'The Loads are Heavier Than Usual': Forced Labor by Women and Children in the Central Province, Gold Coast (Colonial Ghana), ca. 1900-1940

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Periodical article

Title:	'The Loads are Heavier Than Usual': Forced Labor by Women and Children in the Central Province, Gold Coast (Colonial Ghana), ca. 1900-1940
Author:	Akurang-Parry, Kwabena O.
Year:	2002
Periodical:	African Economic History
Volume:	30
Pages:	31-51
Language:	English
Geographic terms:	Ghana United Kingdom
Subjects:	children colonialism women workers child labour forced labour Women's Issues Labor and Employment History and Exploration Economics and Trade Historical/Biographical economics Cultural Roles Sex Roles slavery
External link:	https://www.jstor.org/stable/3601601
Abstract:	Covering the period 1900-1940, this study shows that female and child forced labour in the Central Province of the Gold Coast (colonial Ghana) contributed immensely to the early 20th-century colonial economy. The evidence suggests that female and child labour, but particularly prepubescent female labour, was prominent in the regions with booming cash crop and export-import economies, as well as in areas where the infrastructure was being built. Also a sizeable number of the females engaged in involuntary porterage labour originated in the Salaga slave trading axis. Despite the colonial State's antislavery policies and international anti-forced labour pressures, successive colonial governments allied with expatriate trading companies to rationalize the use of forced labour. Notes, ref. [ASC Leiden abstract]