The following is excerpted from an article by Marjorie Mbilinyi which appeared in the October 1975 issue of Futures.
Idle speculation about "the future" is a luxury that women of Africa cannot afford. We are engaged in three struggles at the same time; the struggles against international imperialism, against class exploitation within our own nations, and against exploitative sexist social relationships. These struggles are interrelated, but not identical.
However, it is difficult to mobilise ourselves without some picture of what the future could be like. Effective long-range and short-range action depend upon correct analysis of the historical context in which we are placed. We need to study the nature of our societies today (its economy, its class structure, and other social, cultural and political factors), and their historical development. Out of this kind of analysis we then can project the probable direction in which our society is headed, and outline some of the steps necessary to achieve the goals we have set for ourselves. In Tanzania, our long-range goals are socialism and self-reliance, to which we will add full human equality for men and women...
The Contemporary Situation
Most African countries are now politically independent but the distorted nature of the economy remains. In all cases of underdeveloped African societies, ultimate control of the locally produced surplus is in the hands of the industrialised capitalist nations' ruling classes. Problems such as unemployment and underemployment, poverty, and the low level of development of social services are all products of economic underdevelopment. Efforts to liberate the national economy from its dependence upon external forces is essential for all, but especially for women. In a situation of chronic unemployment, it is difficult to argue for a female quota system. Without full-scale capital accumulation in the hands of the people; child-care programmes, mass health and other programmes will not be developed on the scale necessary to benefit all the people.
Because of the economic structure of our countries, women are predominantly found in agriculture; in commerce as own-account workers, and in the handicraft sector. These sectors reflect traditional economic occupations for women and tend to have unsteady incomes and no worker benefits. Women wage earners, few in number, are found in service occupations such as nursing, primary-school teaching, and now clerical jobs, but not in potential growth sectors like manufacturing.
There are no legal obstacles to employment of women, or to their entrance into any particular occupational sector. But attitudes reflecting in part the old division of labour, and unequal training opportunities, obviate certain possibilities. Women conform in many cases to what are considered suitable feminine work occupations.
The socialisation processes that occur in the home are extremely powerful To quote a Nigerian woman teacher. describing play activities of boys and girls and how they reflected sex roles:
While boys were busy playing at hunting, farming, making bows and arrows, jumping, playing football, driving lorries and cars, the girls nursed dolls, fetched firewood and sold cooked food and other market goods, drew water and ground pepper to cook soup. (1)
The African woman's traditional place has been the "home", like her sisters throughout the world. Even when cultivating the woman was engaged in activity that remained within the boundaries of her husband's territory. Going out today to seek a wage earning job is perceived to be untraditional by probably all groups save the more highly educated. And the latter group now experience the phenomenon of home decoration; a bureaucrat marries a nurse or a teacher, and in a short while we find her sitting at home, minding the house and the children, and now and then doing volunteer work, so typical of European bourgeois behaviour.
The attitude of many towards women at work is summed up well by this statement made by a Moroccan man:
An occupation outside the house tends to make a woman independent; she is in contact with men and thus becomes their equal, whereas men should be superior to women. (2)
Women in urban areas face very significant problems, which are partly due to the new dependent status they acquire. They may be thrust into totally dependent positions. Hardly any jobs are available without at least primary and, increasingly, secondary education. The majority of Tanzanian women simply do not have formal schooling, and hence are cut off from those occupations. Some women survive on petty trade, brewing beer, small handicraft trade or prostitution. The only alternative is to be the economic dependent of a husband or a child.
In addition to the general aspects of economic and social underdevelopment discussed above, certain problems emerge with respect to education; there are unequal educational opportunities for girls at all levels of the educational system; there is a high drop-out rate for girls, beginning at the lowest grades; and the areas of study chosen by girls parallel the breakdown of occupations into male and female sectors
Some observers seem to hold the point of view that traditional sex roles and definitions of appropriate behaviour have changed along with so-called modernisation. Such views are probably based on observations of the behaviour of bourgeois households in which daughters may truly be subjected to very different demands and expectations. But, for example, in city as in country, marriages are arranged; a young girl is restricted in her movements by varying degrees prior to marriage; and many restrictions concerning appropriate female behaviour confine a wife to her home, , especially after nightfall. It is well known, for example, that
meetings of our women's organisation cannot take place in the evening because women must be at home then.
According to our marriage law, recently passed and put into effect, children are now legally the property of their fathers, though they may in the case of divorce remain with the mother until the age of seven years if the court so decides. In the case of the father's death, the children are placed in the care of his relatives, along with the insurance benefits and the bulk of the husband's property. Although a woman now has the option to divorce her husband, by so doing she loses her children and whatever material goods she has helped put into the home directly and indirectly, unless she has got a name tag signed and sealed on her possessions and is a powerful woman.
Issues relating to the changing status of women are increasingly discussed, sometimes hotly, in legislative debate and in the newspapers. For example, women were extremely vociferous against making polygamy legal in 1969. Some also derided the national militia's enforcement of the laws against western-style dress. Although the laws were meant to apply equally to men and women, those in authority tended to concentrate on women in short skirts asserting that they were shameless and were showing signs of becoming autonomous vis-a-vis men.
Women were also effective in changing the laws concerning maternity benefit. Until this year such benefits were restricted to bona fide married women. Originally, the leadership of the National Women's Organisation of Tanzania (Umoja wa Wanawake wa Tanzania) also rejected the idea of maternity leave for unmarried women, on the grounds that it would encourage immorality among women and increase the number of pregnancies in factories and offices. By 1972 however, UWT had formally changed its stand on the issue. When the Secretary General was asked to explain this change, the answer was:
People's wishes. After the Mbeya annual conference, it was quite apparent that all wanted paid maternity leave to all mothers and since the annual conference is the organisation's supreme body, we had then no alternative but to declare our policy statement on the issue. (3)
Happily enough, our leadership has heeded the wishes of the women. A new maternity bill was passed in 1975 which provides full paid maternity leave of three months for all women irrespective of marital status....
The Struggle Ahead
Reactions to, and rebellion against, some of the traditional and bourgeois notions about women have been described above. Without a full-scale social transformation, the kinds of services and opportunities for active social production, will not develop, partly because it may not be "profitable" for the big capitalist interests here and abroad.
The woman in the home, carrying out food processing and preparation at the same level of technology found in pre-capitalist societies, performs important functions for the system. She provides for her husband the attention and concern a man misses at the workplace. Reproduction of the labour force through the work of the woman in the home is at low cost for the profit makers, but at very great cost to the women thereby limited from full participation in society. If half our population are not involved fully in our struggle for further development and against imperialism, that struggle is weakened and left vulnerable.
It is easy for women, stuck away in isolation from each other, tethered to their home like a cow, to perceive their problems to be personal, individual ones, instead of being a problem for the whole society. A woman cannot struggle in isolation. Collective action of women is necessary to turn upside down those aspects of society which deny them their full place in the struggles ahead.
Up until now, our women's organisation has not chosen to act primarily as a political organisation, committed to the class struggle and the struggle against imperialism. Its activities are typical of bourgeois women's clubs in industrialised capitalist nations, with charity activities, fundraising balls and domestic science classes.
In contrast, the importance of the struggle for women's liberation alongside the struggle against imperialism has been expressed through the praxis of progressive forces in the Portuguese ex-colonies. At a meeting of the All African Women's Conference in Dar es Salaam in 1972, a woman member of FRELIMO's liberation army pointed out that the changes in the position of women in Mozambique have been accomplished through political engagement.
It has been our militant role in a political organisation, having a correct political line, that has given us the proper orientation necessary to make our efforts more effective. It is political awareness that has enabled us to find the most correct path to our emancipation our women's organisation must be an arm, and instrument, of a political movement. (4)
Rural collectivisation through ujamaa village policy has led to positive changes in certain areas. In most ujamaa villages, individual members, men and women, are paid in cash or kind according to their work. For many women this is the first time they have received cash remuneration on a regular systematic basis. Usually, even where women farm their own commercial crop, it is sold to the cooperative society through the husband or head of household. It is therefore not surprising that women are the most ardent supporters of socialist rural policies in many areas of Tanzania.
One drawback of rural collectivisation thus far is that there remains a concentration on crop production and the perpetuation of traditional aspects of the division of labour in production and in reproduction. An alternative strategy would be to develop multiple production/service centres throughout the country, based on collective units of agriculture and industrial production. Industrialisation is a fundamental necessity for socialist production and transformation in any underdeveloped nation.
There are three basic arguments for spreading industrialisation throughout the rural areas rather than concentrating industrial projects in urban area. First, rural industrialisation would undermine and help to resolve growing urban-rural contradictions. Second, it would provide all Tanzanians with a rapid socialisation process related to scientific and technological change and communal life and work. Third, it would provide the only kind of institutional framework within which the emancipation of women would be possible. Everyone would be part of a completely different set of social relations, based on a larger-scale production, a more complex division of labour, a more scientific productive process. Traditional modes of production based on family production units would become obsolete, which would turn upside down age and sex criteria for wealth, status and power. Aspects of the traditional lineage system which are obstacles to socialist transformation would also become obsolete. Given the security offered by the collective, individuals would no longer rely on the extended family system for support, and all members of the collective would become comrades.
In China, every inhabitant of a commune is guaranteed a living, children and old people as well as more economically productive adults. Every member has five guarantees: food, housing, fuel, means of bringing up children, and burial. (5)
A woman's relationship to her work would be drastically altered in such a production system. A woman peasant now cultivates on her husband's land, and the bulk of her produce is intended to feed him and his children. In the communal production systems envisioned, men, women, and children have their own individual work, and relate to that work not as somebody's wife or child, but on their own account. Whether it is in factory or farm production, women would participate in the same kind of work and participate in all other aspects of society. Men would be forced to perceive that women are their equal in all things, which would help destroy sex-stereotyped roles. Women's attitudes of inferiority towards themselves would also change in the process of actually experiencing and testing their countless abilities which were previously stifled.
So many of the duties expected of wives and mothers could be handled in a rational and scientific way but only through full social transformation. It is only in a socialist society that people are put first, not profit. Day-care centres with full medical service would provide better care for children than we individual mothers ever could. Semi-processing and preparation of foods would ease the work of women at home, and eventually encourage men to participate in cooking and other home responsibilities. With the provision of a water source nearby, food items such as preprocessed corn meal, and other goods and services, women would be released from many of the routine chores that now constrain them.
To achieve these changes in our society and its economy, requires correct political analysis and action within a political framework - and it also requires a militant woman's organisation. It would be a mistake to follow the words of the head of the All African Women's Conference, Madame Cisse when she said: "We appeal to men to help us... men hold the key to the world and can open the door for the women to advance".
If we observe the experience in other countries where a socialist transformation has taken place through class struggle, changes in male-female roles have not come easily or at all. In China the struggle for full emancipation of women still continues today. Significant is the fact that the Chinese Communist Party is spearheading that struggle, and views it as a problem for society, not for women alone. At the same time, women's organisations are promoted in order to provide a vehicle for full mobilisation of all women.
Our future is in our hands, but we face a world not of our own choosing. Elements of the old (pre-capitalist and colonialist systems) and the new (capitalist system in its latest stage of development) confront us, demanding firm, organised analysis and action. In Tanzania, our government, through its official newspaper, has publicly recognised the contradictions which exist. (6)
These days, is too often argued even by African revolutionaries that the liberation of women will come when all mankind is liberated from the shackles of colonialist, racist, and imperialist exploitation.
This is true in terms of the long-term aims and objectives of the struggle by the people of the world total liberation and true development But this cannot said seriously without looking at the concrete problems facing women, particularly in Africa.
For although all the African peoples have suffered together centuries of enslavement and oppression, those who happened to be women among them had their position made worse by the very nature of imperialist exploitation as well as by the nature of certain reactionary traditions.
Male chauvinism, for example, a product of feudal, colonial, religious, traditional and capitalist prejudices, still prevailing even in African countries that have embarked on a socialist road of development This chauvinism is having extremely adverse effects on the women question of the position of women in Africa cannot therefore be postponed until the world is liberated. It must be tackled now so that the contribution of African women to the struggle for liberation will not be hindered by the unsatisfactory position most of them occupy in society at present.
Public proclamations are one thing, however, and militant action is another. Up until now (May 1975) International Women's Year in Tanzania has been, in practice, a few radio programmes; meetings attended by bourgeois women of our society, and the constant push by men and women leaders for women to work harder - not to be full and active members of society's work force, but to work harder at whatever they are doing now. Our future will be made for us if we continue in this way. The future will see a preservation of women's inferior and dominated place in society.
It is true a few highly educated women will be able to acquire affluence and prestige through "careers", but they will remain in an ambivalent personal position and they will become members of the oppressor class in society. The labouring women of the peasantry and the working class are likely to be more exploited than before.
We have observed signs of women's rebellion against contradictions in their lives, but they represent mainly individual, isolated and spontaneous outbursts of talk or action. We must develop a militant women's organisation committed to the anti-imperialist and class struggle, in order to give shape and meaning to our efforts, and to successfully act together upon our world and transform it.
The time is now.
Women workers of the world unite.
We have nothing to lose,
but our bonds of servitude.
1. "Growing up in Nigeria", African Women, Vol. 2, No 4, June 1958
2. K.Nouacer, "Status and Employment of Women In Morocco", in African Women, Vol 5, No 1, December 1962, page 19.
3. "Face the People" an interview with the Secretary-General of UWT in Daily News, Tanzania (1971 - 72, date unsure).
4. Rosita Sweetman, "After the All African Women's Talks", in Sunday News, Tanzania, 6 August 1972. page 11.
5. "China's Women in Socialist Revolution and Socialist Construction", Peking Review, No 12, March 1970.
6. Comment, Daily News, Tanzania, 25 June 1974.