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16.4 (Winter 1992) Women's Work, Women's Worth

On the Road to Equality

For many years, the Sahrawis, the indigenous people of Western Sahara, have fought for their survival and against the occupation of their homeland. Spain had ruled Western Sahara for almost a century and in the 1950s and '60s exploited its phosphate riches and forcibly settled most of the nomadic Sahrawis in cities. By 1973, the encounter with Spain had attracted Sahrawis to the POLISARIO Front, which had been founded to liberate the region.

In 1975, on the eve of Sahrawi independence, Morocco invaded Western Sahara. Most Sahrawis fled to refuge in southwest Algeria.

Workers, Traders and Managers

The women of Tafahna al Ashraf, a Muslim village in the Egyptian delta, cultivate the land. Women are also merchants, artisans, agricultural laborers, teachers, and clerks. Some women pursue these endeavors in response to hard times, while others take advantage of opportunities that have appeared over the past three decades. In all cases, women's work shows that development planners must recognize women's place in village economic life.

Women's Work, Women's Worth: Women, Economics, and Development

"What does Doña Maria do," the anthropologist asked.

"She cooks, she makes tortillas. She goes to the fields, she goes to the mountain to get wood, she washes clothes. She raises chickens, she sews she sweeps the floor." On and on went Doña Alberta, Doña Maria's neighbor.

That was 1971. Nine years later, when I revisited San Cosme Mazatecocho in central Mexico, most women called themselves amas de la casa - housewives. Young women, who performed much of the domestic work, were said to be doing "nada" - nothing.

When Servants Could Always Go Home

It was a January afternoon 20 years ago, and I had spend much of the day climbing the muddy, steep mountain road that led to Loma Bonita in central Panama. As I reached a small clearing, a woman came bounding toward me. She arrived and stood close - penetrating dark eyes, openly curious, long black braided hair tucked mostly into a worn straw hat, front teeth missing, no shoes. Introductions seeming superfluous, Rosa Mendosa accompanied me to the house I was seeking of a local politician, talking and asking questions without pause or embarrassment.

The Aloha Industry: For Hawaiian women, tourism is not a neutral industry.

When Haunani Kay Trask and Mililani Trask say that "without beautiful Hawaiian women dancing, there would be no tourism," they are talking about the major industry of their islands state. They are also talking about one of the most egregious examples in the world of the appropriation - and prostitution - of indigenous culture and women for the benefit of industrial society.

Protagonists of Change

Rising before the sun, Maía de la Cruz lies her infant into a blue shawl across her back, awakens her three other children, and hurries barefoot down a dew-moistened dirt path with her sons in rapid pursuit. Their 40-minute walk passes through the market to the zocalo at the center of San Cristobal, Mexico. For the next 14 hours, de la Cruz roams the plaza, selling wrist bands and belts to tourists.

Minobimaatisiiwin: The Good Life

In native communities of Canada and the United States, women are central to traditional ways of life, to indigenous economic power, and to the resistance of so many native peoples to large-scale development projects.

Why? Why are native women engaged in such a tenacious struggle to defend their communities? And why do so many work to rebuild traditional economic structures?

Marketing Ethnicity

At Filene's department store in Boston, you can buy a purse fashioned from Zapotec wool textiles. You can also buy rugs, wall hangings, pillows, and seat covers made by the Zapotec in southern Mexico. Indeed, in southern Mexico. Indeed, the United States is a society of handicraft consumers, but who produces the crafts? How do our purchases influence faraway lives?

Land War: Land barons responded with murder after Indians in Honduras organized to recover their land.

September 30, 1992, at 7 a.m., while driving in Yoro, Honduras, Vicente Matute was shot to death at point-blank range with a shotgun. At least two unidentified assassins fired several shots at the president of the Xicaque Indian Federation.

Francisco Guevara, a prominent member of the Plan Grande Xicaque Tribe, was killed almost instantly with massive head injuries, probably from the same shot that killed Matute. Matute was helping Guevera in a dispute with a powerful local landowner.

Another shot hit Dionisio Martínez, who was riding in the back of the vehicle.

Keeping Kinship Alive

For well over a century, women in the Tongan Island, an independent kingdom in the southern Pacific, have resisted missionary and government efforts that would confine them to a domestic sphere. In this former British protectorate, women have become the main defenders of faka-Tonga -"the Tongan way" - presenting a cultural bulwark against both patriarchy and the social and economic insecurity that can accompany development.

While commoner or working-class women are subordinate in the civil arena, they continue to exercise considerable authority in their families and communities.

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