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This book brings women into the center of the urban landscape, using case studies to illustrate their contributions to family, community, work, and political life. It discusses how women's work in trade and agriculture has been the foundation of African urbanization.
List of contents
Part 1 Introduction -- 1 Urban African Women: Courtyards, Markets, City Streets -- Part 2 Migration and Urbanization -- 2 South African Women and Migration in Umtata, Transkei, 1880-1935 -- 3 Transitions in Kenyan Patriarchy: Attempts to Control Nairobi Area Traders, 1920-1963 -- 4 Three Generations of Hausa Women in Kaduna, Nigeria, 1925-1985 -- Part 3 Courtyards: Marriage, Family, and Housing -- 5 Washing Dirty Laundry in Public: Local Courts, Custom, and Gender Relations in Postcolonial Lusaka -- 6 Can Polygyny Be Avoided in Dakar? -- 7 Health, Gender Relations, and Poverty in the AIDS Era -- 8 Moving and Coping: Women Tenants in Gweru, Zimbabwe -- Part 4 Markets: Work and Survival -- 9 Women in Business: Class and Nairobi's Small and Medium-Sized Producers -- 10 Beyond Simple Survival: Women Microentrepreneurs in Harare and Bulawayo, Zimbabwe -- 11 Prostitution, a Petit-metier During Economic Crisis: A Road to Women's Liberation? The Case of Cameroo -- Part 5 City Streets: Politics and Community -- 12 "I Am with You as Never Before": Women in Urban Protest Movements, Alexandra Township, South Africa, 1912-1945 -- 13 Urban Women's Movements and Political Liberalization in East Africa
About the author
Kathleen Sheldon is a research scholar at the centre for the Study of Women at the University of California at Los Angeles. She has published extensively on African women's history, with a particular interest in the history of women in Mozambique and is the author of Courtyards, Markets, City Streets, (Westview Press, 1996).
Summary
This book brings women into the center of the urban landscape, using case studies to illustrate their contributions to family, community, work, and political life. It discusses how women's work in trade and agriculture has been the foundation of African urbanization.
