Frontiers, Inc.

Mozambique: Some Reflections on the Struggle for Women's Emancipation

Author(s): Sonia Kruks
Source: Frontiers: A Journal of Women Studies, Vol. 7, No. 2 (1983), pp. 32-41
Published by: University of Nebraska Press
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Mozambique: Some Reflections on the Struggle for
Women's Emancipation

Sonia Kruks

Mozambique did not become independent until 1975.
Efforts have been under way since then to prepare the
foundations for a socialist society in the face of a crippling
colonial heritage. This paper sets out to describe what the
situation of women has been in Mozambique and how
it has-and has not-changed since independence. It also
attempts to pinpoint and evaluate the chief constraints
on the further emancipation of women. Since there is little
reliable statistical data available on women in Mozam-
bique, what follows must be taken as a very tentative and
somewhat impressionistic account. It is based partly on
the statements of FRELIMO (the ruling party) and the
Mozambican Women's Organization, partly on my own
travels and observations while working in Mozambique
from 1978 to 1980, and partly on the observations and
fragmentary data collection of other scholars who work
or who have worked in Mozambique.
Colonial and Postcolonial Mozambique
In the early 1960's, at a time when the British and
French were decolonizing in Africa, Portugal was attempt-
ing to tighten control over its African empire, of which
Mozambique was an important part. Economically back-
ward, politically dominated by Salazar's Catholic Fascism,
Portugal was in no condition or mood to decolonize, and
African demands for independence were met with violence
and repression. It was in this context that FRELIMO
(Front for the Liberation of Mozambique) was established
in exile in 1962 and embarked on a guerrilla war of libera-
tion (operating into Mozambique from Tanzania) in 1964.
Initially, FRELIMO was a broadly based nationalist
movement, intent above all on ending Portuguese rule.
But over the course of the war, it became increasingly
radical and began to implement policies in the areas it
controlled-known as the "liberated zones" l-that were
intended to bring about a fundamental political and social
restructuring. FRELIMO's leaders saw "Africanization"
of the existing system as inadequate, and began to pur-
sue wider goals of social transformation, summed up in
the slogan "People's Power. "2
Independence came to Mozambique sooner than
FRELIMO had expected, following the April, 1974, coup
in Portugal. After a transitional period of a year, power
was handed over to FRELIMO in June, 1975. The country
FRELIMO now ruled was one deformed by the effects
of a particularly long and intense colonial rule. At least
80 percent of the population was rural, but subsistence
agriculture had been so distorted by Portuguese forced
labor, forced cultivation, and taxation policies that
malnutrition and disease were rife.3 Since the Portuguese
had not intended to decolonize, and poor Portuguese had
been encouraged to come to the colonies as small traders,
craftsmen, clerical workers, and so on, education and
training for the African population had been minimal.
At independence the illiteracy rate was about 90 percent,
and it must have been nearer to 100 percent for women.4
All colonial regimes are politically repressive, but given
the lack of internal traditions of liberalism in Fascist
Portugal and the more intense degree of exploitation

Sonia Kruks was born in London. She has a doctorate in government from the London School of Economics and
has taught at colleges in London and New York and at the Eduardo Mondlane University in Mozambique. She is currently
assistant professor of political science at the New School for Social Research, where she teaches courses in social and
political theory, including the history of feminist theory. Her research interests encompass recent French political
philosophy, feminist theory, and African politics. Among her publications are a book, The Political Philosophy of
Merleau-Ponty (1981), and an article on the ideological history of the liberation movement in Mozambique (forthcom-
ing in Studies in Power and Class in Africa, ed. I. Leonard Markovitz).

FRONTIERS Vol. VII, No. 2 @ 1983 FRONTIERS Editorial Collective

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Portugal required of its colonies to compensate for its own
economic backwardness in the European context, Portu-
guese rule was particularly vicious. Local administrators
were virtually unchecked in the methods they used to
obtain taxes, crops, and men to fulfill forced labor
quotas.5 Corporal punishment was the norm for minor
offenses by Africans. In most areas Portuguese adminis-
trators, with the aid of their own local police force, ruled
the population directly. In some areas the Portuguese used
indirect rule through compliant local chiefs. Either way,
there were no forms of representation or political par-
ticipation, or access to means of redress, for the bulk of
the African population. It is against this background that
FRELIMO's attempts to democratize in the liberated
zones must be seen. As the movement's first president,
Mondlane, observed, "colonial rule essentially discourages
all the qualities which make for successful democracy.
Among the uneducated, authoritarian rule discourages in-
itiative, a sense of personal responsibility and breeds in-
stead an attitude of non-cooperation with government. "6
The period immediately following independence was
one in which FRELIMO was to some extent acting reac-
tively, trying to stem the chaos and disruption caused
by the speedy exodus of Portuguese. But it was also a
period in which the grounds were laid for later policies:
cooperatives and state farms were established on land
abandoned by the Portuguese,7 and health and education
services were nationalized, as were insurance and banking.
Popularly elected organizations known as "dynamizing
groups" were established in many work places and residen-
tial areas, to attempt to monitor and control sabotage by
departing Portuguese and to attempt to keep production
going.8
By early 1977 the initial problems of independence were
over and FRELIMO held its Third Congress, at which
policies and directions for the future were laid down in
considerable detail. For the first time FRELIMO declared
itself openly to be a Marxist-Leninist party and asserted
that socialism had to be the long-term goal for Mozam-
bique. However, given the colonial heritage, it was argued
that Mozambique had to go through a preliminary stage,
a catching-up period, known as "Popular Democracy, "
in which would be created "the political, ideological,
technical and material base" for the later development of
socialism.9
In regard to politics, the Third Congress agreed to turn
FRELIMO from a broad front into a Leninist vanguard
party. Membership was to be open only to militants who
successfully fulfilled a period of candidacy, while the
broad mass of the population was to be incorporated into
the political process for the first time and given contact
with the Party through the "mass democratic organiza-
tions" under the Party's control and tutelage. One of these
organizations was to be the women's movement, the
OMM,1o of which more later. As the Party developed,
"dynamizing groups" were to be phased out and replaced
by workplace and residency based Party cells."
On the economic front, emphasis was placed above all
on increasing the level of production. Indeed, the "battle
for production" was said to have replaced the battle for
national liberation as the main struggle. Plans for even-
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Kruks 33
tual industrialization (which would allow disengagement
from aspects of the capitalist world economy and, above
all, from Mozambique's dependence on its all-powerful
neighbor, South Africa) were posited on increasing pro-
duction of both food crops and exportable cash crops.
To these ends, the Third Congress elaborated policies for
cooperative agriculture, linked to the resettlement of the
scattered rural population in communal villages.12 In
addition, FRELIMO decided to develop the state farms
sector on large abandoned estates, using fairly high
technology in order to normalize and increase the urban
food supply as soon as possible.
Communal villages were seen not only as more efficient
production units than isolated family units, but equally
as centers for political and social advancement. Plans for
mass education and health care were developed on the
basis of the projected spread of villages; these plans
included a primary school and a health post in every
village, as well as a shop (even when people have cash
income, basic goods such as cloth, soap, salt, even hoes,
are hard to obtain in many rural areas), a creche, and a
Party building. However, the movement of the population
into villages has not been as fast as the Party hoped,13
and since 1978, when the minister of agriculture was
sacked for (among other things) his undue emphasis on
the state farm sector, more attention and assistance have
been promised to "family agriculture, " even though they
have not always materialized.
Recently, in late April, 1983, FRELIMO held its Fourth
Congress. One major focus of debate was agriculture:
although it was decided that priority should be given to
creating and supporting communal villages and coopera-
tives (with state farms being accorded a somewhat less
fundamental importance than before), the importance of
the "family sector" and the need to provide it with
technical and other forms of support were also much
emphasized. 14 The relationship among state farm, coop-
erative, and individual family agriculture and the amount
of encouragement and assistance each should receive con-
tinue to be issues of ongoing debate within FRELIMO
and, as I will argue in this paper, ones central to the
question of women's emancipation.
The Situation of Women in Colonial Mozambique
Mozambique contains a great number of tribal group-
ings, and there is some diversity in the traditional treat-
ment of women within them. Even so, some broad
generalizations can be made.15 Most tribes are patri-
lineal,16 and most are polygamous; bride-price, known as
lobolo, appears to be ubiquitous and is often paid in
livestock. When a woman proves to be infertile or leaves
her husband, there is an obligation on her family to repay
the lobolo or to provide another daughter as a substitute.
Women are often promised in marriage in infancy, and
in some tribes child marriage is common. It is very rare
for a rural woman to have a say in her marriage partner.
Initiation rites are said to be widespread and include such
treatment as periods of isolation, whipping by adult male
relatives, and sexual intercourse prior to puberty.17
Once married, a woman is under the authority of her
34 FRONTIERS
husband and leads a rather privatized existence within his
household. She lives in a house which he has constructed
and which she must leave if the marriage breaks up. Her
access to land is usually through her husband's owner-
ship of it.18 Although men are responsible for some
agricultural tasks, notably clearing new land and plow-
ing, their main activities within the traditional division
of labor were hunting, warfare, care of cattle, and con-
struction. Colonial rule has changed male activities
primarily to wage labor and cash crop production
today,19 but women still maintain their traditional role--
the production of family food supply. Normally, a woman
controls the land she works, in the sense of making the
decisions about how and when to plant, and she has the
right to sell any surplus she can produce. It is in these
respects that traditional African women can be said to
have a degree of autonomy that is certainly lacking to the
western housewife; although they are confined within a
rigidly defined domestic sphere, it is a sphere that includes
their own and their children's means of subsistence. In
addition to agriculture, women are exclusively responsible
in most instances for an entire range of domestic tasks.
Food preparation involves not only cooking but prepara-
tion of grains through pounding, and the time-consuming
tasks of fetching water and firewood. Washing, cleaning,
and child care are additional demands on their time.
Studies conducted in other sub-Saharan countries suggest
that women's working day is considerably longer than
men's, often stretching from before dawn until after
dark.20
While there has been some argument among African
leaders and scholars as to whether and how far the above
kind of family and production relations, widespread in
Africa, constitutes the oppression and exploitation of
women, 21 there has been little disagreement with the view
that colonialism has had significant negative effects on
the condition of women. At a most basic level, the increase
in malnutrition caused by a diversity of colonial policies
falls hardest on women, who spend much of their adult
life pregnant or lactating. In addition, policies that force
men into wage labor, usually as migrants, increase the
labor burden on women. Work that men would tradi-
tionally have done, such as clearing new ground, plowing,
and even house repairs,22 has been taken over increasingly
by women. Colonial Mozambique was par excellence a
migrant labor economy, with men from the southern third
of the country being contracted to South African mining
companies by the state in exchange for payments of
gold,23 while farther north men worked as plantation
labor. The effects of this labor policy were not only to
increase women's labor, but also to give men access to cash
income and to the workings of the so-called modern
sector, an access denied to women. As a result of such
processes, women generally came to be regarded by
colonial administrators as even more backward than their
men, were passed over for education and training for the
"modern sector," and were even ignored in agricultural
extension efforts although they are the main producers.24
In addition, in Mozambique the colonial "modern-
izers" themselves had unusually oppressive policies for
all women, the Portuguese Family Code providing prob-
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ably the most restricted set of women's rights existing in
Europe, and Catholic prohibitions on birth control and
abortion being enforced through civil law. In all, one might
conclude, Mozambican women must have been among the
most deeply oppressed on the African continent, prior
to independence.
FRELIMO's Preindependence Commitment to the
Emancipation of Women
Although at its founding congress in 1962 FRELIMO
had already resolved to promote women's involvement in
the struggle and to establish a women's organization,25
it was not until 1967 that any formal women's organization
was established. In the meantime (as in any rural guerrilla
war), FRELIMO had had to rely on support from women,
who provided food, shelter, and assistance with transport.
That women should be formally included appears to have
been recognized by some of the leadership quite early, but
was opposed by the more traditionally minded, warfare
being seen as an exclusively male domain. When women
were admitted it was as full military members, organized
in the Women's Detachment, and their entry reflected the
general radicalization of FRELIMO and the dominance
within the movement of those who saw the struggle as
one to build a wholly new society and not simply to end
colonialism.
The creation of the Women's Detachment was seen to
be liberating to women themselves. As Mondlane wrote
in 1968, "Through the army, women have started to take
responsibility in many areas: they have learned to stand
up and speak at public meetings, to take an active part
in politics. "26 But as Mondlane himself made clear, the
Women's Detachment was also seen as tactically useful.
Women were particularly effective at mobilizing the
population, their presence with guns often shaming men
into joining up, while it was easier for them to approach
other women than it would have been for male soldiers.
The Women's Detachment remained small, and women
did not progress from it into the top FRELIMO leader-
ship, which remained exclusively male. Although they were
militarily trained and sometimes involved in combat, it
seems that members of the Detachment were used more
for mobilizing and for social service tasks such as health,
education, and establishing orphanages in the war
zones.27 Since its members lived in a military base and
traveled extensively, few married women joined it.
FRELIMO leaders later decided to provide a less demand-
ing organization in which women with families could be
mobilized more easily. This organization, the Organiza-
tion of Mozambican Women (OMM), had its founding
conference in 1973, but it appears to have remained rather
small and fragmentary until after independence, when it
became the mass democratic organization for women and
a national structure started to be built. It is important to
point out that although there was a certain amount of
pressure from women for both the Women's Detachment
and the OMM to be established,28 neither was in any way
a spontaneous women's movement; they were created by
decision of the male FRELIMO leadership, in order to
carry out tasks defined as important by that leadership.

At the first OMM conference FRELIMO's president,
Samora Machel,29 gave an analysis of the sources of
women's oppression, of the necessity for FRELIMO to
struggle for women's emancipation, and of the ways that
this should be done, an analysis that still provides the basis
for policies concerning women in Mozambique. With re-
gard to the first issue, the sources of women's oppression,
Machel argued, following Engels, that the oppression of
women must be located within the context of their
economic exploitation in a society based on private
property, such as he insisted even traditional Mozambican
society had been. Women are privately appropriated as
sources of labor and future labor, lobolo being the
expression of this appropriation.30 Women are oppressed
so that they may be exploited, and oppression takes place
through "ideological and cultural mechanisms" that make
women feel inferior and passive and that isolate and
privatize them within the family. Comparing the system-
atic denigration to which women are subjected to the
similar mechanisms of colonial racism, Machel concluded:
The process of alienation reaches its peak when the
exploited person, reduced to total passivity, is no longer
capable of imagining that the possibility of liberation
exists and in turn becomes a tool for the propagation of
the ideology of resignation and passivity. It must be
recognized that the centuries-old subjugation of women
has to a great extent reduced them to a passive state, which
prevents them from even understanding their condition.31
The clear implication of this analysis is, of course, that
women neither can nor should conduct an autonomous
struggle for their own emancipation. They have, in the
main, to be guided by men in order even to see their
oppression. Quite consistently, Machel devoted part of his
speech to the question of why the Revolution-which is
to say FRELIMO men-should bother themselves with
the issue of women's emancipation at all. Answering those
in the Movement "who feel that we should devote all our
efforts to the struggle against colonialism and that the
task of women's emancipation is therefore secondary
because it will dissipate our forces, " Machel made essen-
tially two points. First, if the aim of the Movement was
to wipe out exploitation, then it must attack all forms of
it or it would reappear. Second, if women were not in-
corporated in the Revolution and did not understand it,
then they would hinder it. In particular, their incorpora-
tion was essential because they were the educators of the
next generation: "how can we ensure the revolutionary
education of the generation which will carry on our work
if mothers, the first educators, are marginal to the revolu-
tionary process?"32 Thus the emancipation of women,
in Machel's eyes, did not imply changing their roles as
"mothers" and "first educators," as western feminists
usually argue, but it did imply involving them qua mothers
and educators in the wider process of social emancipation
from which they too were to benefit.
This last point became even clearer when Machel went
on to discuss the "how" of women's emancipation.
Emancipation, he insisted, must not be seen as "mechan-
ical equality," of the kind that requires an exactly equal
division of household tasks, or women's doing every job
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Kruks 35
that men currently do. Such a mechanical conception, he
warned, "leads to complaints and attitudes which utterly
distort the meaning of women's emancipation. "33
Thus Machel saw issues such as the domestic division
of labor as trivial. The main struggles involved in the
emancipation of women were listed as first, the political
mobilization of women in the general battle for human
liberation; second, their incorporation in production
(which is presumably to say socialized production, as
women were already active in individualized subsistence
production); third, the raising of women's "scientific and
cultural" level, so that they cease to be purveyors of
traditional "obscurantist" and "tribalist" ideas. Finally,
Machel did argue for the need to develop a new concep-
tion of the family. The exploitation of women in the
traditional family-and all the mechanisms that support
it, such as polygamy, bride-price, and initiation rites-
must be replaced by monogamy. The "new revolutionary
concept of the couple and the home" must be based on
love, but the love of militant comrades, for "love can only
exist between free and equal people who have the same
ideals and commitment in serving the masses and the
revolution. "34
In many ways Machel's prescriptions for the emancipa-
tion of women are similar to those of other Marxist-
Leninist movements.35 Machel follows an orthodox posi-
tion insofar as he considers private property as the root
of women's oppression, argues that political mobilization
and involving women in social production outside the
household are the main keys to emancipation, and con-
tinues to see the mothering role of women as "natural. "
However, in spite of the economistic and productivist bias
of the analysis, the policies that FRELIMO (through the
OMM) has pursued most clearly and consistently towards
women since independence have in fact been mainly to
do with family structure and sexuality and with education.
Indeed, as I will suggest below, there has been a noticeable
lack of clear thinking or policies on the question of the
relation of women to production outside the family
sphere. It is to the period since independence that I now
turn, my main focus being the situation of the majority
of Mozambican women, those in the rural areas.
Women's Political Participation: the OMM, the
Party, the State
Privatization and isolation, leading to general political
backwardness, are seen by FRELIMO as major effects
of traditional and colonial treatment of women. It follows
that women's entry into the political process is seen as
a prerequisite for their emancipation: isolated women have
to be reached by the political organizations before
illiteracy, polygamy, or anythng else can be dealt with. It
is not known what proportion of Party members are
women, though about one-sixth of the delegates to the
Fourth Congress were women.36 Nor is it clear how
widespread either the OMM or the Party is at the grass-
roots level in all parts of the country. Certainly, in urban
areas, communal villages, and state farms both exist; and
on paper the OMM exists everywhere, down to the
smallest administrative unit, the "locality." But how much
36 FRONTIERS
contact is actually made with the majority of rural women
who are still not in villages is hard to tell-not surpris-
ingly, most of the information available deals with those
sections of the rural population that have been politically
mobilized and moved into villages.37
For those women whom it has contacted, what does
the OMM do and what difference has it made to their
lives? As we have seen, it is not intended to be a self-run
or autonomous women's movement, but is supposed to
provide a channel for informing women of FRELIMO's
policies and involving women in carrying them out. The
most common way the OMM goes about contacting and
incorporating women is through campaigns around
specific events or issues. Mobilizing for specific events
seems to be quite effective. For example, when a mass
vaccination campaign was conducted, the OMM, with
considerable success, mobilized women to come and bring
their children.38 What appears to be harder-not surpris-
ingly, given the demands on women's time-is to mobilize
women in a more continuous manner. Of the continuous
campaigns, the literacy campaign has been one of the most
important. Few illiterates speak the national language,
Portuguese, and it is only in literacy classes that most
women can obtain the language skills that permit them
access to, and participation in, the political system. Ac-
cording to 1979 figures, over 40 percent of those attending
literacy centers were women,39 but the completion rate for
courses appears to be low, and one hears stories of literacy
courses in villages that collapse after a few months for
one reason or another-participation dropping off, lack
of supplies, the teacher's being sent elsewhere, and so
on.40 Even so, one can say that in comparison with
colonial times, there has been a vast increase in women's
literacy.41
Other continuous campaigns the OMM conducts have
been to involve women in collective agriculture and in
education and propaganda campaigns against bride-price,
and so on (of which more in the next sections). Another
series of campaigns has aimed to educate women to be
better mothers and housekeepers. Here, both the inade-
quacies of FRELIMO's analysis of women's situation and
the very real conflicts implicit in current priorities emerge.
For example, given the high infant mortality rates, the
OMM campaign to get mothers to give their children three
meals a day42 makes much sense from a public health
point of view. However, given all the work involved in food
preparation, this campaign is demanding a great deal of
additional domestic labor from women at a time when
many other new demands are also being put on their time;
and, of course, it is further reinforcing the view of women
as uniquely responsible for the well-being of their children.
Yet, having pointed out these problems, one also has to
say that at the present time a campaign to involve fathers
in the additional labor would not be successful and that
the organizational structures that would make communal
child feeding possible are not yet developed, so that this
campaign, which is in some ways detrimental to women,
would still seem to be justified if it succeeds in reducing
infant mortality. It is clearly inevitable that there will be
such conflicts in the complex and multifaceted social
transformation FRELIMO is attempting. The main
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problem is perhaps that FRELIMO does not appear to
confront them face on, but assumes that all that is good
for the revolutionary transformation must also be good
for the emancipation of women.
On perhaps a more positive note, it is clear that OMM
activity and campaigns are encouraging women to leave
their traditionally privatized domestic role and participate
increasingly in the general running of their communities.
For example, already in the 1977 elections to the state
assemblies, 28 percent of representatives of Locality
Assemblies (the lowest level) were women, while even at
the highest level, the National Assembly, over 12 percent
of those elected were women.43 Although precise figures
are not available, it would appear that all law courts
contain some women judges and that women are also
being recruited into security agencies, from local militia
to the police and army, in significant numbers.44 Given
the fact that women virtually never spoke in public before
independence, their entry into public life, albeit mainly
at a local level, must be seen as a great achievement.
The OMM is not intended only to mobilize women to
carry out FRELIMO policy. It is also supposed to con-
tribute to the policy making process with regard to
women. It is in this area that the organization is undoubt-
edly at its weakest. Monthly meetings are held between
the national OMM leadership and the Party at which
suggestions and initiatives are supposed to pass in both
directions. But when asked in a recent interview what
policies OMM had suggested to FRELIMO, the Secretary
General of OMM had considerable difficulty in answer-
ing and could come up with only one example.45 It is
clear that policy regarding women is determined in the
Party still. That is to say, a predominantly male leadership
is deciding what are-and are not-'women's issues" and
which are the most pressing ones without considering the
women's opinion that the OMM theoretically channels
from the grassroots up to the Party.46
There are several reasons for OMM's lack of initiative.
Prior to independence, it was run by members of the
Women's Detachment, peasant women from the liberated
zones in the North. With independence, OMM head-
quarters moved south to Maputo, and many of the leaders
either did not come or were unable to cope with urban
life. As a result, a new leadership developed that was
primarily urban and middle-class, and lacking in under-
standing of rural society. This leadership was criticized
and largely purged by FRELIMO in 1976, when the
Second OMM Conference was held. The present leader-
ship is still mainly urban, though it includes some
working-class women. The latter are poorly educated and
feel intellectually insecure in relation to FRELIMO; they
fear a repeat purge if they fail to understand FRELIMO's
policies and are branded as counterrevolutionary.47
Between their nervousness and their genuine lack of
understanding of rural life, which is compounded by poor
communication between local OMM branches and the
center, it is not surprising that the OMM leadership fails
to act as advocates of women's needs to the Party. If in
the long run better communication develops between the
rural OMM and its national headquarters, and if the
OMM develops a leadership drawn from peasant women,

it might begin to formulate and propose policies that
articulate the expressed needs of rural women. At that
point also, FRELIMO would perhaps have to confront
the conflicts between some of its development policies and
the interests of women. But such a time is clearly still far
in the future and will depend on how political power
comes to be allocated in general among the peasantry, the
urban working class, and the petit bourgeoisie.
Family Life and Sexuality
In his speech to the First OMM Conference in 1973,
it should be recalled, Machel gave the issue of altering
family life a low priority. Again in 1976, opening the
Second OMM Conference, he insisted that the liberation
of women depended on their involvement in the "main
transforming task" of society. This had been the War of
Liberation; now it was the battle for "production, " the
prerequisite for constructing "the material and ideological
base" for socialism.48 Yet the actual resolutions passed
by the conference had virtually nothing to say about the
means of involving women in production and instead dealt
primarily with matters of family life and sexual activity.
Why this was so is not clear, but one might hypothesize
that it has to do with FRELIMO's lack of clear thinking
on the problems of involving women more in nontradi-
tional production relations: it was perhaps very hard to
come up with clear resolutions on production and easier
to devote attention to the apparently more clear-cut issues
of women and the family. However, as I will suggest below,
these issues are not as clear-cut as they appear, and overlap
with issues of women's labor and therefore of production.
The Conference Resolutions on "social problems in the
rural areas" dealt with the following matters: initiation
rites, premature and forced marriage, forced and heredi-
tary marriage, lobolo, polygamy, adultery, and divorce.
In general, education and propaganda were seen as the
main "means of combat" against these practices, though
in the case of polygamy stronger disincentives were applied
in the form of a prohibition on FRELIMO membership
and other public positions for those entering new polyga-
mous relations. The economic foundations of polygamy
were also recognized in the recommendation that OMM
should encourage communal villages since, "through
collective work, the situation in which enslaved women
feel obliged to share their husbands will be eliminated. "49
Since the 1976 conference a new Family Law has been
drafted. The Family Law embodies the ideal of the
egalitarian, "militant," monogamous marriage, which
FRELIMO espouses as the alternative to polygamy.
Property is to be jointly owned,50 place of residence a
joint decision. Both parents are said to be responsible for
their children, though unlike the Cuban Family Code,51
for example, the law does not spell out what this means
in terms of shared child care and housework. The Family
Law also permits divorce (prohibited under Portuguese
law), though it is not encouraged and can take place only
after reconciliation efforts have been tried and have
failed.52
Clearly the Family Law must be regarded as a state-
ment of intent at present. Many of its clauses are vague,
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Kruks 37
and much of it will not be easy to enforce in many cases.
Even so, the formal statement of women's equality and
rights within marriage is a useful advance on the colonial
situation. Another advance has been the recognition of
women's right to contraception, though it will be many
years before it is available to all women and even longer
before the majority choose to use it.53 "Family plan-
ning, " as it is called, is of course justified not on the
grounds of a woman's right to choose not to have children,
but on the basis of the need for women to be able to
control fertility to space their children. Motherhood is still
assumed to be-and probably in fact almost always is-
the goal of every woman.54
It is hard to assess the present degree of impact of
FRELIMO's policies on the traditional family structure.
Provincial OMM sections report major declines in
polygamy and other practices. But recent visitors to
communal villages, which contain the most advanced
sections of the population, report that close questioning
brings forth admissions that new polygamous marriages
are taking place.55 One interesting point is that it is often
women who encourage and even help their husbands to
take other wives. This is not through blind traditionalism
but, as FRELIMO itself has recognized,56 for essentially
material reasons: it is not only the man who benefits from
the increased labor supply that a second wife represents.
For the first wife, a second represents not only more
agricultural production for the household but the
possibility of reducing domestic labor, for example by tak-
ing turns in cooking or collecting wood.57 There are
certain "economies of scale" in domestic labor in the
polygamous household that women recognize and value,
even if in other ways they find the institution detestable.58
If this is the case, might not the policy of abolishing
polygamy in fact be detrimental to women in some ways?
Undoubtedly it is an institution that permits male exploi-
tation of women, but it is also part of the complex and
delicately balanced social organization that enables an im-
poverished peasantry to subsist. What I think is clear is
that its abolition will be of value to many women only
in the context of a total reorganization of the relations
of production in which other nonindividual forms of
agricultural production and domestic labor are developed.
While FRELIMO is clear about the former, there appears
to be little serious consideration of the need for the latter.
Creches are supposed to be built in villages-but to free
women for collective agricultural work.59 There seems to
be little realization of the way the monogamous family
will increase domestic labor time unless it is offset by
modifying the sexual division of labor, that is, with the
husband taking on domestic tasks, or by collectivizing
more domestic tasks, such as cooking, or by introducing
such labor-saving items as communally owned grain mills
and wood-lots routinely into the villages. Of these three
possible ways of reducing women's domestic labor time,
only the first is ever discussed, as far as I can tell. Men
are encouraged to help their hardworking wives with
household chores, but there is no suggestion that these
should be their responsibility; and women are told not
to demand that their husbands help, but to hope that their
own example of hard work will encourage their husbands
38 FRONTIERS
to want to participate.60 It is likely that polygamy will
disappear far more rapidly than a change in the sexual
division of labor within the family will take place, or than
women's domestic labor will be reduced by other
means-unless in the not too distant future the OMM
really does transform itself into an effective advocate body
for rural women and brings about significant policy
changes.
Even though on balance the abolition of polygamy in
the present is probably desirable, a question arises
especially for the western feminist about FRELIMO's
alternative, a strict and rather puritanical monogamy. Is
this option not likely to be sexually repressive for women?
There certainly does seem to be an over-zealousness in
the social pressure against premarital and extramarital
sexual activity.61 However, insofar as FRELIMO is ad-
vocating a free choice of marriage partner for women for
the first time and making it possible for women to initiate
divorce, its policies must be seen as relatively liberating
in relation to the existing situation. Issues of sexual
freedom did not arise within the feminist movements in
the United States or Europe until contraception was
widely available and women had a certain level of access
to education and jobs. They are not likely to arise in
Mozambique either until similar levels of access have been
reached.
Women, Production, and Socioeconomic Planning
As I have already suggested, in spite of the economistic
nature of Machel's analysis of women's oppression and
the exhortations to involve women in social production
as a means to their emancipation, little thought has been
given to the constraints on involving women in produc-
tion, or to ways of loosening these constraints. One reason
for this is obviously the lack of analysis and theoretical
contribution by the OMM. Related to this is the domi-
nance of men in the national planning processes and the
fact that "women's issues" are rather narrowly conceived
as those of mobilizing women or questions relating to the
family. Thus when a decision is made on some aspect of
social policy or an economic project is planned, its im-
pact on women is not usually considered.
For example, when a new state farm project is being
planned, recommendations will be made by officials from
not only the Ministries of Agriculture and Public Works
but also the Ministries of Health and Education; water
supply, possible need for a new school, and so forth, will
be discussed. But there is no body responsible for con-
sidering the impact on women: there is not a ministry for
women, and the only structure that might in theory con-
sider the impact of the plans on women, the OMM, is
not consulted as far as I know. The results of this lack
can be disastrous, as in the case of some state farms es-
tablished in Nampula Province where, in order to stabilize
the (male) labor force, permanent family housing was
provided but there was no provision to make land
available for family (that is, women's) agriculture. As a
result, the workers' wives lost their productive role and
became wholly dependent on male wages for their own
subsistence and that of their children, unless they were
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willing and able to travel several miles each day to cultivate
the family plots where they had previously lived.62
This is, of course, an unusually gross example, but it
well illustrates a fairly general problem. It is striking that
the "Economic and Social Directives" of the Third
Congress, which lay down detailed goals for both
economic and social development, do not include a
section on women.63 Similarly, the "Theses" for the
Fourth Congress do not specifically address the problems
of women. The problem of essentially writing women out
of development plans is exacerbated by the very cen-
tralized nature of planning in Mozambique. Were plans
for, say, a new communal village developed more at the
"locality" level, it is possible that in some areas OMM,
or women in local assemblies, would be able to suggest,
for example, that a creche or easy access to firewood to
reduce domestic labor time should be a priority. It is
possible that planning will become more decentralized in
the future, as the Party is consolidated nationwide and
enough planners and technicians are trained so that they
do not have to be concentrated in the capital. Certainly
decentralization is an issue that is discussed. One promis-
ing indicator is that both democratization and the de-
centralization of decision making were major policy orien-
tations of the Fourth Congress. If implemented they will
place more control over decisions affecting rural life in
the "locality" assemblies where, as we have seen, women
are well represented:
The people's deputies know the real problems in their
zones, and they mobilise the people to solve local prob-
lems on the basis of self-reliance.
The deputies discuss and control questions of supply.
They organise the fight against blackmarketeering, hoard-
ing and speculation. They plan and control food produc-
tion in their area, and decide on the type of produce
needed to supply their area. They control the implementa-
tion of decisions and approved plans.64
If such localized "people's power" does become a reality
over, perhaps, the next decade, given that women are
active in local political structures, they will stand to
benefit.
One aspect of macro-level planning which is of particu-
lar importance for women's incorporation in nonfamily
production is the allocation of resources between state
farm and cooperative production. As seen in the example
above, the state farms employ a wage labor force, and it
is overwhelmingly male.65 The initial reason for this was
that men were used almost exclusively as plantation labor
by the Portuguese, so that they already existed as a labor
force needing employment when abandoned Portuguese
estates were transformed into state farms. However, this
situation is likely to be perpetuated, given that the top
priority in the state farms is high productivity: men are
already experienced in the discipline of wage labor, are
less likely to be absent than women (who have domestic
responsibilities), and are more likely to have had suffi-
cient education to be trained in the use of new mechanical
equipment. In addition, there seems to be a firm prejudice
by men workers against having "their" women do perma-
nent wage work and leave the domestic sphere;66 those

women who do seek wage work are usually single
mothers.67 In all, the integration of women would require
major shifts of values and priorities on the part of both
workers and management. Given the lack of practical
concern with the problem, such shifts are not likely to
take place.
Cooperative production in communal villages, on the
other hand, would seem to provide better possibilities for
the integration of women into social production. Indeed,
in some areas where men have a very strong tradition of
wage labor, they have been reluctant to enter cooperatives,
and the latter are run almost exclusively by females.68
Cooperative agriculture is much more flexible than wage
work. Both the duration and the timing of work hours
can be more easily geared to the needs of women.
However, in many cooperatives where there are men as
well this has also posed a problem: women tend to work
only half time in the cooperative as they still devote time
to their traditional role as family food producers on
individual plots. The result is that the men not only receive
more money when the crop is sold but also take over most
of the leadership positions. Even so, the fact that women
are members of the cooperative in their own right, can
work full or part time, and receive a cash income which
is their own69 means that cooperative agriculture must
be seen as the form most conducive to the incorporation
of women in socialized production. The communal
village, engaged in cooperative production, clearly pro-
vides a locus in which struggles for an altered sexual
division of labor can take place-unlike the state farm,
which tends to reinforce the existing division.
As I suggested earlier, the balance between small-scale
cooperative and large, high technology state farm agri-
culture is far from being resolved. The issue of how each
affects women is not one that enters into the debate, but
it is clear that it will be of great importance to women
which option is pursued most extensively over the next
decades. It is encouraging, from the point of view of
furthering women's control over their own lives, that the
Fourth Congress not only gave a degree of primacy to
cooperatives in relation to state farms, but also urged more
control by production cooperatives over their own goals
and methods of production:
The Party structures at all levels will devote great attention
to the organisation of communal villages and to the
growth of the cooperative movement. They are responsible
for mobilisation, for political leadership, and for ensuring
that the state organs carry out their tasks. The Party is
to ensure that decisions over what crops to grow, what
targets to set, and what production methods to use express
conclusions reached in discussions amongst the members
of the cooperative themselves.70
Obviously, women in Mozambique have started to make
considerable gains since independence. For the first time
they are being incorporated in political processes; they
have equal legal rights and responsibilities with men; they
have increased access to education. Oppressive practices
such as child marriage and initiation rites are diminish-
ing, and women are being encouraged to choose their own
marriage partners. At least in the cooperative sector, a
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Kruks 39
cash income and the experience of collective work are now
open to them.
However, such gains can be seen as no more than a
beginning, and it is clear that there are considerable
impediments to an accelerating process of emancipation.
These include the lack of dynamic and rural based leader-
ship within the OMM and the consequent determination
by FRELIMO's male leadership of what the "women's
issues" and their relative priorities are. The failure of this
leadership to consider the question of demands on
women's labor time and to tackle the related question of
the sexual division of labor promises to be a major
stumbling block, as does its failure to realize that
economic and social development planning need also to
be considered as "women's issues. "
A complex of interrelated problems and dynamics is
at work, but one thing is clear: given the highly politicized
and planned nature of Mozambique's social transforma-
tion, the sine qua non for fuller emancipation must be
the transformation of the OMM into a movement of and
for rural women. It must become capable of analyzing
the situation of women and formulating coherent policies.
It must also develop enough confidence to struggle within
the Party for its policies and to demonstrate that all issues
are, in one way or another, "women's issues. " Whether
or not the OMM does develop into such a movement itself
depends on a set of complex factors and remains to be
seen. But given the changes that have already taken place
since independence, there are grounds for cautious
optimism.
NOTES
I am grateful to Martha Madoerin with whom some of the ideas in
this paper were first worked out in an unpublished paper we wrote
together in 1979. She is not, of course, responsible for the ways in which
I have since used them.
1. The first liberated zones were in the North, in the sparsely populated
provinces of Cabo Delgado and Niassa.
2. For details of policies in the liberated zones, see Eduardo Mondlane,
The Strugglefor Mozambique (Harmondsworth: Penguin Books, 1969).
"People's Power," rather than mere "Africanization," came to be
accepted as general policy only after considerable internal conflict in
FRELIMO, during a period known as "the two lines. "
3. The imposition of money taxes was a standard colonial device, used
also by the British and French, to force Africans into the monetized
economy and especially to oblige them to become wage laborers. In
addition, the Portuguese used forced labor gangs (chibalo) and in some
areas, most notably in the North, they used forced cash crop production.
The latter involved requiring each household to cultivate a minimum
acreage of, for example, cotton. The crop had to be sold to a conces-
sionary company for a fixed price. The money received would then mostly
be taken by the state in the form of taxes.
A recent study gives male life expectancy as forty-two and female as
forty-four. Infant mortality rates range between 75 and 150 per 1,000,
depending on the area. UNICEF/WHO, Country Decision Making for
the Achievement of the Objective of Primary Health Care: Report from
the People's Republic of Mozambique, 1980.
4. FRELIMO, Relat6rio do Comit6 Central ao 30 Congresso (Maputo:
Departamento de Trabalho Ideol6gico da FRELIMO, 1977), p. 65.
5. In some areas women were also taken for forced labor, but this
does not seem to have been the norm.
6. Mondlane, p. 220.
7. It has been estimated that the abandonment of settler farms resulted
in a 55 percent drop in national agricultural production between 1973
and 1975. In the same period marketed peasant (that is, African)
production fell by 60 percent, because of the departure of Portuguese
traders, truck drivers, and so on. See Marc Wuyts, Peasants and Rural
40 FRONTIERS
Development in Mozambique (Maputo: Center for African Studies,
1978), p. 30.
8. For an account of "dynamizing groups, " see Allen Isaacman, A
Luta Contintia, Creating a New Society in Mozambique, South Africa
Pamphlets, No. 1 (Binghamton: Fernand Braudel Center, 1978); and John
Saul, "Mozambique: the New Phase, " Monthly Review, 30, No. 10
(March 1979), 1-19.
9. FRELIMO, Programa e Estatutos (Maputo: Departamento de
Trabalho Ideol6gico da FRELIMO, 1977), p. 8.
10. Organizaqgo da Mulher Mogambicana (Organization of Mozam-
bican Women). Other "mass democratic organizations" include the youth
movement and organizations for particular groups such as journalists,
artists, members of cooperatives.
11. This process is not yet complete, but many new cells have been
formed since a big Party recruiting campaign in 1978. FRELIMO's
vanguardism should not be seen as a mindless acceptance of the whole
Marxist-Leninist "package" from outside. It is rooted in an analysis of
Mozambique which takes into account the lack of political experience
of the bulk of the population, the brutalized nature of the peasantry,
and the fragmentary nature of the proletariat. I have examined
FRELIMO's arguments for a vanguard party more closely in another
paper: "From Nationalism to Marxism: The Ideological History of
FRELIMO, 1962-1977, " in Studies in Class and Power in Africa, ed.
I. Leonard Markovitz, forthcoming.
12. Much of the rural population lives very dispersed. People avoided
settling near townships or roads because such places would be more
immediately under Portuguese control.
13. The latest official figure is that 1 million, out of a total popula-
tion of 12 million Mozambicans, live in communal villages.
14. "Draft Theses for the Fourth Congress of the FRELIMO Party,"
supplement to the Bulletin of the Agencia de Informagio de Mogam-
bique, No. 76 (1983), pp. 10-12. At the time of writing I have not yet
seen the Congress documents themselves, and thus draw on these
preliminary Theses instead. However, I have been told by an observer
at the Congress, Allen Isaacman, that the Theses were broadly endorsed
by the Congress.
15. The standard ethnography is still the detailed two volume work
by Henrique A. Junod, Usos e Costumes dos Bantos (Maputo: Imprensa
Nacional de Moqambique, 1975).
16. The Yao tribe is an important exception.
17. Documentos da 2a Confer~ncia da Organiza?aio da Mulher
MoCambicana (Maputo: Departamento de Trabalho Ideol6gico da
FRELIMO, 1977), pp. 90-91. See also Junod, pp. 170-76.
18. It is clear that traditional concepts of land ownership are
significantly different from those of modern western society. Ownership
does not generally imply the absolute right to control and alienation
of land which we normally associate with the term. For a good discus-
sion see Barbara Rogers, The Domestication of Women (London:
Tavistock Publications, 1980), ch. 6.
19. Cattle-keeping is still an important male activity, cattle being an
expression of wealth and the main means of paying lobolo.
20. Rogers, ch. 7. As far as I know, no such study exists for Mozam-
bique itself.
21. FRELIMO, as I will show, regards the traditional relations as
exploitative. An example of contrary opinion is that of Leopold Senghor
of Senegal: "In traditional Black African society woman was not con-
sidered inferior .... If, in the family and in society, women appear to
have inferior tasks, that is only outwardly so. In reality, there is a division,
not a hierarchization of work. Women perform functions of an impor-
tance and dignity not always found in so-called civilised nations." Cited
in M. Dobert and N. Shields, "Africa's Women: Security in Tradition,
Challenge in Change," Africa Report, July-Aug. 1972, pp. 14-20. For
a more scholarly presentation of similar views see Thelma Awori, "The
Myth of the Inferiority of the African Woman," in The Civilization
of Women in the African Tradition (Paris: Pr6sence Africaine, 1972),
and other papers in the same volume, composed of conference papers
from a meeting of the Society for African Culture, Abidjan, July 1972.
(I am grateful to Fran Keally, University of Wisconsin-Madison, for the
reference to this volume.)
22. House repairs are an annual and important activity on mud-and-
thatch constructions that have to withstand a tropical climate.
23. On the impact of mine labor migration on the rural political
economy of southern Mozambique, see Ruth First, Black Gold: The
Mozambican Miner, Proletarian and Peasant (Brighton: Harvester Press,
1983).
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24. This is a point well documented some years ago in Ester Boserup,
Woman's Role in Economic Development (London: George Allen and
Unwin, 1970).
25. Datas e Documentos da Hist6ria da FRELIMO (Maputo: Impren-
sa Nacional de Moqambique, 1975), p. 25.
26. Datas e Documentos da Hist6ria da FRELIMO, p. 274.
27. Information given by old-time members interviewed in 1979 in
Cabo Delgado. Barbara Isaacman and June Stephen, Mozambique:
Women, the Law and Agrarian Reform (Addis Ababa: United Nations,
Economic Commission for Africa, 1980), p. 15.
28. Mondlane, p. 186, and Isaacman and Stephen, pp. 14-15.
29. Mondlane, FRELIMO's first president, was assassinated in 1969.
Machel was elected president in 1970.
30. "The Liberation of Women Is a Fundamental Necessity for the
Revolution, " Sowing the Seeds of Revolution (London: Committee for
Freedom in Mozambique, Angola and Guin6, 1974), p. 27.
31. "The Liberation of Women, " p. 28.
32. "The Liberation of Women, " p. 24.
33. "The Liberation of Women, " p. 30.
34. "The Liberation of Women," p. 31.
35. A codified or orthodox position on "the woman question" was
developed in the early days of the Third International and has since been
uncritically accepted in Third World revolutionary states. See Maxine
Molyneux, "Women in Socialist Societies, " in Of Marriage and the
Market, ed. Kate Young et al. (London: CSE Books, 1981), pp. 175-77.
36. Of the 667 delegates, 105 were women, about double the percen-
tage that were present at the Third Congress in 1977 (information from
Allen Isaacman). Given that women are probably less likely than men
to be chosen or to be willing to come to the Congress in Maputo as
delegates, one might hypothesize that FRELIMO's rank and file female
membership is higher, perhaps around 20 percent.
37. In a survey of twelve communal villages (five in Nampula Pro-
vince, seven in Gaza Province), Isaacman and Stephen (p. 32) found
female membership in or candidacy to the Party to range between
8.7 percent in one Nampula village and 59.3 percent in a village in Gaza.
Obviously their figures are of no statistical significance, but what they
do illustrate is the tremendous unevenness between provinces and even
villages which makes it hard to generalize about the country as a whole.
38. As much as 95 percent of the population is said to have partici-
pated in at least some provinces-a remarkably high figure. See Gill
Walt, "Commitment to Primary Health Care in Mozambique: A
Preliminary Review, " Rural Africana, 8-9 (Fall 1980-Winter 1981), 91-98.
39. Information from OMM Archives, cited in Isaacman and Stephen,
p. 103.
40. I do not have figures to document this, but it is an impression
shared by other observers.
41. There has also been an explosion in school education since in-
dependence which has significantly affected girls. Probably not more
than 2 or 3 percent of girls received any formal education prior to
independence. The 1979 figures give over 42 percent of primary level
students and over 20 percent of secondary school students as female.
See Isaacman and Stephen, p. 98.
42. The norm is two meals a day, one at noon and one in the evening.
At certain times of the year when food tends to be short, often only
an evening meal is eaten.
43. Isaacman and Stephen, p. 35. Even the figure of 12 percent
compares quite well with the U.S. Congress, which would in some ways
be an analogous body.
44. Isaacman and Stephen, pp. 37-40.
45. Interview by Stephanie Urdang, reported by her in a lecture in
London to the Mozambique, Angola and Guin6 Information Centre,
June 1982.
46. According to FRELIMO, through the "mass democratic organiza-
tions" such as the OMM, the Party should be able "to know and feel,
at every moment, the problems, the needs, the opinions, the criticisms
and suggestions of diverse sections of the population" (Relat6rio, p. 111).
47. Urdang, interviews reported at London lecture.
48. 2a Conferencia, p. 23.
49. 2a Confer~ncia, pp. 96-97.
50. Joint ownership is of great importance as it means that, at least
in theory, women who do not earn a money income are entitled to share
control over their husbands' cash income.
51. Article 26 of the 1975 Cuban Family Code states: "Both partners
must care for the family they have created and each must cooperate
with the other in the education, upbringing and guidance of their

children. ... They must participate, to the extent of their capacity or
possibilities, in the running of the home. "
52. Isaacman and Stephen, pp. 53-54. The law also stipulates that the
well-being of a child should be the main criterion for deciding which
parent should have custody. This overturns the traditional assumption
that children automatically belong to the father and go to his relatives
in cases of separation.
53. The first family planning campaign planned to provide contra-
ception to only 25,000 women. Isaacman and Stephen, p. 142.
54. In traditional society infertility is a major disaster for a woman:
it means that her husband is entitled to send her back to her family
and that she will have no children to support her in old age.
55. Isaacman and Stephen, p. 49; and Urdang, London lecture.
56. "... in the majority of cases it is the wife herself who procures
other wives for her husband, with the object of increasing the labor
force to help her with family production" (2a Conferencia, p. 96).
57. In addition, a degree of exploitation is not uncommon, with the
first wife's having authority over the second or subsequent wives and
shifting part of her work onto them. The reasons that women agree to
become second wives are less clear, except that it would seem that any
marriage is regarded as better than none-and of course many women
have no choice if their family is offered a lobolo that they want to receive.
58. Jealousy and resentment also exist. Today, in some instances, wives
now go to the OMM or the Party and ask them to intervene to prevent
a second marriage. I myself encountered a case of this in 1979 when
an urban woman I knew quite well discovered that her husband was
about to marry a second wife from his home area and bring her to town
to share their two room apartment. The husband was prevailed upon
to abandon the plan.
59. The creche program has run into many problems. Some of these
concern the provision of staff, equipment, and food on a reliable basis.
Others are to do with the reluctance of many women to leave their
children in the care of people outside the family. Isaacman and Stephen,
pp. 76-77.
60. Urdang pointed out that although women are encouraged to do
traditionally male work, such as housebuilding, there is no equivalent
sense that men should be mobilized to do traditionally female work.
OMM cadres she talked to generally thought that it would be too
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Kruks 41
upsetting and "explosive" an issue to campaign for much male participa-
tion in domestic labor. Her impression was that such a campaign would
upset most women as well as men (London lecture). Of the two other
possible ways of reducing domestic labor time, the communalization
of activities such as cooking would be difficult while family food
production remains predominantly individual. The introduction of labor-
saving items into villages would be possible, and its lack of consideration
reflects the male bias in village planning-of which more in the next
section. One significant labor-saving item is planned for all villages
already: a good water supply in or very near the village.
61. In the towns especially, there have been vigorous campaigns against
prostitutes, and women who have extramarital affairs risk being accused
of prostitution.
62. Personal communication from Ursula Semin-Panzer, who visited
state farms in Nampula Province in the summer of 1979 with one of
the "July Brigades" of the University.
63. The "economic sectors" include agriculture, industry, commerce,
transport, and so forth. Only three "social sectors" are listed: educa-
tion, health, and human settlement and habitation.
64. "Draft Theses, " p. 21.
65. On selected state farms Isaacman and Stephen (pp. 77-80) found
the number of permanent female employees to range from 3 out of 18,000
to nearly 20 percent.
66. This prejudice was given as the main reason for low levels of female
employment by a state farm manager (Isaacman and Stephen, p. 77).
67. This is also true in the urban areas. Often unsupported mothers
come to the towns to seek employment, and some factories (notably
for cashew processing) have a predominantly female labor force.
68. This reluctance has been most notable in Gaza Province, which
has a strong tradition of male labor migration to the mines in South
Africa.
69. Membership in cooperatives is by individual worker and not by
household, according to the official guidelines. However, Isaacman and
Stephen (p. 88, note 39) found that in some villages wives were in fact
incorporated in the same brigade as their husbands when they worked
part time and that the total remuneration was then given to the man.
70. "Draft Theses," p. 11. Emphasis mine.