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

Differences in women's pre-colonial participation in agriculture are used to explain the heterogeneous incidence of female labor force participation across Africa today. Agro-ecological suitability for staple food crops varies exogenously and historically determined the level of task-specific physical exertion necessary for cultivation. Crops requiring tasks less suitable for labor-intensive soil cultivation and reaping 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, preliminary results suggest that women belonging to ethnic groups with an ancestral female farming system exhibit higher labor force participation today, independent of the original economic rationale. Interestingly, the reduced form results suggest that one additional implication of an arrangement where women were valued economically is that these ethnic groups have more progressive gender motifs as reflected in their historical folklore. Accordingly, ethnic groups in areas with agro-ecological suitability for crops less labor-intensive in soil cultivation and reaping are associated with fewer folklore motifs depicting female domesticity, female submission and male violence. To explore political implications, I hypothesize that these women are 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.