Women and the Crisis in Commonwealth Africa

Abstract

The consequences of the contemporary crisis for women in Commonwealth Africa are that their economic opportunities in both the rural and the urban sectors are declining, and that they are increasingly scapegoated as the causes of economic disintegration. Politically, the entrenchment of corporatist one-party states and military regimes means that what little participation was opened to women at independence is being eroded. As the economic crisis deepens in the 1980s, Africans may respond by retreating into low-level subsistence agriculture, in which the bulk of the work is done by women. If corporatism develops into fascism, the scapegoating of economically independent women will intensify. The meaning of the crisis of the 1980s for women in Commonwealth Africa is less political representation and fewer economic resources, more political repression and more work.