Agriculturalist Women In Sub-Saharan Africa

Throughout this course, we learned that women’s studies originated as a concern at the time that “women and men noticed the absence, misrepresentation, and trivialization of women [in addition to] the ways women were systematically excluded from many positions of power and authority” (Shaw, Lee 1). In the past, men had more privileges than women. Women have battled for centuries against certain patterns of inadequacy that all women experience. Every culture and customs has divergent female

Throughout history, women have made up a sort of “minority” in the world’s many societies. They have been looked upon as property to husbands and fathers. Their place was deemed the male’s home. Women were to provide services to men, ranging from carrying an heir (hopefully a male) to providing a clean home and cooked meals. Women in high-income nations still continue to face challenges because of their gender, and those in low-income nations often remain thought of as property. From a symbolic interactionist perspective, gender is an issue that is based on many underlying historical concepts, and it continues to contribute to world-wide poverty.

Throughout history every civilization has looked to the stars and pondered their existence. While never truly reaching an understanding of their purpose on this lonely blue planet we call earth, they have constantly strived to further their understanding of the world and it’s mysteries. This thirst for knowledge has evolved with humans for a millennia and has changed as we have. One question that teased the mind of man for centuries was the quandary of sexes. Both a sociological and physical conundrum, the true station of a man or women in society has always been an important issue in any developing nation. Historically men have always been tasked with the more socially demanding tasks in their community while women are assigned the menial

Yes, Sub-Saharan African women should work more in agriculture and engage more in income-generating activities. I say so because the agricultural system in Sub-Saharan Africa is mostly performed by women. Even in countries where women and men work on separate fields and growing different crops (traditional crops vs.and Ccash crops), women do assist their husbands in the production of men’s traditionally male-grown cash crops. Therefore, women need to work more in order to produce more for home consumption and for sale.

Gender equality is an aspect of everyday life all societies in the world deals within their own way. It is the concept that men and women are equal to each other. In many places across the globe, women are seen as inferrer to men. Places in the Westerner world still have the ideology of how men are the superior and women are submissive to them. However, this is very untrue for the San society in Africa. It becomes evident that the ancient and long-lasting San society had gender equality when places in the world today are still struggling for the same results. The San society is the oldest and longest lasting hunter/gathering society in Africa. The book Nisa: The Life and Words of !Kung Women written by Marjorie Shostak is the life story of Nisa, women who grew up in the San society. Over the course of the book, her life story begins to unravel. Shostak goes into great detail about Nisa’s childhood, marriages and life thereafter. This gives the reader a clear insight into what it was like growing up and being apart of a gender-equal community that was the San society. Nisa is willing to share her story with the world so others could what it was truly like being apart of a community like the San.

The affected resources is not the only problem; the decision making over the fate of the land is another part of the difficulty for women. In most of the poorer countries, men have the control of the land and what becomes of it. They make the laws and usually women do not have a political voice in the decision. Laws in most of Sub-Saharan Africa and Asia discriminate against women in regards to ownership of properties. Women cannot properly be the steward of the land and its resources that both men and women depend on to survive and continue their

Amongst societies, there is a great variety of means of survival, all of which are dependent upon factors influencing the community—geographical location and structure of authority, to name a few. Such factors and the community’s ways of survival create the underlying basis of other complex issues, including the relationship between the sexes. Many anthropological papers that concentrate on the modes of production of specific groups of people have shown a connection between the modes of production and the presence or absence of gender inequality. Futhermore, there is also evidence of a further causality between the two: as a society adopts a more complex mode of

A common social theme of history is the constant battle of equal rights for both men and women. Ever since the development of the first agricultural societies during the BC times, people have been living in a society where paternalism and patriarchy dominated; men are always at the top of the social hierarchy. Men were always the leaders, the priests, the ones who decide what was right and what was wrong. Women have battled for equality with their male counterparts ever since then. They have fought for their right to vote. They have fought for their right to speak at religious liturgies. They have fought for their right to equal job and educational opportunities. Social equality between men and women will always be a never-ending

When you ask some of the men in most of this developing countries in sub Saharan countries what they own in their house, the first things on the list is wife followed by cows and goats and sheep. This shows how women are not considered as person but as asset. This is due to the fact that women have always been lagging behind in terms of education and therefore generating almost nothing to their family in terms of money. Women are only responsible for taking care of children, homestead and gathering firewood. Creating small business to these women can raise up their confidence thus reducing domestic violence and abuse in general. According to the Geohive data, men in world outnumber women slightly, there is no way sustainable development can be achieved when almost a half of the population is left behind. However in sub-Saharan countries women are more than men, providing women roans and enable them to create small business can change many lives (GEOHIVE,

In America, women arguably have more liberties than anywhere else in the world. We have access to prenatal care, we get to choose who and when we marry, and we can have a fulfilling education and career. In Africa, however, the status of women is very different. Historically, African women have been forced into marriage young, expected to have many children, and taught to stay at home and perform domestic duties. Though most of the world is at a state of gender equality, Africa still struggles to let go of its antiquated ways. Many African women are taking a stand against sexism and societal norms, but in the impoverished Sub-Saharan areas, there is still a push back. Religion and history tell these poor communities that it is the man’s job to

Appropriately, 1.7 billion people, about one-third of the world’s total population, are between the ages of 10 and 24, with the vast majority living in developing countries (Creel and Jerry, 2002: 1). As they mature, young women aged 15-24 years are increasingly exposed to reproductive health risks such as sexually transmitted infections (STIs), unintended pregnancy and childbirth (Creel and Jerry, 2002: 1). Moreover young women, especially adolescents, are at higher risk of morbidity and mortality associated with pregnancy and childbirth. The risk is much higher when pregnancy is unintended while most pregnancies to young girls in sub-Saharan Africa are unintended or mistimed. In Ethiopia 28% of adolescents aged 15–19 and 24% of young women

During world civilization, men and women lived in an egalitarian system. However, the introduction of Agriculture changed that forever. Once men began hunting and women started gathering, the men considered what the women do as an easy job. This is when the world began to collapse in terms of gender discrimination and inequality. This unequal system continued throughout centuries and still exists today. However during the 15th &16th century everything changed and women were more suppressed than ever. They were viewed as an object that were to be used by men. Many women didn’t get the education they deserved unless they were from a privileged family. Even the privileged women had very little opportunity to make a living for themselves. They were seen as a prize. Most women were expected to stay virtuous then marry into a rich man. Despite the fact, many women were courageous enough to defy stereotypes and make the world a better place to live for themselves and other women.

Deniz Kandiyoti,’s ‘bargaining with patriarchy’ offers a complex but seemingly pertinent argument in regards to the dichotomy between society and gender specific roles. Regarding their practices as fluid and negotiable, where societies are the product of imposition that struggle between cultural and historical norms. Within these systems of negotiation, Kandiyoti’s juxtaposes agricultural labor and “classic patriarchy.” Within Sub-Saharan Africa gender relations tend to favor that of males, receiving both credit and economic stability, however it is not just the men who contribute to the economy but that of women. Patriarchal bargaining in Africa has resulted in women’s resistance to men’s absolutist power over the access and value of their work. Kandiyoti sates “women have very little

In most parts of Africa, women are still seen as "less than" despite the huge part they play in the family and/or community. They are treated as property, rather than people and this method has been set for a while. This idea of power can be seen when Felton Best writes " In most parts of Africa women are still the property of the men who father them or marry them. In some societies it is the uncle who holds sway over a woman's life"(189). This simply illustrates that men are in control. Being that men have the power, women are constantly feeling be little'd, which causes for little or no talk about a change in their lives. With the lack of conversation about sexism, the idea of women being independent is such a hostile topic.

The ideas that have been constructed surrounding gender within Africa has severely impacted the well-being and disempowered the women and children living within this culture. Significantly less girls go to school, women earn less money than men for paid labor, harmful traditional practices affect their health, and certain cultural norms act as a hindrance to women moving ahead in society. But the larges areas of disempowerment remain in areas such as education and the practice of female genital mutilation (FGM). Common events such as rape, torture and violence are all detailed through the biography Go Go Mama by Sally Sara. The novel tells the story of Eugenie Muhayimana who survived the Rwandan Genocide by being forced into being a sex slave to the Hutu people but in the process contracting HIV. The inequality between men and women is extremely prevalent within the culture of Africa and as a result of this women are disempowered greatly.