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Periodical article Periodical article Leiden University catalogue Leiden University catalogue WorldCat catalogue WorldCat
Title:City Women and the Colonial Regime: Usumbura, 1939-1962
Author:Dickerman, Carol W.
Year:1984
Periodical:African Urban Studies
Issue:18
Period:Spring
Pages:33-48
Language:English
Geographic terms:Burundi
Belgium
Subjects:colonialism
urban women
Peoples of Africa (Ethnic Groups)
History and Exploration
Labor and Employment
Economics and Trade
Urbanization and Migration
Women's Issues
Abstract:Far from being exempt from the sorts of economic and social restrictions experienced in rural areas, urban women in colonial Africa were subject to comparable constraints in their activities. These controls, as well as women's initiatives and responses, were the product of the interaction of the colonial political economy with local African society. Using evidence drawn from case records of the two African courts in Usumbura, Ruanda-Urundi (today Bujumbura, Burundi), the author describes colonial urban policy and urban African women's economic situation and social position. Norms for women were doubly patriarchal: the colonial government imposed new forms of economic and social discrimination (exclusion from wage labour, residence and travel regulations, propagation of housewifery) on a group already in a subordinate position in African society. Moreover, within the institutions of marriage, child rearing, and divorce, the traditional authority of the male head of the family became, if anything, greater. Women, for their part, learned to manipulate situations and regulations in ways that were often resourceful and creative. Bibliogr., notes, ref.
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