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Periodical article Periodical article Leiden University catalogue Leiden University catalogue WorldCat catalogue WorldCat
Title:Bureaucracy and Rural Women: Illustrations from Malawi
Author:Hirschmann, DavidISNI
Year:1985
Periodical:Rural Africana
Volume:21
Period:Winter
Pages:51-63
Language:English
Geographic term:Malawi
Subjects:rural development
civil service
rural women
Agriculture, Natural Resources and the Environment
Development and Technology
Women's Issues
Politics and Government
Peoples of Africa (Ethnic Groups)
Abstract:The author pinpoints attitudes of male bureaucrats in Malawi as significant in the exclusion of women from development. He demonstrates the ways in which male stereotypes of appropriate female roles in relationship to males prevent them from designing rural projects in which women are addressed as primary and responsible economic actors. By designating women's appropriate roles as 'home economies' rather than as 'agriculture', women are actively discouraged from obtaining the training, education, and career access which would make them competitive with males and which would allow them to influence rural development. The author's findings suggest that African ideational and cultural factors pose constraints on rural women. His findings are balanced, however, by his assertions that colonialism, patriarchy, and international economic inequalities provide the backdrop against which Malawi's development policy was generated and is perpetuated. Together, both internal and external variables result in the exploitation of Malawi's rural women. Notes, tab.
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