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Paper short abstract:

In recent years, foreign factory plants have been exported to low-wage countries where the capitalists aim to exploit the abundance of "untapped" female labor. However, why do factories prefer feminine bodies? How do gender and inequality intersect in the workplace in foreign companies?

Paper long abstract:

The expansion of industrial parks across the country’s major cities drew a large number of labor migrants from rural villages to the cities in search of industrial work. The majority of these first-generation industrial labor migrants are young women seeking work, independence, and a better urban life. Drawing on fieldwork in two foreign garment companies in Bole Lemi Industrial Park (BLIP) in Addis Ababa, this paper examines how the factories’ demand to employ young women has fed the motivations and aspirations of scores of young rural labor migrants to work in the industrial park. Young rural migrants associate labor migration with escaping rural poverty and realizing their future life goals. They imagined the city as a source of opportunity for a better future. However, the migrant workers’ expectations—better city life vis-à-vis realities of factory work— the industrial work ethic and discipline have become the new challenges.

Keywords: labor, migrant women, inequality, aspiration, Ethiopia

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Paper short abstract:

This paper tends to examine the impacts of British wartime economic policies on Lagos women, living and livelihood during the second world war. It will examine the role/contributions of this market women to the British war efforts, majorly in supplying foods to the soldiers and cash crops.

Paper long abstract:

Abstract

The role of women in the Second World War was investigated in this study. The exclusion of women in decision-making process has been identified recently as one of the major challenges for economic development. Apparently, a strong pillar of women’s groups for grassroots participation and a drive for more involvement of women in decision-making process at the local level is still confronting series of setbacks, thus making it a die-hard for them to combine available opportunities for economic development. Thus, the opportunity therein for more women’s participation in decision-making process is yet to be exploited. The involvement of women in anti-colonial struggle in the twentieth century and the parts they played in the social, economic and political domains still require further investigation. This present study, based mostly on archival sources, explores women's involvement during the Second World War, identifies their challenges and assesses their responses to the threat of the war on their social and economic status. Using historical analysis, primary and secondary sources were investigated to reveal how women were involved in the Second World War in colonial Nigeria. It focuses on women's opposition to British wartime policies during the Second World War, paying attention to those activities that were carried out and how they operated. Indeed, although women played significant public roles before the World War II period, their positions were altered by the British foreign rule through economic and political disenfranchisement. The introduction of new economic policies by the British imperial government which had implications on the economic climate led to unmitigated hardship for women resulting in their vociferous demands for justice and fair play during the war years, from 1939 to 1945. The paper concludes that the experience of the Nigerian women as necessitated by the foodstuff price scheme remains the turning point in the history of trade that later transpired the history of women in what was known as underground economy (black market).

Keywords: Woman, Nigerian Woman, Second World War

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Paper short abstract:

National Policy on Gender and Development address gender-based inequalities. However, women's representation remain minimal exposing women to high levels of poverty. How has KNPGAD implementation facilitated women's representation? Findings indicate a need for evidence-based policy-making processes.

Paper long abstract:

Globally, 26% of managers and leaders are women while 74% are men, and this gender-based inequality has hardly shifted in the past 30 years, based on a report released by the United Nations Agency for Women UNWOMEN 2023. The government of uses the Labour Institutions Act of 2007 and Kenya National Policy on Gender and Development (KNPGAD) to address gender-based inequalities. However, women's representation remains minimal exposing women to high levels of poverty and illiteracy. Therefore, the paper seeks to establish how the KNPGAD has been implemented and has been able to change and entrench women's representation landscape in labor Institutions in Kenya. The study used a mixed-method approach to research representation of women. The study used desk-based reviews, database confirmations, surveys, and Key informants’ Interviews to collect data. The data collected was both qualitative and quantitative. The paper used Feminist Institutionalism Theory to analyze how the institutional structures have impacted women's representation. Data were analyzed using Statistical Packages for the Social Sciences (SPSS) software. The findings indicate a need for evidence-based policy-making processes to eliminate inequalities and create equal opportunities for all. The gender policies are expected to influence leadership systems and facilitate the inclusion of effective women representation. The study recommends expansion of women's representation in physical and digital spaces. Kenya National Policy on Gender and Development to address gender-based inequalities. However, women's representation remains minimal exposing women to high levels of poverty. How has KNPGAD implementation facilitated women's representation? Findings indicate a need for evidence-based policy-making processes.

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Paper short abstract:

The introduction of renewable energy in South Africa has been a contentious issue, with labour market opportunities drawing significant attention. Drawing on a case study of the construction of two wind farms, this paper explores the gendered aspect of employment opportunities in the transition.

Paper long abstract:

The introduction of renewable energy into South Africa's energy mix has reignited debates on the nation's labour market conditions, particularly focusing on the looming job losses in the coal sector of Mpumalanga province, and employment opportunities associated with the 'energy transition.' The country's persistent unemployment rate, which stands at around 30% and disproportionately affects the youth and women, serves as the backdrop of these debates. Labour unions have accurately warned that the closure of coal mines during the shift towards renewable energy will result in job losses within the coal value-chain, while proponents of renewable energy argue that employment opportunities will be created in other sectors, such as manufacturing and construction, thus offsetting the job losses. Since its inception in 2011, the Renewable Energy Independent Power Producer Procurement Programme (REIPPPP) has generated 69 554 'job years' for South African citizens, with 11 374 of these going to women and 35 046 to youth, as of March 2023. However, labour unions have questioned the validity of the 'job years' concept and the actual number of jobs created. In this paper I draw on a case study of the construction of two wind farms that are part of the REIPPPP, and examine the employment opportunities during construction and consider how these intersect with gender and inequality and the implications for the just transition. These wind farms are located in the small town in Northern Cape province, a region with a distinct local labour market as compared to others in South Africa.

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Paper short abstract:

In times of recent multiple crises, urban precarity in southern Ghana is growing among migrant women from the north of the country. Hereby, long fought over translocal achievements of facilitating women’s social mobility in northern Ghana are at risk. How do women experience and navigate this?

Paper long abstract:

Initially a means to secure food security in times of heavy droughts in the early 1980s, women from northern Ghana have established independent practices of translocal labour migration. Ever since, young women continue to move in numbers, predominantly circularly, to Accra and Kumasi, Ghana’s biggest cities, to earn individual and family income. For most women today, this is an ambivalent experience. Due to a widespread lack of formal education and language skills, the majority is tied to job opportunities in the informal load carrying business. The absence of a safe and secure working environment, of sufficient and stable income, and inadequate access to housing and health care foster precarious livelihoods. Despite these gendered precarities their migration is linked to the hope of social mobility upon return. In fact, returnees enjoy a higher social status and generally widen women’s social and economic room to manoeuvre. However, the recent emergence and intensification of multiple crises in Ghana, ranging from impacts of the COVID-19 pandemic to high rates of inflation, have imperilled these achievements. While urban work opportunities have become scarce, migrant women’s income (and its value) has decreased drastically. Based on ethnographic and geographical fieldwork in Ghana between 2007 and 2023 we analyse the recent processes of gendered urban precarity and their translocal impact on women’s social mobility in the region of origin. Hereby, we seek to contribute to the debate on gender, labour and inequality in Africa by highlighting the temporalities and spatialities of gendered precarity in women’s labour migration.

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Paper short abstract:

The paper focuses on the intersection between racialized and gendered divisions in the workforce and living arrangements of a globally operating mining company in contemporary Zambia and explores different lines of contestation to the company’s hiring practices.

Paper long abstract:

The paper examines gendered and racialized labour divisions in contemporary Zambia’s mining sector. Despite the abolishment of white privilege in Zambia’s economy after the country’s independence in 1964, a similar form of racialized division of labour can be seen in the mining sector today again. In Northwestern Zambia, almost exclusively 'White' and almost exclusively male expatriate mine managers and senior supervisors, together with their wives and children, reside in an estate in the middle of a new mining town for the duration of their contract with a mining company headquartered in Canada.

Their presence is an expression of both global and regional divisions of labour structured along racial lines. The mining company which has strong regional (white Rhodesian) roots privileges ‘Whites’ over ‘Blacks’ for leading positions and prefers ‘White’ South Africans over other ‘Whites’. Further, the mine’s management strongly supports family life to ‘stabilize’ its expatriate workforce. My first focus is the intersection between racialized and gendered divisions in the mine’s workforce and the estate. While residents engage little with the world outside the electric fence, the estate – and the mine – are functionally integrated into the municipal economy and live off the reproductive labour of the urban communities.

The estate’s homogeneity does not create a harmonious community, though. As a second focus, I explore different lines of contestation to the company’s hiring practices, from single working women to contract workers, and the possibilities of global solidarities between a conceptually differentiated albeit interdependent global South and global North.