Showing papers on "Women's work published in 1990"

Women and wages: gender and the control of income in farm and bantustan households

Abstract: The argument of this article is based on a close comparison of two Bantustan areas in South Africa: the Matatiele district in the Transkei and Qwaqwa in the Orange Free State. Such comparisons are rarely, if ever, attempted, but we contend that they are potentially very useful in illuminating the complexities of social relationships in South Africa's rural periphery. In this article we concentrate on gender relationships. All the Bantustans share certain characteristics that impinge on the nature of gender relationships. Most significant are the overwhelming dependence of households on income derived from remittances, and the fact that migrant‐contract employment opportunities are mainly restricted to men. But Bantustan areas also differ with regard to the availability of residual productive resources (such as arable and pasture land), their residents’ past involvement in wage‐labour and experiences of forced relocation, and in the forms of material differentiation amongst residents. This article explores...

Farm size, household size and composition, and women's contribution to agricultural production: evidence from Zaire.

Abstract: This article examines a unique data set on peasant farms in Zaire, focusing on several of the propositions regarding land‐abundant tropical agriculture recently set forth by Binswanger and McIntire. In an environment fairly comparable to their base case, we find empirical support for their contentions concerning the virtual universality of self‐cultivation, the limited extent of hiring of labour, and the importance for farm size of the household's age‐sex composition. Women's contribution to farm size at the margin is larger than that of men, although this difference is apparent only among larger households. Our results differ somewhat from the Binswanger‐McIntire proposition that area cultivated per working household member will be largely invariant to household size or wealth. There is a decline in cultivated area per worker as household size increases that may reflect incentive problems as well as a tendency toward greater diversification of household activities as household size increases. Wealthy hou...

Women's work and family size in rural Thailand.

Abstract: Surveys of 612 couples in 2 districts of rural Thailand were conducted to analyze the extent to which the birth of each child and the cumulative effect of childbearing interrupts interferes with or influences womens economic activity. The districts were in a northern area Lamphun where fertility has declined rapidly since the 1960s and central Suphanburi province where the decline has been slower. Couples were selected for having completed families or 1 or 2 children or 4 or more surviving children and were matched for age. Information was obtained by survey questionnaires and by focus groups. Small family couples were somewhat better educated and of higher socioeconomic status and tended to be farmers while large family couples were more likely to engage in wage labor. These couples viewed womens labor as an economic necessity either for survival or to educate and provide for their families. To cope with child care women resorted to relatives older children hired child care nursery school primary school took their children with them to work or modified their work schedule. The double burden of income-earning activity and child care caused considerable strains for working mothers. There was an overwhelming consensus among both groups that childbearing interrupts and that child care interferes with womens work. 95% of the small and 90% of the large families felt that more work could be done if families were kept small. Implications of this study are that government sponsored family planned should continue and that some type of subsidized day care is needed including early morning hours when farm women leave for work.

Women's Work, Women's Lives: A Comparative Economic Perspective

Abstract: This chapter provides a broad overview of women's economic status in all parts of the world, with special emphasis on their position relative to men Large differences are found among countries and regions in the size of the gender gap with respect to such measures as labor force participation, occupational segregation, earnings, education, and to a some what lesser degree the amount of time spent on housework Two generalizations, however, hold Women have not achieved full equality anywhere, but particularly in the advanced industrialized countries for which data on the relevant variables are more readily available, there is evidence of a reduction of gender differences in economic roles and outcomes

Women's Work and Children's Nutrition in South-Western Kenya:

Abstract: This paper reports a time-allocation study conducted in south Nyanza, Kenya Data on household composition, identifying each household member, age, and relationship to each other were collected fro

Women's Work Patterns: A Time Allocation Study of Rural Families in St. Lucia

Abstract: This time-budget study aims to contribute to our understanding of the lives of Caribbean rural women by documenting the productive and reproductive work patterns of women in the rural community of Saltibus. It highlights the effects that socio-economic status (class) and women's life-course stage have on time allocation to such activities. The sequence, rationales and household decision making are also described. The study concludes with some implications for development policies and recommendations for development planners.

Women's Work, Women's Lives: A Comparative Economic Perspective

Abstract: This chapter provides a broad overview of women's economic status in all parts of the world, with special emphasis on their position relative to men. Large differences are found among countries and regions in the size of the gender gap with respect to such measures as labor force participation, occupational segregation, earnings, education, and to a some what lesser degree the amount of time spent on housework. Two generalizations, however, hold. Women have not achieved full equality anywhere, but particularly in the advanced industrialized countries for which data on the relevant variables are more readily available, there is evidence of a reduction of gender differences in economic roles and outcomes.

Taxing development in Tanzania: why must women pay?

Abstract: The extension of a development tax to women in Tanzania raises the general issue of the relevance of gender to patterns of economic development in a country with a ‘socialist’ reputation. This article looks at the link between gender and development in Tanzania, but equally importantly it focuses on the way in which the question of gender has been contested and debated within Tanzania. While the debate on gender has highlighted the way in which ‘socialist’ policies have intensified women's workloads without removing patriarchal social relations, the development tax both recognises the contribution of women but also exposes their continued dependence on men, since their production does not always result in cash income. Structural adjustment programmes have, however, begun to force women into the marketing of subsistence food in order to make ends meet, as the inflationary effects of adjustment bite. Rather than being ‘integrated into development’, SAPs and the Development Levy bind women more closely into ...

Women's work, families, and health : the balancing act

Abstract: womens work families and health the balancing act. Book lovers, when you need a new book to read, find the book here. Never worry not to find what you need. Is the womens work families and health the balancing act your needed book now? That's true; you are really a good reader. This is a perfect book that comes from great author to share with you. The book offers the best experience and lesson to take, not only take, but also learn.

Agricultural Development in Sierra Leone: Implications For Rural Women in the Aftermath of the Women's Decade

Abstract: The United Nations Decade for Women drew to a close in 1985 with a dramatic conference in Nairobi, Kenya. It was with much enthusiasm that over 300 resolutions were passed in to promote forward looking strategies for the advancement of women globally. One of the most critical issues addressed during the period of the women's decade concerned the effectiveness of national development policies and institutional machineries to facilitate the empowerment of women. It was generally considered that while the outcomes varied, the persistence of structural and cultural barriers tended to weaken the capacity of governments to respond efficiently and effectively, and of women to affect the political and economic process in their best interests. Another significant policy issue, directly related to the first, is the current food crisis in Africa. This crisis is characterized by the increasing inability of most African countries to provide for the food needs of their rapidly growing populations. For the past two decades per capita food production has also declined relative to other world regions and there has been a growing dependence on food imports and food aid, rising food prices and severe hunger and malnutrition. This situation is therefore very crucial, because the agricultural sector forms the base of most African economies and contributes between 40-60 percent of the gross domestic product and over 50 percent of export earnings. Within the light of such issues the Nairobi Manifesto was prepared and endorsed by a special meeting of African women's groups at the Nairobi conference. 1 On the issue of the food crisis in Africa, the position taken was that the lack of food, water and fuel were vital concerns in the lives and responsibilities of women. The persistence of these problems was perceived as linked to colonial and post-colonial export-oriented agricultural policies which had failed to address the issue of national and regional food self-

Women's Work and the Family Economy in Historical Perspective

Abstract: Introduction: Women's work and the family economy in historical perspective, W.R.Lee and Pat Hudson. Part 1 Agriculture and proto-industry: women's work and the family - some demographic implications of gender specific rural work patterns in 19th-century Germany, W.R.Lee women and proto-industrialization in a corporate society - Wurttemberg woollen weaving, 1590-1760, Sheilagh C.Ogilvie. Part 2 Women's work and the family economy: strains in the "firm of wife, children and friends"? middle-class women and employment in early 19th-century England, Catherine Hall "la petite ouvriere surmenee" - family structure, family income and women's work in 19th-century France, Anne Meyering "she decides in economic affairs"? changes in women's work and family responsibilities in Norway since the 1860s, Ida Blom. Part 3 Factory work and urban employment: kinship, labour and enterprise - the pottery industry 1890-1920, Richard Whipp women in urban employment and the shaping of the Russian working class, 1880-1917, Jane McDermid women in a car town - Coventry 1920-1945, Linda Grant. Part 4 Unemployment and casual labour: unemployment and the making of the feminine during the Lancashire cotton famine, Clare Evans the hidden economy of dockland families - Liverpool in the 1930s, Pat Ayres.

Women's work: engendering economic anthropology.

Abstract: Economic anthropologists have been slow to take advantage of the new scholarship on gender relations in society Although there have been some positive developments in the direction of incorporating gender analysis in research in economic anthropology, the mainstream of the subdiscipline has rarely appreciated the significance of gender as a primary category of analysis Following a general discussion, this paper draws from research on the informal economic sector in the Peruvian Andes to argue that studies are incomplete and often distorted when they disregard gender, and they are enriched to the degree that they examine the differential experiences of women and men in the society and the economy Over the last fifteen years, a number of anthropologists have called for greater attention to gender relations and, especially, to women's position in society (eg, Rosaldo and Lamphere 1974, Reiter 1975, Young et al 1981, Caplan and Bujra 1982, Shapiro 1983) The recognition of distortion in theory and research that take the male as the universal measure and as a consequence underestimate the social, economic, and political participation of women has led to some serious rethinking in the discipline Nevertheless, the subfield of economic anthropology has been surprisingly slow to take advantage of the new scholarship on gender Although this new work has often focused on precisely those matters of concern to economic anthropologists-the division of labor, social relations of production and distribution, economic development-gender has rarely been appreciated as a primary category of analysis2 in the mainstream of economic anthropology Attention to gender and specifically to women's experience implies more than a simple addition of new material to old research de-

The Verdigris Industry in Eighteenth-Century Languedoc: Women's Work, Women's Art

Abstract: The history of women's work is frequently a history of exploitation, of menial tasks, arduous labor, health risks, inadequate wages, and severely limited opportunity. Occasionally, however, this melancholy account is leavened by episodes of individual or collective achievement; the story of the verdigris industry in eighteenth-century France provides such leavening. It is a success story, a report of a financial golden age, during which many women became entrepreneurs, and a few developed lucrative and legally protected power bases. It is perhaps ironic that this economic Eden should have developed in France. Granted, France is a country with a traditional interest in the female, but this interest has been rarely translated into concern for her occupational and financial fulfillment. By and large, the women who have caught the French imagination have been aristocratic, intellectual, sensual, and/or fictional. The result has been that we know more about the inventive Marguerite de Navarre and the invented Manon Lescaut than we do about the millions who contributed their anonymous labor to the French economy. The nature of that contribution, the range of occupational roles open to women, is not well known. Evelyne Sullerot, citing the thirteenth-century Livre des metiers by Etienne Boileau, determined that fifteen medieval trades were considered "uniquely feminine," and she found the conventional irony in the fact that many of these trades revolved around gold and silk, "two of the most precious and sought-

Effects of tea production on women's work and labour Allocations in Embu district

Abstract: xii 1. CHAPTER ONE 1 1.

Unequal participation by women in the working world

Abstract: Interest in studying the economic performance of women in the region dates from recent times and is related to development studies. An initial conclusion of analyses on the economic roles of the sexes was the unequal participation by men and women in the labour market. According to census records, the greater part of the adult male population appears as working population, while the majority of women appear as non-working population, i.e., they are registered as homemakers. This finding led researchers to attempt to determine its causes and to explore the different ways in which work is distributed between men and women in the areas of production and reproduction, respectively. In one way or another, Latin American societies —like those of the rest of the world— have centered women s work on the duties of social reproduction, labour force reproduction and biological reproduction. Thus, women’s role in these areas determines the form and scope of female participation in productive work.

Day Care and the Quest for Professionalism: Issues and Dilemmas in Traditional Women's Work.

Abstract: This paper critically examines the concepts of professions and professionalization that prevail in the early childhood literature and cffers alternative conceptualizations from the sociology of professions. After delineating traditional concepts of professions, Wilensky's (1964) popular definition of a profession is adopted for this examination. Accordlng to Wilensky, any occupation wishing to exercise professional authority must :and a technical basis for it, assert an exclusive jurisdiction, link both skill and jurisdiction to standards of training, and convince the public that its services are uniquely trustworthy. The four conditions of this definition are discussed in relation to day care. Subsequent discussion points out that the advocates of professionalization in day care may not be representative of the occupational group as a whole, and that professionalization, although widely accepted in the early childhood literature, may have a number of unintended consequences. In the concluding discussion, the application of traditional models of profassionalization to the early childhood field is criticized because it ignores the issue of gender. Ideas are offered on how to integrate an appropriate professional model for day care workers within an ecological approacn. (RH) ********************************************************************** Reproductions supplied by EDRS are the best that can be made from the original document. ****************************************ft********1*********************

Book reviews : Revaluation of Women's Work Sheila Lewenhak Croom Helm, 1988, 335pp, hbk

Abstract: For those expecting an attractive, neatly conceptualised arrangement of the debate on domestic versus waged labour, Sheila Lewenhak’s latest publication will be a disappointment. This is not a theoretical work, rather it is a daring attempt to address a global problem facing women, a question of method how, precisely does one measure the value of women’s unpaid labour on a global scale? Taking up the challenge thrown down by so many international policy makers and civil servants, Sheila Lewenhak proposes some quantitative ways of establishing indicators to include women’s invisible socio-economic activity into the Gross Domestic Products of the world economies. Bypassing without apology any reference to revaluing of housework with