Lightening the Load: Women's Labour and Appropriate Rural Technology in Sub-Saharan Africa

bibliographic database
Line

Book

Title:	Lightening the Load: Women's Labour and Appropriate Rural Technology in Sub-Saharan Africa
Authors:	Bryceson, Deborah Fahy MacCall, Michael
Year:	1994
Issue:	21
Pages:	32
Language:	English
Series:	ASC working paper (ISSN 0924-3534)
City of publisher:	Leiden
Publisher:	African Studies Centre
Geographic term:	Subsaharan Africa
Subjects:	rural women women's work technology migration agriculture Sex Roles Development and Technology Labor and Employment economics
External link:	https://hdl.handle.net/1887/380
Abstract:	This paper questions the assumptions of the rural technology debate, reassessing if and how technological interventions and initiatives are potentially valuable to rural women in sub-Saharan Africa. This entails examining what kinds of technologies are being promoted, and for whom they are being introduced, with comparisons drawn from the Green Revolution experience in South Asia. The first section of the paper discusses rural African women's work regimes, factors contributing to the intensification of African women's workday, and the contraction of African women's access to community-held resources. An assessment of the different purposes and phases in the development and spread of rural technology and its impact on women producers follows. The concluding sections consider the overall utility of rural technology intitiatives in sub-Saharan Africa, emphasizing the challenges that women's severe lack of time and money pose for their appropriate design and distribution.