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

Differences in women's historical participation in agriculture are used to explain the heterogeneous incidence of female labor force participation across Africa today. In pre-colonial Africa, the gendered division of agricultural labor was determined primarily by task composition, giving rise to distinctly men's and women's crops. In the absence of heavy machinery, soil cultivation and reaping were considered men's agricultural tasks, while sowing and weeding were considered women's agricultural tasks. Crops requiring fewer men's agricultural tasks increased the demand for female labor. In societies where men had less of a physical advantage over women in task-specific crop production, men worked very short hours in agriculture making it possible to adopt a female farming system. Consistently, the instrumental variable 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 women's crops have fewer gender motifs depicting female domesticity, female submission and male violence, as reflected in their historical folklore. To explore political implications, I hypothesize that these women are also more engaged in informal politics, suggesting that the appropriate role of women in the economy is one that continues to be negotiated through persisting political participation.