16-4 Women's Work, Women's Worth

On the Road to Equality

For many years, the Sahrawis, the indigenous people of Western Sahara, have fought for their survival and against the occupation of their homeland. Spain had ruled Western Sahara for almost a century and in the 1950s and '60s exploited its phosphate riches and forcibly settled most of the nomadic Sahrawis in cities. By 1973, the encounter with Spain had attracted Sahrawis to the POLISARIO Front,…

Workers, Traders and Managers

The women of Tafahna al Ashraf, a Muslim village in the Egyptian delta, cultivate the land. Women are also merchants, artisans, agricultural laborers, teachers, and clerks. Some women pursue these endeavors in response to hard times, while others take advantage of opportunities that have appeared over the past three decades. In all cases, women's work shows that development planners must…

Women's Work, Women's Worth: Women, Economics, and Development

"What does Doña Maria do," the anthropologist asked. "She cooks, she makes tortillas. She goes to the fields, she goes to the mountain to get wood, she washes clothes. She raises chickens, she sews she sweeps the floor." On and on went Doña Alberta, Doña Maria's neighbor. That was 1971. Nine years later, when I revisited San Cosme Mazatecocho in central Mexico, most women called themselves amas…

When Servants Could Always Go Home

It was a January afternoon 20 years ago, and I had spend much of the day climbing the muddy, steep mountain road that led to Loma Bonita in central Panama. As I reached a small clearing, a woman came bounding toward me. She arrived and stood close - penetrating dark eyes, openly curious, long black braided hair tucked mostly into a worn straw hat, front teeth missing, no shoes. Introductions…

The Aloha Industry: For Hawaiian women, tourism is not a neutral industry.

When Haunani Kay Trask and Mililani Trask say that "without beautiful Hawaiian women dancing, there would be no tourism," they are talking about the major industry of their islands state. They are also talking about one of the most egregious examples in the world of the appropriation - and prostitution - of indigenous culture and women for the benefit of industrial society. Hawaii is the last…

Protagonists of Change

Rising before the sun, Maía de la Cruz lies her infant into a blue shawl across her back, awakens her three other children, and hurries barefoot down a dew-moistened dirt path with her sons in rapid pursuit. Their 40-minute walk passes through the market to the zocalo at the center of San Cristobal, Mexico. For the next 14 hours, de la Cruz roams the plaza, selling wrist bands and belts to…

Minobimaatisiiwin: The Good Life

In native communities of Canada and the United States, women are central to traditional ways of life, to indigenous economic power, and to the resistance of so many native peoples to large-scale development projects. Why? Why are native women engaged in such a tenacious struggle to defend their communities? And why do so many work to rebuild traditional economic structures? In the first place,…

Marketing Ethnicity

At Filene's department store in Boston, you can buy a purse fashioned from Zapotec wool textiles. You can also buy rugs, wall hangings, pillows, and seat covers made by the Zapotec in southern Mexico. Indeed, in southern Mexico. Indeed, the United States is a society of handicraft consumers, but who produces the crafts? How do our purchases influence faraway lives? The Zapotec of the village of…

Land War: Land barons responded with murder after Indians in Honduras organized to recover their land.

September 30, 1992, at 7 a.m., while driving in Yoro, Honduras, Vicente Matute was shot to death at point-blank range with a shotgun. At least two unidentified assassins fired several shots at the president of the Xicaque Indian Federation. Francisco Guevara, a prominent member of the Plan Grande Xicaque Tribe, was killed almost instantly with massive head injuries, probably from the same shot…

Keeping Kinship Alive

For well over a century, women in the Tongan Island, an independent kingdom in the southern Pacific, have resisted missionary and government efforts that would confine them to a domestic sphere. In this former British protectorate, women have become the main defenders of faka-Tonga -"the Tongan way" - presenting a cultural bulwark against both patriarchy and the social and economic insecurity…

Industrial Soldiers

South Korea's transformation into an industrial power over the past three decades has dramatically altered the lives of its people. Among those most affected have been the young women employed in factories. Ironically, industrialization has both exploited the traditional roles of women and undermined those roles by involving women in economic and political issues beyond their households. Korean…

How Can We Be Koochi?

"May God bring the day when there is peace, and we can return to our country," says Lewani Bibi, an Afghan Pashtun Koochi. In the language of the Afghans, Koochi means nomad. Once a nomad, Lewani now lives as a refugee in Baluchistan, Pakistan, just across the Afghan border. For Lewani and most of the women in these refugee camps, 14 years of war in Afghanistan have dramatically altered their…

From Co-Ops to Kitchens: In Nicaraguan cities, women face an uphill battle in and out of the labor force.

From Co-Ops to Kitchens: In Nicaraguan cities, women face an uphill battle in and out of the labor force Julia Morales, a seamstress for 30 of her 70 years, and her daughter have seven sewing machines in their Managua home, where they used to employ several other women. A founding member of the Women's United Textile Cooperative a decade ago, Morales and others like her joined up with much…

Flexibility Equals Survival

In many parts of Africa, a highly flexible system of town and village marketplaces, staffed primarily by women, maintains, a trickle of income, consumer goods, and food with remarkable resilience through stresses of political upheaval, economic crisis, and seasonal and extended drought. This network of small-scale traders - who visit the most remote villages and service the smallest part-time…

Fishers Among the Mangroves

The inhabitants of the small villages of Thailand's mangrove swamps, who have fished for thousands of years, have recently initiated several efforts to restore their environment and safeguard their fish supply. However, since the early 1970s a seemingly innocuous creature - the black tiger prawn - has threatened their way of life. As the prawn industry has expanded through Asia and Latin America,…

cs canada - 16.4

Traditional Ecolony For several years, the James Bay II project, Quebec's plan to dam the Great Whale River, has drawn concern from Canadian and international environmental groups. Now Manitoba and Ontario have designs on other rivers flowing through their provinces into the Hudson and James bays. This new initiative comes in addition to large-scale hydro-electric projects in all three provinces…

Common Ground of Creativity

In "The Poets in the Kitchen," Paule Marshall tells stories from her childhood in the late 1930s and early '40s that reflect what it means to be an immigrant, a West Indian, a black in a racist society, a mother, a wife, a woman in a male-dominated culture, and a worker near the bottom of the economic ladder. Marshall's mother and her mother's women friends had all immigrated from Barbados. After…

Collision Course

In the late 1970s, China inaugurated a series of economic and social policies to modernize the economy, increase production and income, and raise the standard of living. For the most part, these initiatives loosened the control of state planning and allowed more free-market activities in both urban enterprises and rural agriculture. Agriculture was transformed into the "family-responsibility…

briefly noted - 16.4

China's "New Dominion" Despite a growing movement for independence, the plight of the Uighurs of western China has received little attention. One of many ethnic groups struggling for autonomy under Chinese rule. the Uighurs, live in poverty, while China exploits their resource-rich land. The region is officially called the Xinjiang Uighur Autonomous Province, but that name is misleading. In…

A Year to Remember

Here in the United States, 1992 has earned its title as the "Year of the Woman." After false starts in previous elections years, an electoral gender gap appeared following the scandalous treatment of Anita HIll by white men in the U.S. Senate and after the sexual assault on female officers at a meeting of an organization of U.S. Navy pilots. Women's gains on November 3 were significant. The first…

"Yo No Soy Nada"

Juana? "She's a pleasant woman. She works hard, she goes to church on Sundays, and she's honest. Sh sells shoes to help her husband out. He's a goodman, doesn't drink, doesn't smoke." Beatriz? "She is respected in the village. She has a smile for everyone, her dress is always impeccable, and she helps out the poor when she can. It's not that she's rich - her sons own everything." Maria? "Which…

"Women Work Harder Than Men"

In the Eastern Highlands of Papua New Guinea, women must cope with two types of male domination: an indigenous form based on men's traditional role as warrior and defender of the village and an externally imposed one that makes paid employment a male privilege. Yet despite this double burden, Highlands women are strong and assertive - and aware of their shared interests as women. They actively…