Paper short abstract:

Cameroonian gender patterns underwent a major change twenty years ago. These new social roles for both genders have been reinforced after diaspora in European countries. The case of a small community in Italy shows us how diaspora further modifies gender patterns without rejecting tradition.

Paper long abstract:

Cameroonian gender patterns underwent a significant change almost twenty years ago. A great political and socio-economical crisis has brought new social roles for both men and women. These roles have been reinforced after Cameroonian diaspora in European countries. In the small Cameroonian community around Varese (Italy) I found a different way of conceiving manhood and womanhood. Traditionally African women's gender pattern is to produce and re-produce goods and children, as Meillasoux pointed out. Male gender pattern is to redistribute goods that women produced. Women work for the nuclear family whereas men for the extended one. In diaspora communities women propose their womanhood not just through childbearing but through taking care of the whole community. In this context men can not afford to fit in their role of great redistributors, so they find new strategies to reduce their networks. On the contrary women work to expand them. Gender patterns of dispora communities are not completely new but they promote new social spaces for women.