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Inheritance and Women's Labour in Africa

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  23 January 2012

Jack Goody  and
Joan Buckley
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Africa is notable for the extent to which women participate in cultivation. An examination of the contribution of men and women by means of ‘The Ethnographic Atlas (Ethnology, 1967) shows that women play the major part in cultivation in 45 per cent of societies in Africa as a whole, and in 53 per cent of sub-Saharan societies. We are concerned here with the contribution women make to cultivation (in pastoral as well as purely farming economies) and not to its over-all control, which is largely in the hands of men.

Résumé

HÉRITAGE ET TRAVAIL DES FEMMES EN AFRIQUE

En Afrique, les femmes jouent souvent un rôle important dans les activités agricoles. L'exploitation par les femmes prédomine au Congo, en Afrique centrale, orientale, et en Afrique du Sud, alors que l'importance des femmes dans l'agriculture décline en Afrique du Nord et de l'Ouest. L'exploitation agricole par des femmes est fortement liée à deux types de succession, d'abord aux systèmes matrilinéaires, ensuite à la forme de succession verticale que Gluckman a nommée ‘house-property’. On la trouve dans les sociétés patrilinéaires et parfois les sociétés bilatérales. Le système ‘house-property’ divise la propriété des hommes entre les enfants selon leur origine maternelle. Dans les économies d'agriculture, un tel système attribue fréquemment aux fils d'une femme la terre qu'elle a eue en fermage, mais qu'elle ne peut ni posséder ni transmettre. Le système ‘house-property’ se rencontre dans les grandes zones d'elevage d'Afrique; les hommes s'occupent des troupeaux et les femmes de l'exploitation agricole. II peut en être de même dans les societés purement pastorales où les femmes jouent un rôle en soignant ou en trayant le bétail. Le système ‘house-property’ fournit par conséquent une sorte de reconnaissance sociale du rôle important de la femme dans le processus de production, bien qu'elle soit elle-même exclue de la pos-session des moyens de production.

Type
Research Article
Information
Africa , Volume 43 , Issue 2 , April 1973 , pp. 108 - 121
Copyright
Copyright © International African Institute 1973

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