Book contents
- Frontmatter
- Contents
- List of Illustrations
- Acknowledgements
- Glossary
- Map of Mozambique
- Introduction
- Part I CONCEPTIONS OF GENDER & GENDER POLITICS IN MOZAMBIQUE
- 1 Women in Mozambique
- 2 Notes on Gender & Modernization (1988)
- 3 Family Forms & Gender Policy in Mozambique 1975 – 1985 (1989–1990)
- 4 Simone de Beauvoir in Africa:Woman – The Second Sex?
- 5 Gender in Colonial & Post-colonial Discourses (2003)
- Part II NIGHT OF THE WOMEN, DAY OF THE MEN: MEANINGS OF FEMALE INITIATION
- Part III IMPLICATIONS OF MATRILINY IN NORTHERN MOZAMBIQUE
- Epilogue
- References
- Index
2 - Notes on Gender & Modernization (1988)
from Part I - CONCEPTIONS OF GENDER & GENDER POLITICS IN MOZAMBIQUE
Published online by Cambridge University Press: 05 February 2013
- Frontmatter
- Contents
- List of Illustrations
- Acknowledgements
- Glossary
- Map of Mozambique
- Introduction
- Part I CONCEPTIONS OF GENDER & GENDER POLITICS IN MOZAMBIQUE
- 1 Women in Mozambique
- 2 Notes on Gender & Modernization (1988)
- 3 Family Forms & Gender Policy in Mozambique 1975 – 1985 (1989–1990)
- 4 Simone de Beauvoir in Africa:Woman – The Second Sex?
- 5 Gender in Colonial & Post-colonial Discourses (2003)
- Part II NIGHT OF THE WOMEN, DAY OF THE MEN: MEANINGS OF FEMALE INITIATION
- Part III IMPLICATIONS OF MATRILINY IN NORTHERN MOZAMBIQUE
- Epilogue
- References
- Index
Summary
In an essay from 1976 the feminist historian Joan Kelly sums up her work in women's history as follows:
Indeed, what emerges [when the study of history is approached from the vantage point of women] is a fairly regular pattern of relative loss of status for women precisely in those periods of so-called progressive change. … Our notions of so-called progressive developments such as classical Athenian civilization, the Renaissance, and the French Revolution, undergo a startling re-evaluation. (Joan Kelly 1984, 2)
on the basis of my work in Mozambique between 1981 and 1984, and afterwards through the analysis of extensive data on women and gender relations, I will extend this statement to include the so-called development process in Africa, as I have seen it unfold in Mozambique. Mozambique is governed by a political power, Frelimo, which since the onset in 1964 of the armed struggle against Portuguese colonialism until the acceptance of Structural Adjustment Policies in the late 1980s battled to structure the development process into a socialist mould. Sadly, however, seen from the vantage point of women's lives, initial socialist and later neo-liberal development policies have made no great difference; the ‘fairly regular pattern of relative loss of status for women’ still holds true. I have reached these conclusions the hard way.
- Type
- Chapter
- Information
- Sexuality and Gender Politics in MozambiqueRethinking Gender in Africa, pp. 39 - 61Publisher: Boydell & BrewerPrint publication year: 2011