Geography Reference
In-Depth Information
Field Note
“I am fi lled with admiration for the women car-
rying water on their heads up the bank from the
Niger River. Other women are at the water's edge,
fi lling their buckets. These women are perform-
ing a daily ritual requiring incredible endurance
and strength. Once they carry their buckets to
their dwellings, they will likely turn to preparing
the evening meal.”
Figure 5.16
Along the banks of the Niger River just outside Mopti, Mali
.
© Alexander B. Murphy
children, she might wish to apply for title to the land she
has occupied and farmed for decades, but in many places
land titles are not awarded to women.
Young girls soon become trapped in the cycle of female
poverty and overwork. Often there is little money for school
fees; what is available fi rst goes to pay for the boys. As soon
as she can carry anything at all, the girl goes with her mother
to weed the fi elds, bring back fi rewood, or fetch water (Fig.
5.16). She will do so for 12 hours a day, 7 days a week, during
all the years she remains capable of working. In East Africa,
cash crops such as tea are sometimes called “men's crops”
because the men trade in what the women produce. When
the government of Kenya tried to increase the productivity
on the tea plantations in the 1970s and 1980s, the govern-
ment handed out bonuses—not to the women who did all of
the work but to the men who owned title to the land!
Since the 1990s, women have lobbied for greater
representation in governments in southern and east-
ern Africa. Uganda was a leader in affi rmative action for
women by setting up a quota or guarantee that women
must hold at least 20 percent of the legislative seats. In
South Africa, Apartheid, the systematic oppression of the
majority black population by the minority white popu-
lation, ended in 1994. The South African government
established a constitution with universal suffrage (voting
rights) in 1997. The constitution does not include an affi r-
mative action policy for women's representation in the
parliament. Instead, major political parties, starting with
the African National Congress (ANC) reserved a certain
percentage of their seats won for women.
Today, the country where women hold the highest
proportion of legislative seats is neither Uganda nor South
Africa. Rather, another African country, Rwanda, is the fi rst
country in the world where women hold more than 50 per-
cent of the legislative seats. Women passed the 50 percent
mark in the 2008 election in Rwanda (Figure 5.17). Rwanda
suffered a bloody civil war in the 1990s and over 800,000
people died (one-tenth of the population at the time), a
majority of whom were men. Immediately after the war,
women accounted for more than 70 percent of the popula-
tion of the country. Today, women account for 55 percent
of the voting-age population. The Rwandan constitution,
adopted in 2003, recognizes the equality of women and
set a quota of at least 30 percent women in all govern-
ment decision-making bodies. Of the 80 legislative seats in
Rwanda, 24 are reserved for women. In these 24 seats, the
only candidates are women and only women can vote.
Dowry Deaths in India
On a 2004
Oprah!
show, the talk show hostess interviewed
journalist Lisa Ling about her travels through India and
her reports on dowry deaths in India. The Chicago audi-
ence looked stunned to discover that thousands of girls
in India are still betrothed through arranged marriages
and that in some extreme cases, disputes over the dowry,
which is the price to be paid by the bride's family to the
groom's father, have led to the death of the bride. The
bride may be brutally punished, often burned, or killed
for her father's failure to fulfi ll a marriage agreement.
