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Periodical article | Leiden University catalogue | WorldCat |
Title: | Bureaucracy and Rural Women: Illustrations from Malawi |
Author: | Hirschmann, David |
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. |