The Origins of Women’s Economic and Political Participation in Africa, Chinemelu Okafor

I use differences in women's historical participation in agriculture to explain the heterogeneous incidence of female labor force participation across Africa today. In pre-colonial Africa, task composition primarily determined the gendered division of agricultural labor, giving rise to distinctly men's and women's crops. In the absence of plough machinery, societies considered soil cultivation and reaping men's agricultural tasks, and considered sowing and weeding women's agricultural tasks. I test the theory put forth by Esther Boserup that crops requiring fewer men's agricultural tasks increased the demand for female labor, and in societies where men held less of a physical advantage over women in task-specific crop production, men worked very short hours in agriculture, making it possible for these societies to adopt a female farming system. The empirical results suggest that women belonging to ethnic groups with an ancestral female farming system exhibit higher labor force participation and household decision-making autonomy, independent of the original economic rationale. Interestingly, the reduced form results suggest that one implication of the gendered division of crops is that ethnic groups in areas more suitable for indigenous women's crops exhibit fewer gender motifs depicting female domesticity, female submission, and male violence in their historical folklore. To explore political implications, I hypothesize that these women also engage more in informal politics, suggesting that the appropriate role of non-elite women in the economy continues to be negotiated through persisting political participation.

Funding: Weatherhead Center for International Affairs.

External Presentations: American Political Science Association Annual Conference (2026); PhD Excellence Initiative Conference at Stanford University (2026).