The Contribution of African Women to Economic Growth and Development:
Historical Perspectives and Policy Implications
May 31, 2011
Emmanuel Akyeampong (Harvard University)Hippolyte Fofack (World Bank)
GAP DEVELOPMENT SEMINAR SERIES
1
Outline Background and context; Rationale and objectives; Precolonial Africa: An Era of Gender Parity? Production, Reproduction, Accumulation: Kinship and
Exploitation; Gendered Production in Pottery and Textiles:
Women’s Work; State Formation, Slavery, Slave Trade and the Work
of Christian Missionaries; Colonial Policies, Colonial Economies: Gendered
Impact and implications; Conclusion. Africa on the Eve of Independence: the
Status of Women;
Background and context At the turn of the millennium, world leaders
converged on a set of eight Millennium Development Goals (MDGs);
Goal 1: Eradicate extreme poverty and hunger (e.g. reduce by half the proportion of people living on less than a dollar a day);Goal 2: Achieve universal primary education (e.g. Ensure that by 2015, children everywhere, boys and girls alike, will be able to complete full course primary schooling); Goal 3: Promote gender equality and empower women (e.g. Eliminate gender disparity in primary and secondary education, preferably by 2005, and at all levels of education no later than 2015); 3
Goal 4: Reduce child mortality (e.g. reduce by two-thirds, between 1990 and 2015, the under-five mortality rate);Goal 5: Improve maternal health (e.g. reduce by three-quarters, between 1990 and 2015, the maternal mortality ratio; achieve by 2015 universal access to reproductive health);
Goal 6: Combat HIV/AIDS, Malaria and other diseases (e.g. Halt and begin to reverse the spread of HIV/AIDS; Achieve, by 2010, universal access to treatment for HIV/AIDS for all those who need it);Goal 7: Ensure environmental sustainability;Goal 8: Develop a global partnership for development; 4
Goal 1: Poverty reduction Persistence of poverty in Sub-Saharan Africa in
the first decade of the millennium; The diverging development paths and widening
income gaps between Sub-Saharan Africa and other regions of the developing world have emerged as one of the main characteristics of the last few decades;
The challenges of meeting the first MDG may be exacerbated by the global economic and financial crisis;
Sub-Saharan Africa has emerged as the only region of the developing world that will miss MDG1; 5
Figure: per capita income in North and Sub-Saharan Africa
6
0
500
1000
1500
2000
2500
3000
3500
1970
1972
1974
1976
1978
1980
1982
1984
1986
1988
1990
1992
1994
1996
1998
2000
2002
2004
2006
2008
GDP per capita (constant 2000 US$)
Sub-Saharan Africa North Africa
Tracking progress toward halving poverty
0
10
20
30
40
50
60
1990 2000 2015
East Asia and Pacific
South Asia
Sub-Saharan Africa
7
MDG3: Promote Gender Equality and Empower Women Promoting gender equality through elimination of
gender disparity in education is good for growth and economic development in both advanced and developing countries;
In the Bank’s framework, gender equality impact on growth operates through a number of channels, including: Increased women’s labor force participation,
productivity and earnings; Life expectancy; Improved children’s well-being;
8
United Kingdom: Female Labor Force participation and income
9
34
36
38
40
42
44
46
48
14000
16000
18000
20000
22000
24000
26000
28000
30000
1980
1981
1982
1983
1984
1985
1986
1987
1988
1989
1990
1991
1992
1993
1994
1995
1996
1997
1998
1999
2000
2001
2002
2003
2004
2005
2006
2007
2008
2009
GDP per capita (constant 2000 US$) Labor force, female (% of total labor force)
Schooling and Income in Africa (1970-2009)
10
5
5.5
6
6.5
7
7.5
8
8.5
9
40 50 60 70 80 90 100 110 120
Ln o
f GD
P pe
r cap
ita (c
onst
ant 2
000
US$
)
Ratio of female to male primary enrollment (%)
GABSEY
EQU SAFMAU
NAM BOT
CAP
SWA
ZIM
KEN
MAD
RWAUGA
GHA
ANGCOT
BEN
GUI
SOM
CHA
SIE
GAM
MOZ
DRCBUR
MAL
SEN
NIG
MAU
Assessment of Progress towards MDG3
The Sub-Saharan African Region continues to exhibit some of the worse gender-related indicators and large gender gaps: The highest maternal mortality ration; Large gender gaps in primary and
secondary enrollment rations; Gaps in female labor force participation;
11
The context is also characterized by the increasingly strong commitment to MDG3 in the development community;
Development partners selected gender as a ―Special Theme‖ of the IDA 16 replenishment;
The next World Development Report—WDR 2012: Gender Equality and Development; focuses on the evolution of gender equality across the
world and strives to address gaps in knowledge on the gender and development nexus.
In particular, how and why gender equality matters for development, as well as how to best address gender inequality in the design of development strategies and policies.
13
As a result of persistency of high poverty rates and gender disparities in Sub-Saharan Africa, most research on gender and development in the region have focused on: Widowhood and vulnerability; Gender-based violence; Gender gap in access to infrastructures; Gender, poverty and unemployment;
African women have been approached as victims and on compassionate ground;
This approach may not reveal the full potential and contribution of African women to economic development;
14
Rationale and objectives Africa has a unique history where colonialism
has created added layers on existing norms and traditions, rendering the gender relations and dynamics more complex than in other regions;
The complexity of that relation requires that the gender and development nexus be studied from several prism—after all gender is a cross-cutting theme in the Bank;
The objectives of this research is to fill analytical gaps, drawing on history to improve understanding of gender relations and dynamics and in the process improve policy design and formulation in the region;
15
In the last couple of decades increasing academic and policy interest in evaluating and enhancing the contribution of women to economic growth and development;
Recognition that women’s potential contribution to growth would be even more significant in the absence of household occupation constraints, often exacerbated by the poor state of infrastructure (Agenor, Canuto and Pereira daSilva, 2010), Agenor and Fofack, 2011);
Questions at the heart of emerging studies of gender and development in Africa: (i) how gender discrimination manifests itself; (ii) the persistence of gender discrimination;
(iii) the possible economic costs and welfare implications of gender discrimination;
(iv) how did gender-based discrimination actually originate in Africa;
(v) what triggered that process; (vi) what drives or sustains it; Social scientists and economists such as
Esther Boserup, Nils-Petter Lagerlof, Paul Collier, Chris Udry, William-Baah-Boatengand others have addressed the first three set of questions raised;
In particular, Udry’s insights on female land use in Akuapem, Ghana;
Last three questions require the intersection of economics with history and ethnography: (Acemoglu, Johnson and Robinson, 2001); Alesina, Giuliano and Nunn (2011);
There is where we place our intervention; Capture of women’s labor within household
production; The nature of African social and political
institutions and developments that have perpetuated this;
Does it make a difference in terms of female accumulation and empowerment when they work outside the home?
18
Precolonial Africa: An Era of Gender Parity?
Ivor Wilks (1993) on the 16th century in Akan history as the ―era of great ancestresses‖;
Akan oral traditions on women in leadership role in the age of migrations. The acquisition of Kumasi;
R. S. Rattray (1923) on the stools of chiefs and queen mothers in Asante;
Warfare and menstruation;
Matriliny does not translate into matriarchy;
Christine Saidi (2010) on matriarchy as a viable sociopolitical form in matrilineal societies in East-Central Africa between 100 BCE and 1900 CE;
Draws on linguistic and archaeological evidence to suggest women’s strong social and political authority across the region until warfare and political centralization elevated men;
20
Production, Reproduction, Accumulation: Kinship and Exploitation Claude Meillassoux (1972, 1981) is one of the
first to draw attention in African studies to kinship as a social and economic system that manages economic production, the physical reproduction of human beings, and social reproduction at large through a comprehensive set of social institutions;
In his debate with Miers and Kopytoff (1977), Meillassoux (1991) would argue that Miers and Kopytoff had completely misunderstood the function of kinship in their slave-to-kinship continuum;
For Meillassoux the boundaries of kinship are rigid and exclusionary;
Iliffe (2007) on how Africans as pioneers have colonized a harsh continent on behalf of humanity: Soil and climate conditions in Africa; Old soils, thin top soils, acidic and leached;
Precolonial Africa and the context of abundant land and scarce labor;
Kopytoff (1987) internal and interstitial frontiers in Africa;
Institutional vacuums between settled societies;
Max Gluckman (1963) on the vagueness of succession rules in Africa;
This is the context of ―wealth-in-people.‖
22
Production, Reproduction and Accumulation: Kinship and Exploitation - cont
This is the setting for production and reproduction in Africa, the struggle over labor and the urgency of demographic continuity;
Women are at the center of both; Kinship: an ideology that reckons relations of
adhesion; demarcates age, sex and functional categories related to productive activities;
Kinship also regulated the sexual unions that underpinned reproduction;
Boserup (1970), Goody (1976) on correlations between types of agriculture and lineage systems;
Planting vs cereal cultures and how they map onto matriliny (and polygyny) and patriliny (less polygyny and dowry);
The plough and gendered production; Women, the hoe and planting cultures in
Africa;
24
Gendered Production in Pottery and Textiles: Women’s Work Pottery is essentially women’s work, but among
the Hausa, Mossi, in Bunyoro and Buganda men worked in pottery;
A. K. Quarcoo and M. Johnson (1968) on Shaipotters in Ghana;
Craft enmeshed in puberty rituals and effectively feminized;
Specialization for the market; 32 types of pots; Provided income for women; Women’s niche in a market economy only
obtained through aversion rituals?
Textiles. Mali (Roberts, 1996) and Northern Nigeria (Kriger, 1993, 2006). C19th Sokoto Caliphate;
Spinning vs weaving. Kano male weavers. H. Barth. Southern emirates of Ilorin and Bida.
Female weavers and managers: 40 types of textiles made by women; State strictures;
Slavery: Impact on self purchase. Images
26
State Formation, Slavery and Slave Trade, and the Work of Christian Missionaries
The importance of slave trade and slave production in precolonial Western Africa: Debate between Walter Rodney (1966)
and John Fage (1969); Scholarly consensus on relation between
internal slavery and slave exports; Meillassoux on warrior and mercantile slavery
in West Africa; Atlantic slave trade new lease to warriors;
From “wealth-in-people” to sale of people? Selling outsiders. Selling men. Women the majority of slaves in Africa (Robertson and Klein, 1983);
Their centrality to production and reproduction; Incorporating outsiders; Kinship the mechanism; ―Rights-in-persons‖: ―belonging to‖ and ―belonging in‖;
Manning (1990) that in Africa through the export slave trade, low productivity made the price Europeans offered for an African slave higher than the productive value of an African in Africa;
Abolition of export slave trade and the introduction of ―Legitimate trade‖; Expansion in plantation slavery within Africa; Women in the transition to cash cropping;
30
States, Slave Trade, Slavery and Christian Missionaries - cont Abolition movement in the late C18th and
Christian circles in Europe; Formation of mission societies and the mission to
Africa; Strong baggage of European culture and the
impact on African institutions, culture and gender relations;
The church, the school, and residential patterns in ―Salems‖ or Christian quarters;
Championing nuclear families, and a different gendered approach to labor;
Women as wives and mothers, men as producers;
Missionaries introduce the plough to men in South Africa;
The market as a civilizing influence. Christian families and ―respectability;
―Middle Class‖ sensibilities among urban Christians;
In rural Africa female agricultural production remained important but rendered invisible;
Men mediated household relations with the colonial and capitalist infrastructure: paying taxes, receiving monies, delivering produce
to depots, buying supplies for the rural household; Images
32
Colonial Policies, Colonial Economies: Gendered Impact and Implications Colonial abolition of slavery at the end of the
C19th and the paradox that few slaves left their masters;
The ―Protectorate‖ and ―Indian‖ models; Even the abolition of slavery failed to sever the
cord that subordinated women to men and held them captive in the domestic realm;
Settler, Concessionary and Peasant Economies;
Different labor dynamics but structure of colonial economy similar;
Albert Sarraut, Colonial Minister (1920-24, 1932-33) on the colonial economy;*
All colonial economies weighed heavily on women and the countryside in the unwillingness of capitalist interests to reproduce the labor force;
Meillassoux (1981) on how European companies drew labor from rural Africa, paid low wages to urban workers, and simultaneously prevented the penetration of capitalistic relations into the countryside to sustain the exodus of rural labor;
Patriarchal Alliances and Customary Law: the Invention of Custom;
Plural legal systems under British and French colonial rule;
Family law under custom: African native tribunals, Islamic courts.
36
Ghana: Population employed in key occupations
37
0
20000
40000
60000
80000
100000
120000
140000
160000
180000
200000
1891 1901 1911 1921 1931 1948 1960
Professional and technical Fischery and Farming Services
The actual number is 1,541,230
Ghana: exports of key selected items (in 000s of GBP)
38
0
10000
20000
30000
40000
50000
60000
70000
80000
90000
Gold Cocoa
Colonial Policies, Colonial Economies: Albert Sarraut
Economically, a colonial possession means to the home country simply a privileged market whence it will draw the raw materials it needs, dumping its own manufactures in return;
Economic policy is reduced to rudimentary procedures of gathering crops and bartering them;
Moreover, by strictly imposing on its colonial ―dependency‖ the exclusive consumption of its manufactured products, the metropolis prevents any efforts to use or manufacture local raw materials on the spot, and any contact with the rest of the world;
The colony is forbidden to establish any industry, to improve itself by economic progress, to rise above the stage of producing raw materials, or to do business with the neighboring territories for its own enrichment across the customs barriers erected by the metropolitan power (Fetter, 1979: 109).
40
Ghana: imports of key selected items (in 000s of GBP)
41
0
100000
200000
300000
400000
500000
600000
700000
800000
900000
1000000
Clothing leather and textiles Other consumer goods
Colonial Policies, Colonial Economies --cont. Education in Colonial Africa: Women Outmanned; Education is a key area, instrumental in colonial
understandings of the role of the colonial subject, and for independent governments the role of empowered citizens in developing nations;
Enormous influence of missionaries in British and Belgian colonies;
Mission education aimed at supplying teachers, catechists, and clerks for lower echelons of colonial bureaucracy;
French more independent of mission control, especially FWA;
French educational reforms after 1946 French Union (Hailey’s African Survey (1957));
Phelps Stokes Fund in British Africa (1920, 1923); Gendered education: women in domestic and
marriage training; men in industrial and agricultural training (Berman, 1971);
Low female enrollment rates in formal education. Case of Ghana, 1900-1960. Chart;
Reform in British colonies (1940s): Asquith and Elliot Commissions;
South Africa and the Bantu Education Act of 1953;
Women and the social reproduction of the Apartheid State, Inanda (Healy, 2011);
43
Ghana: Enrollment in primary and middle schools
44
0
50000
100000
150000
200000
250000
300000
350000
400000
450000
500000
1900
1901
1902
1903
1904
1905
1906
1907
1908
1909
1910
1911
1912
1913
1914
1915-9
1920-4
1925-9
1930-4
1935-9
1940-4
1945-7
1948
1949
1950
1951
1952
1953
1954
1955
1956
1957
1958
1959
1960
Boys Girls
Conclusion. Africa on the Eve of Independence: the Status of women MDG3: promote gender equality and empower women.
Upcoming WDR (2012) devoted to gender equality; How an understanding of the historical processes that have
captured women’s labor or confined them to informal sectors necessary to any effective policy intervention;
Agric base of African economies; excessive exposure to external shocks and recurrent BOP crises (Fofack, 2009). Gender inequality tends to be more pronounced in the primary and agric sector. Ghana exports vs. imports, 1900-60;
Manufacturing and service industries and the place of women; Women in urban Africa pushed into the informal sector, essentially a
service industry (Keith Hart); Dynamism of the urban informal sector – an escape from rural
kinship networks? Ghana key occupations, 1900-60; Africa and Asia in the 1950s, African optimism not misplaced.
Gunnar Myrdal (1974 Nobel Laureate in Economics);