Short Abstract

This panel aims to put under the spotlight the history of female labour in Africa, and to challenge the paradigm of the "male wage earner" standard. It examines histories of multiple, complex, and entangled labour relations, as well as their thoroughly gendered patterns.

Long Abstract

The aim of this panel is to put under the spotlight the history of female labour in Africa. Despite a significant body of literature on the subject from the 1970s onwards, female labour has rarely been included in mainstream narratives about African labour. These narratives continue to treat the ‘male wage earner’ as a universal standard for the African worker, pitting formal male labour against the informal, unregulated and/or unwaged labour of women. However, historical evidence and case studies suggest that vast majority of remunerated labour performed by both men and women in 20th-century Africa was unregulated. Moreover, even the concept of remuneration should be subject of close scrutiny.

Building on this, the panel proposes to study labour relations through an African prism, and in particular through the momentous transformations of the continent in connections to global history, such as the rise of mercantile capitalism and slavery, or the development of global cash crop markets. These processes affected labour relations: one example is the the transition from unfree to free labour, with all its ambiguities, grey zones and contradictions; another is the change in the forms of remuneration and value of labour. Nevertheless, gender was a key pattern in all of these transformations. It was a crucial factor in determining other aspects of labour too, such as the conditions and type of work performed, the access and use of the capital earned, and the possibility or impossibility of surplus accumulation, all themes that this panel seeks to address.

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