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Working Women in Developing Countries

“Women in Southeast Asia boil palm sugar. West African women brew beer. Women in parts of Mexico and elsewhere make pottery. Women in most countries weave cloth and make clothes. Women in most cultures sell their surplus food in local markets. Profits from these activities generally belong to the women themselves.”​—Irene Tinker in the book Women and World Development.

Take, for example, the Akan people of southern and central Ghana. Writes Rae André: “Women plant, men harvest; women trade in the market, men trade over longer distances. Traditionally, husbands and wives have had separate savings and investments and have been entitled to any profits made from their own labor or trade.”

The old way of life, though, is quickly changing as nations gear up for industrialization. The reason? Industrialists introduce not only Western technology but also Western culture. Typically, developers will teach new farming techniques to the men​—even when farming is the domain of women. Factory jobs are likewise made almost exclusively available to men. What have been the effects of all of this?

Consider Indonesia. There the job of rice hulling was traditionally done by women. However, in the early 1970’s, small Japanese-built rice hullers were introduced, depriving women of their livelihood.

In the Guatemalan town of San Pedro, wives worked as weavers, while husbands were farmers and traders. Women there took what Dr. T. Bachrach Ehlers calls “fierce pride” in being economically productive. Suddenly, new weaving machines were introduced. But only men were extended the credit needed to purchase them. Women therefore lost control of the weaving industry and now work for the low wages paid by factory bosses.

In Kenya some women are left behind “on the family plot of land to scratch out a living for themselves and their children” as their husbands pursue salaried employment in the cities. When they eventually rejoin their husbands to live in high-rise apartments, they find, according to a Kenyan official, “nothing more than a place for people to commit suicide.” Why? “Kenyans,” he explains, “like to be on the ground; they like to have a piece of soil to call their own.”

In India women have traditionally had “low ritual status.” Thus the better-paying jobs are often viewed as inappropriate for a woman. (Even Gandhi, who spoke of the equality of women, once said that “equality of the sexes does not mean equality of occupations.”) Nevertheless, observes the book Women in Contemporary India, middle-class working women have now had “the opportunity to develop a taste for material goods.” Cultural and religious taboos may therefore give way to another earmark of Westernization​—materialism.

Ironically, women in the Third World find themselves working harder than ever, but without the economic independence​—or security—​they once enjoyed.

India: Sociologist Zarina Bhatty says: “Women work because they have to, and not because they find in it the means for greater freedom, economic independence or self-expression.”