Showing papers on "Women's work published in 1981"

Gambian women: Unequal partners in rice development projects?

Abstract: Agricultural development projects usually channel inputs to male household heads on the assumption that they control the land, labour, crops and finances. This assumption is challenged for the Mandinka: women cultivate rainfed rice, having ownership or use‐rights to rice land, while men control upland and grow groundnuts and millets. Both cultivate household and personal crops. Three development projects introduced irrigated rice to men who therefore control this land and crop. Failure to involve women in rice development schemes has not only increased their economic dependence on men but is also a major reason for deficiencies in these projects and low national rice production.

Breastfeeding and women's work: constraints and opportunities.

Abstract: A careful examination of existing studies suggests that work as a cause of declines in breastfeeding has been exaggerated while insufficient attention has been devoted to making breastfeeding and work more compatible. Formal employment in urban settings which requires concentrated attention to the job is the aspect of womens work that is viewed as incompatible with breastfeeding especially for women whose employment separates them from their infants. Breastfeeding rates for working women do not show that employment and breastfeeding are incompatible. 4 aspects of the relationship between breastfeeding and work which may influence overall trends are considered in greater detail: work as a reason for weaning; the effect of maternity benefits on rates of breastfeeding; the effect of mothers employment status on the nutritional status of her children; and the effect of mothers employment on breastfeeding duration. Some important early writings which contributed to establishment of the belief that maternal employment is a major reason for the worldwide decline in breastfeeding despite the lack of evidence in support of this belief are reviewed. The influence of the assumed connection between maternal employment and breastfeeding on policies designed to promote adequate infant feeding and the significance of such beliefs to the infant formula industry are discussed. Some suggestions to facilitate breastfeeding by working women are advanced.

Women and agriculture in sub‐Saharan Africa: Implications for development (an exploratory study)

Abstract: Data on the importance of women's role in agriculture in sub‐Saharan Africa and the social structures supporting the women's role are considered to clarify the interaction between the production systems and the social systems. The results are discussed with respect to their impact on the two‐sector ‘agriculture‐industry’ development models and their implications for future development. The paper concludes that women's role in agriculture supported past development but that the failure to recognise/enhance their activities is contributing to current problems with the food supply which can be overcome most effectively by working with rather than against the women.

The locus of reproduction: women's labour in the Zambian Copperbelt, 1927-1953

Abstract: An important advance in the study of southern African labour history in the last decade has been the recognition that capital has historically sought to relieve itself of the costs of social reproduction. The argument suggests that South African mining capital, in order to reduce the cost of wages paid to its African employees thus increasing the level of surplus value it could extract sought to localise social reproduction in the rural areas. By encouraging a system of migrant labour, companies avoided responsibility both for the maintenance of workers' families at the mine during their period of employment and for the maintenance of the workers themselves at the end of their working lives. I This paper, primarily a study of the causes, structure, and implications of women's involvement in the Zambian (Northern Rhodesian) copper mining industry, questions both the conceptual and spatial dimensions accorded social reproduction in this paradigm. Social reproduction, it suggests, involves not only the generational reproduction of the working class as a whole, but also the daily reproduction of labour power, that is, the daily maintenance of the worker. The Northern Rhodesian mining companies saw it in their interest to localise this second aspect of women's reproductive labour not in the rural areas, as the standard paradigm would predict, but under company domain and on company property. Women's unpaid labour, performed in the mining compounds, reproduced labour power on a daily basis and increased its productivity in the long term more effectively and cheaply than could the companies directly. Thus, contrary to Wolpe's South African model, the ability of capital in Northern Rhodesia to extract greater surplus value depended on its success in relocating women's reproductive labour to the urban areas. Moreover, although this calculation was initially based on a short-term assessment of the potential reduction of wage costs, some elements of management came to suspect by the second

Developing Women's Cooperatives: An Experiment in Rural Nigeria

Abstract: This study focuses on the experiences of two groups of Yoruba women who tried to organise themselves along modern cooperative lines The progress of the first group which tried to adhere to government regulations, is compared to that of the second, which moulded its own rules Cohesion, personal development, and financial growth were found to be greater in the self‐regulating group Implications for cooperative policy are discussed

Demographic predictors of women's work participation in post-war Britain

Abstract: This paper both discusses and quantifies the effects of family formation on the cycle of womens work participation over adult life as discernible in aggregate data. Employment rates of successive birth cohorts of women over the 1950-74 period were analyzed. Since World War 2 there has been unprecedented growth in Great Britain in labor force participation of women over 30 particularly given the small base of mothers of dependent children. These trends are described and analyzed in terms of the contribution of demographic factors i.e. children marital status age and cohort to the patterns observed. The paper results from econometric research designed primarily to develop a model for projecting the female labor force undertaken in collaboration with Richard Layard at the Center for Labor Economics (CLE) at the London School of Hygiene. Certain demographic factors provide the main explanation for the life cycle pattern in the proportion of women in employment and should play an important role in projecting the female labor force. Children can account for most of the dip in the aggregate participation profile before its 2nd peak between 45 and 50 and age itself for the decline thereafter. Demographic factors fail to explain why this bimodal pattern should have emerged during the postwar era in Britain nor do they seem so important in explaining the upward trend within that period. Once childbearing is allowed for marriage does not appear as important for the explanation or projection of the aggregate labor force. How far the presence of a child lowers a mothers probability of labor force participation depends not only on the childs age but on the presence of other children in the family. This was confirmed by a subsidiary analysis of micro data and is attributed in part to the economies of scale in child care. In the aggregate the effect of children on a cohort participation rate appears to be fairly well approximated by a linear formulation in numbers of children in age groups averaged over the whole cohort. Simulating an average lifetime effect on participation of forming an average sized family of about 7 woman years or 16-19% of the time between ages 20-59 depending on cohort the curtailment of the working lives of women who have children was not marked and may be less than is commonly supposed. The impact of having children may be more severe on the quality of a womans working life than on its duration. The relatively modest impact of children on total length of working life also appears from the viewpoint of trends through calendar time. The rising trends observed from successive censuses mean that the expected working life of women has been rising whether or not they have children.

9 Women's Work and the Family

Abstract: The effects of a working woman's occupational activities on her family are varied and diverse. On the one hand they help raise her family's living standards and expand its social contacts. On the other they promote the development of the woman's personality and thereby raise her social status, enrich her intellectual and cultural life, and sharply enhance her role in family and daily life. This, in turn, promotes equality in the family and the rational division and sharing of domestic work.

Women's work and child nutrition in Haiti

Abstract: Thesis (M.S.)--Massachusetts Institute of Technology, Dept. of Nutrition and Food Science, 1981.

Women's work, fertility, and competing time use in Mexico City.

Abstract: This study suggests that the degree to which work and childcare are competing uses of time is an important determinant of the female labor force participation (FLFP) fertility relationships in less developed countries. A negative relationship may be found where work and childcare are competing uses of time and no relationship (or even a positive relationship) where they are not. Several measures of competing time use are developed. The competing time use hypothesis is tested using sample survey data from Mexico City. Focus is on correlation not causation. A basic assumption is that FLFP and fertility decisions are made jointly and depend on income prices tastes wages employment opportunities and current family size. The empirical work deals with the direction and significance of partial correlations between FLFP and fertility and whether these correlations vary predictably according to the degree to which work and childcare are competing uses of time. The data were drawn from a multistage stratified clustered probability sample of married Mexican women living in the Mexico City Metropolitan Area. All women were living with their husbands at the time of the interview in early 1971. Sample size was 798. The empirical results provide strong support for the hypothesis that a negative FLFP fertility relationship will exist only if work and childcare are competing uses of time. When no distinction was made regarding competing time use there was no significant FLFP fertility relationship. Women who had worked at some time since marriage had very similar levels of fertility to women who had not. When distinctions regarding competing time use were made large fertility differences were evident. Workers for whom market work and childcare cannot be performed simultaneously had significantly lower fertility than nonworkers; workers for whom market work and childcare could be performed simultaneously had similar or higher fertility than nonworkers. Full time workers had significantly lower fertility than nonworkers but part-time workers did not. The modern sector workers had significantly lower fertility than nonworkers but traditional sector workers did not. Policies that deal with female employment in developing countries need to focus on both levels of employment and the nature of that employment.