvelous wheeled contraption, full of moving parts and complicated hardware. To argue that Africans are uninventive or that invention does not continue daily is to be, at best, ignorant of ordinary African life and, at worst, racist What must be examined are the social and ideological reasons why African inventiveness has not been translated into a culture of mechanical competence as, by contrast, exists among Asians.

The “conscientization” of men

Sexist bias at all levels of policy-making was one of the major findings in the review presented in Chapter 3. Western feminists have agonized for years, in academia and in aid agencies, about how to make their male colleagues read their articles, attend their workshops, and integrate the substantial analyses and findings of feminist research into their own work. We have yet to find a solution, although there have been advances on some fronts. The problem of “conscientizing” African men exists in a worldwide context of massive indifference toward the efforts of feminists, both male and female, to insert women and gender into the knowledge about human society. In Africa, the issue is politically sensitive. It is ironic that in a continent where women once enjoyed greater power and autonomy than women in most other regions of the world, efforts to change men’s minds are now seen as profoundly threatening. From the level of political theory to the level of putting technology-transfer schemes into practice, research on sexist ideology and how it may be overcome is required.

The boundary problem

The boundary problem has been extensively documented in Chapters 1 and 2 and demonstrated in several of the case studies presented. Rather than repeat the assertions already made, concrete research guidelines to overcome the problem are spelled out in Chapter 7. One suggestion that it is important to make, in spite of its self-evident value, is that agencies should identify the bridge-building suggestions in the studies they commission and actively work toward using them within the structure of their organization.

Who does the research?

The sensitivity of African women to the question of outside researchers was addressed in Chapter 2; the problem of the subordination of local “knowledges” is discussed in Chapter 6. The goal should be for Africa to take charge of the production of knowledge about itself. It is important to recognize, however, as some African feminist researchers do, that a simplistic attitude favouring any African research over all outside research will inevitably lead to certain biases and to the perpetuation of conceptual errors that indigenization is intended to overcome. Mbilinyi (1985b), in particular, is clear-sighted about the problems of an “African women only stance.”

As previously mentioned, unequal access to research resources and channels of dissemination will ensure research efforts are dominated by elite women and that the voice of ordinary African women will once more be silenced. Feminist political economy has revealed how elite women have been ideologically, economically, and politically coopted to the Western-dominated interests of their class. Only research organizations that have analyzed class structure and sought to account for it in their research design may succeed in overcoming the limitations of existing conceptual frameworks and generate research and development programs based on an accurate knowledge of sex-gender systems and the local community. Such organizations (e.g., WIN, WAG, WRDP) seem to be operating on the best principles of women’s (genuinely) traditional cooperation: research ngwatio.

A review of the literature on women, technology, and development in Africa has revealed that the significant divide in conceptual approaches is not between Africans and non-Africans. No magical insights are bestowed on intellects simply because they are African, and white skin does not doom a researcher to error. The distinction between valuable and inappropriate research lies in the conceptual framework used, and African scholars have contributed to each conceptual framework so far discussed. To suggest that an African’s ethnic background is the key determinant of the validity of his or her ideas trivializes the complexity of the intellectual issues involved; the suggestion may, in fact, be considered ethnocentric and condescending (equivalent to the backhanded compliment that “blacks have rhythm”). Projects that uncritically seek African researchers, failing to scrutinize their credentials or the quality their work, convey the message that the issue is not important enough for the application of our own rigorous standards of analysis and criticism.

Given our relative advantages and the unequal power relations between the West and Africa, however, the task of critiquing African scholarship and action is extremely sensitive. On the one hand, the criteria by which judgment is passed must be scrupulous in avoiding the ethnocentric bias described for so much of the literature and policy on Africa (i.e., we must avoid the often-leveled charge of “intellectual colonialism”). On the other hand, we must ensure that the standards we apply are as rigorous as those we demand for research on our own society.

Beyond this, the reality that a substantial proportion of the resources for research and action reside in the West, both in agencies and among scholars, ensures that work on Africa will inevitably continue here. Our moral responsibility in this regard is twofold. First, we must ensure that our efforts genuinely serve African interests and are derived from a sounder knowledge than we have displayed. Second, we must identify and support those research efforts in Africa that are tackling the biases and assumptions of development activities and are engaging in useful, development-oriented feminist political economy. Both responsibilities require respectful participation in current African attempts to uncover and assert local “knowledges.” Chapter 6, dealing with the conceptual problems inherent in feminist as well as nonfeminist scholarship on Africa, addresses this important task.

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