Zambezia (1981), IX (ii).RE SEAR CH RE FOR TINVISIBLE WOMENLUCY BONNERJEACentre for Applied Social Sciences, University of ZimbabweIN THE PAST, there were few statistics collected on the female populations ofvarious countries. This paper traces the historical neglect of women and the moremodern interest in them, confined at first to questions relating to fertility and later towelfare considerations, and then raises questions about the consequences forpolicy-making today.'Statistics' is a term generally used for the results of an enumeration, or, moretechnically, for the science of drawing inferences from numerical data. Perhaps theearliest forms of statistics were the cadastral surveys of ancient Babylonia, Chinaand Egypt, which had quite elaborate accounting systems, recording numbers ofsoldiers, and supplies of gold and silver, and of com; women, however, were neverseen as resources to be counted. Systematic censuses were first carried out byRoman magistrates, in order to make a register of the people and their property, atfive-year intervals. The concern was with men only, and the aim was to identifywho should be taxed, inducted into military service, or forced to work. Informationwas not needed on women.Today the population census has evolved to become the most comprehensivesingle source of information about a nation. It not only reveals basic demographictrends such as the changing composition of a population, but also shows trends inurbanization, changes in occupational and industrial configuration and in stand-ards of living, levels of education and employment, and regional and groupdifferentiation. It also makes possible estimates of future trends, which areessential in all kinds of planning.Information is now collected on women, too. Statistical techniques have beenrefined enormously since, for example, the first census in Great Britain in 1801, yetmany of the concepts and assumptions relating to family life and to women remainthe same, although it is in this area in particular that these concepts have becomemost inappropriate.CONCEPTSWestern criticisms of the census and of other data-collecting measures have focusedon a number of concepts. In Britain, Oakley and Oakley1 have pointed to an inherentcontradiction in the census which is conceived as a household survey yet attemptsto identify the socio-demographic characteristics not only of households but also ofindividuals. This has led to a tendency to assume that the household is an entity inŁA. Oakley and R. Oakley, 'Sexism in official statistics', in J. Irvine, I. Miles and J. Evans (eds),Demystifying Social Statistics (London. Pluto Press, 1979), 172-90.155156RESEARCH REPORTitself, and to forget that it is made up of individuals with different characteristics,each with different needs, opportunities and constraints.The link between the household and the individual has been the 'head ofhousehold', a concept based on a number of debatable assumptions: that the head ismale, and that he has various dependants, among whom is his wife. Even if thiswas ever an accurate description of a household, nowadays being head and beingresponsible for the home are two functions which are increasingly shared betweenspousesŠand this seems to be happening in different cultures and different socialclasses. Where responsibilities are shared, 'head of household' becomes aninappropriate term; it conceals the position of women in both family and society.The third concept which needs re-thinking is the category of 'economicallyactive*. This is a peculiar category: being a housewife is not'working'; being onstrike is; the care of elderly persons is classified as work or not, depending onwhether it is paid.2 Being away from work because of sickness, holiday andunemployment does not prevent one from being economically active, while lookingafter childrenŠunless they are not your own, and someone pays youŠis beingeconomically inactive. This concept was designed to fit the male industrial patternsof continuous, full-time employment; it has little regard for women's patterns ofwork or their contribution to the home, community and society.A fourth concept criticized in the West is that of social-class categorizationŠan attempt to sum up various factors about a person, perhaps best described as 'lifechances'Šand the way it is derived. Traditionally, occupation has been used as thebest single indicator for identifying social class. While this may be appropriate formen, in the case of women it is not. Men's occupations say nothing abut women.And women's occupations do not relate clearly to their education and training, or toother aspects of their lives such as housing, earnings and life-styles. For a variety ofstructural reasons, women are confined to a narrow range of occupations and as aresult working women tend to be concentrated in one social-class category: 'socialclass III non-manual'.3 This category, however, subsumes such a variety ofoccupations and lifestyles that once again one can gain from it little informationabout the women so classed.In summary, there are numerous problems in these concepts as used to collectinformation on women. They have been taken from a different context and notadapted. The fact that these concepts are largely irrelevant to women shows thatmen and women do occupy different positions in relation to society's opportunitiesand rewards. At the same time, however, these concepts are unable to show that'different' is also 'unequal'. At best, they result in a partial understanding of theroles that women play in society and family, and at worst, in a mystifying processthat upholds past traditional values and norms and conceals the very change thatthe data are trying to illustrate and quantify.EXPORTING CONCEPTSThe idea of a census, together with the aims and assumptions inherent in it, were2M. Nissel and L. Bonnerjea, 'Looking after the Handicapped Elderly at Home: Who Pays?'(London, Policy Studies Institute Working Paper, Report 602, 1981).3M, Nissel, Basic Concepts and Assumptions: Women in Government Statistics (Manchester,Equal Opportunities Commission, Research Bulletin 4, 1980),LUCY BONNERJEA157V1"'exported with the rest of the colonial administration to the Third World. Thecolonial powers oversaw the transformation of most African countries intoeconomically dependent areas.4 The earliest measures of enumeration were in thecollection of taxes, the registration of males, and the control of livestock, as Africanareas were drawn into the cash economy and into new patterns of production.In Zimbabwe this process started early. In Mashonaland the British SouthAfrica Company in 1894 imposed a hut tax (Ordinance No, 5 of 1894) of 10s. perhut, irrespective of the number of people living in it. Ten years later the Native TaxOrdinance (No. 12 of 1904) replaced the hut tax with a poll tax of £ 1 on each maleover the age of sixteen. This not only meant a doubling of the amount payable, but,in the change from hut to men, also resulted in the expansion of the revenue base.Women did not pay tax, although a man having more than one wife paid an extra10s.In this way, women were not counted unless they were part of a polygynoushousehold. Then, in the first decade of this century, there was an attempt toestimate the whole Black population of the country. The method did not involvecounting individualsŠ it simply used a multiplying factor of 3.5 times the totalnumber of indigenous taxpayers. The tax on polygynists was dropped at this time.5Women disappeared altogether from the figures.It was only after the Second World War that the Central African StatisticalOffice in Salisbury started investigations into the size of the Black population; in1948 a sample survey which was carried out used as a frame a list of taxed villages,and the selected sample villages had their total population counted. This was incontrast to the 19 3 6 and 1946 censuses, which are divided into three main sections,European, Asian and Coloured, following which there is some information on'Natives', accompanied by an explanatory note that reads:The schedule for 'Natives in Employment' (which the employer wasrequired to complete) differed entirely from the other three, because thesocially useful information obtainable in regard to native wage-earnerswas inevitably of a different [nature] from that of the more civilisedraces.6This comment indicates something of the nature of race relations at the time, buthere it is used simply to show the similarity in attitude between what is considered'socially useful' information on Whites and Blacks, and men and women. If therewas little information on Blacks, there was even less on Black women; and these aretwo problems, not one.Change was introduced only slowly. The 1951 census of employers coveredall races and the term 'Native' was changed to 'African'. The 1969 census, thelatest one available, still made racial and sexual distinctions in the quantity and4W. Rodney, How Europe Underdeveloped Africa (London, Bogle L'Ouverture, 1972).'R.W.M. Johnson, 'African population estimates: Myth or reality?*, Rhodesian Journal ofEconomics (1969), III, 5-17.'Southern Rhodesia, Report of the Director of Census on the Census of Population, 1936,([Salisbury, Department of Statistics], mimeo, 1943), 4; Report on the Census of Population ofSouthern Rhodesia Held on 7th May, 1946 (jSalisbury, Central African Statistical Office], 1949), 2.158RESEARCH REPORTnature of the information collected: it used a detailed questionnaire relating topersons other than 'the African", and a condensed form for the Black population.7THE 1969 CENSUSHow did women feature in Zimbabwe's last census? Firstly, there is an emphasison portraying Black women as the bearers of children, and the census gives nocomparable figures or comments on women of the other races. The concern withwomen is immediately apparent in the large section on the 'Fertility and Mortalityof the African Population', There are figures on all children born and on survivingchildren, age-specific fertility data, and urban - rural comparisons of fertility. Forthe last mentioned, the fact that the number of children born to urban females isbelow that for rural women of the same age receives more comment than does thecorrespondingly higher survival ratio of the urban children. There are Tablesrelating education to fertility, and the section ends on an 'overall natural increase'estimate. The concern with women seems to be based on an interest in demographygenerally and perhaps overpopulation in particular.Other sections have much less information. In the housing data, three out ofnineteen Tables are concerned with Africans, and there is no information on, forexample, female-headed households, or on rents paid or income earned by women.There is information on electricity supplies but not on water, which is particularlyimportant in identifying living standards of families and the nature of'housework'for the women. The education section is a little more comprehensive, withmale/female subdivisions for both attendance and standards attained.There are eight Tables concerned with the 'economically active' Africanpopulation. The earlier criticisms of the concept are relevant here. The Table on the'Employment Status of Africans by Year of Birth and Sex' is reproduced here inaggregated form as Table I, in an attempt to show the irrelevance of the concept, thedata, and the whole Table, to women's work. There are 1,227,650 women who areof 15 years and above. Of these, 101,130 are described as 'economically active',while 1,116,520 are not. So fewer than one in ten are even potentially describable.However, when one subdivides the 101,130 even further, 3,960 are activelyseeking work, and 89,660 are employees of'others'. So of 1,227,650 women, thework of only 7,510 can be identified (in the first three columns). This is hardlyilluminating of the economic activities of Black women.The only other Table in the census which sheds any light on the formalemployment of Black women is Table 77, entitled 'African Employees byIndustry, Sector and Sex', which compares the private and the public sector formen and women. The figures seem very low; for example, there are only 32,524women involved in agriculture and livestock production, in contrast to 212,955men. However, the Table does still show where the women are concentrated: in theservice sector. This is still a small number compared to the number of men:24,673 to 153,340. Of the 24,673 women, 16,474 were in the domestic sectorwhile only 20 were in the business services and 48 in the recreational and culturalservices. No figures are available on earnings. This Table seems mainly to show7 Southern Rhodesia, Census of Population, 1951 ([Salisbury, Central African Statistical Office),1954); Rhodesia, Census of Population 1969 (Salisbury, Central Statistical Office, (19711).Table ICOMPONENTS OF THE ECONOMICALLY ACTIVE POPULATION ENUMERATED IN THE1969 AFRICAN HOUSEHOLD CENSUSSex and Age GroupSelf-EmployedoutsideAgri-cultureEmployees of:AfricanFarmersAfricanBusiness-menOthersActivelySeekingTotal WorkTotal Enu-meratedEconomic-allyActiveAll OtherPersonsNotStatedTotalPopulationMales:Under 15 years 310 2 94015 years and over 15 490 10090Not stated 180 100TOTAL 15 980 13 130Females:Under 15 years 320 90015 years and over 2 600 1 330Not stated 20 ŠTOTAL 2 940 2 230940 17 100 20 980 97011450 606 030 627 570 24 610150 9 940 10 190 29012 540 633 070 658 740 25 870790 9 580 11270 3703 580 89 660 94 570 3 960Š 1 370 1 370 1304 370 100 610 107 2104 46022 260 1115 300 9 930 1147 490667 670 597 650 6 070 1 271 39010 660 7 070 3 570 21 300700 590 1720 020 19 570 2 440 1.8011 960 1 139 550 10 370 1 161 880101130 1116 520 10 000 1227 6501 520 13 190 2 510 17 220114 610 2 269 260 22 880 2 406 750Persons:Under 15 years 63015 years and over 18 090Not stated 200TOTAL 18 9203 840 1 730 26 680 32 250 1 340 34 22011420 15 030 695 690 722 140 28 570 768 800100 150 11310 11560 420 12 18015 360 16 910 733 680 765 950 30 330 815 2002 254 850 20 3001 714 170 16 07020 260 6 0803 989 280 42 4502 309 3702 499 04038 2504 846 930Source: Rhodesia, Census of Population 1969, Table 75 (adapted).Table IILESOTHO: VALUE OF LABOUR PERFORMED BY WOMENSectorsIndustrialOrigin of G.D.P.(at factor cost)(Millionsof Rands)Percentage ofG.D.P. Attributableto Labour FactorsValue ofLabourFactors(Millionsof Rands)Percentage ofFemale Workersper BranchTotal Valueof FemaleLabour(Millionsof Rands)Equivalentin Millionsof RandsAgricultureMiningManufacturingElectricity-waterConstructionCommerce19671971197519671971197519671971197519671971197519671971197519671971197516.8220.0629.221.020.220.310.240.751.860.110.190.960.901.262.6412.1115.3124.3885756010752514.3017.0524.850.770.170.240.150.451.120.010.020.100.670.961.983.023.836.09852251052012.1514.5021.100.020.010.040.110.28_0.030.050.100.600.761.22TOTAL19671971197531.2037.7959.3760.659.557.918.9222.4834.4812.8415.4222.7117.221.426.1Source: United Nations Yearbook, 1975.LUCY BONNERJEA161what kind of work women do not do. It does not even touch on the wide range ofinformal and self-employed activities in which they are often involved.OTHER STUDIESThe 1969 census does not provide much useful information on Black women,partly because of the application of inappropriate concepts, which leads to theasking of irrelevant questions, and partly because of lack of interest. But the censusis only one form of data collection. Others (surveys or evaluations of programmes,for instance) tend to use similar assumptions and conceptualizations. Thisfrequently leads to misconceptions about changes in society and about the effects ofspecific programmes.Cost-benefit analysis is a statistical technique that is being used increasinglyin evaluation studies, but its application is often based on a misconception about thelabour importance of women.8 For it favours certain sectors of the community: thecash-earning individuals who have high'opportunity costs'. This involves a highervaluation of the middle classes, and men become more important than women. Oneexample is the benefit of measuring health programmes in terms of increases inGross National Product (G.N.P.),which results from earlier returns to employ-ment.9 This disregards women's health, since much of women's work is not 'formal'employment, and hence is not thought to count in the estimate.The G.N.P. itself has become a contentious issue. The calculations on whichit is based completely ignore subsistence food agriculture, which largely acounts forrural women's work. The concept of G.N.P. is based on the Keynesian approach tooutput, on materially valued, not simply valuable, output. However, this method ofpresenting a country's accounts hides all distributional effects and shows littleinformation on standards of living or welfare. Class inequality, racial inequality,rural poverty and sex differences can all be hidden. This is particularly relevant to acountry like Zimbabwe, which is built on a dual economy on two levels; both theracial and the sexual differences in opportunities are enormous. Zimbabwe'sG.N.P. can rise steadily while for the majority of the population there is no change.ALTERNATIVE APPROACHESThere are examples of meaningful collations and analyses of data. The U.N.D.P.,for instance, put together 1976 income figures for Africa. The average income forall of Africa was US$400 per capita, while the average income for Zimbabwe wasUS$500 per capita. The inequality of distribution within Zimbabwe can best beillustrated with further comparisons: the average per capita European income wasnearly US$8,000, while the African average income was US$150. The approx-imate average for the Tribal Trust Lands was US$40.10Meaningful national data on women are more difficult to find. For Zimbabwe,data have largely been confined to the census with its narrow focus. The monthly8B. Rodgers, The Domestication of Women (London, Tavistock, 1980).*D.W. Pearce, Cost Benefit Analysis (London, Macmillan, 1973).10U.N.D,P., Zimbabwe: Towards a New Order, An Economic and Social Survey (Geneva,U.N.C.T.A.D., 1980).162RESEARCH REPORTstatistics collected by the Central Statistical Office do not have any data on women.Other countries are beginning to recognize their contribution. In Lesotho, forexample, there has been an attempt to measure women's contribution to the G.N.P.This is presented in Table II, in which the productive sector is broken into sixcategories, the origins of G.N.P. at factor cost being shown in the nationalcurrency. The G.N.P. value that can be attributed to labour factors is estimated,after the extraction of capital inputs and land values. The labour is then valued andthe percentage contributed by women gives the estimated monetary value of thelabour.11The figure is high because much of Lesotho's labour force is not employedinside the country. Nevertheless, it is an example of how the monetary value ofwomen's work, and their contribution to the economy, can be measured, and also ofhow the participation of women in economic activities in the rural areas, asopposed to the wage-employment sector, can be quantified. This is important forZimbabwe, since the splitting of families between the urban and rural settings is anissue that is being considered by policy-makers at the present; it is of concern toboth the Riddell Commission and the Ministry of Lands drawing up plans for theresettlement programme. Data quantifying the economic and social effects of thisseparation are badly needed before decisions are taken.INDICATORSIn order to avoid having to make crude estimates, it is important to develop andcollect a systematic set of indicators which can be used to illustrate the economicand social position of women, and to enable comparisons to be made betweendifferent countries and within a country between regions and over time. Thesemeasures need to be more refined than those currently available, and they also needto include measures of the effects of any development process. Various indicatorshave been suggested in relation to the progress of whole societies; here, however,the concern is with the comparative access of men and women to the benefits andcosts of development.One set of simple measurements has been suggested by the African Trainingand Research Centre forWomen, part of the United Nations Economic Com-mission for Africa based in Addis Ababa.12 The first is concerned with employment,and measures the percentage of female workers in the formal sector, which isdivided into parts requiring more or less formal education. It then measures averageannual rates of growth in each as well as growth over the preceding five and tenyears, respectively. The second relates to comparative wages in the differntemployment sectors. The third focuses on the proportion of hours of labour that areassigned to women in the 'informal' activities concerned with food production,processing, storing and marketing, and with water and fuel supply, householdactivities, child-care and community projects. The fourth covers formal educationwith statistics on each sector, and includes a breakdown of subjects to show whatproportion of female students study science and technology. The fifth indicator isthe percentage of female participants in non-formal education, such as in" United Nations, Economic Commission for Africa, The New International Economic Order:What Roles for Women? (Addis Ababa, U.N.E.C.A., 1977),12 Ibid.LUCY BONNERJEA163agricultural training. The sixth measure is concerned with health: the averagedistance from water points, by districts; the number of clinics per 100,000 womenof child-bearing age; and the conventional infant and child mortality rates (of whichthe latter requires a breakdown for those between the ages of one and four in orderto answer questions on malnutrition in the post-weaning period). The seventhindicator is land-ownership by women, in both traditional and land-settlementschemes. This is followed by relative access to credit and loans from all sources.The ninth indicator is rural technology, which includes the number of grinding millsand weeders per 100,000 population. Finally, measurements of the particiation ofwomen in decision-making positions in government, in parliament, on councils,and in the private sector.This list is not exhaustive; it merely suggests certain aspects of women's liveswhere disadvantage is experienced, and towards which some or even mostdevelopment is aimed. The goal is equality with men in the context of equalitybetween classes and races, and districts and regions. The first step towards equalityinvolves setting up a monitoring system which allows such information as isindicated above to be collected throughout Zimbabwe; a system that is sensitive tochanges in policy since Independence, and that can monitor the effects of thereconstruction programme planned in conjunction with the Zimcord Conference.STATISTICS AND POLICYIn former times, there was no 'women's question'. Industrialization in thedeveloped countries and colonization in the underdeveloped countries was largelyresponsible for breaking the unity of what was biological and economic, private andpublic.13 The common factor between industrialization and colonialism is in thiscase the demands made by the market economy. When societies changed fromorganization around household production, women's roles became differentiatedand unequal, and there was awareness of, if not concern for, this difference.Changing this awareness into a concern seems most important in three areasof policy interest: the family economy, the informal economy, and the distribu-tional effects of various development programmes. The three areas are interrelatedbut the focus in each is different.The family economy is concerned with the income of the family: who earns it,who controls it, who spends it. The assumption too often is that the 'head ofhousehold', the man, earns the money and supports the family. However, allstudies which have looked at women have stressed the great effort that women putinto earning some income of their owe, over which they have some control.Sometimes this is a small fraction of the family income, sometimes a large one.Increasingly the family income is the result of the work of two or more people ratherthan of one. Then the policy questions arise: what effect does a woman's incomeŠor the lack of itŠhave on the health and nutrition of the children, and on theireducation; on the family's material living standards; on the ability of its members toparticipate in the wider social, economic and political structures of their society?All these are important issues in Zimbabwe's post-Independence restructuring of11 B. Ehrenreich and D, English, One Hundred and Fifty Years of Advice to Women (London,Pluto Press. 1978),164RESEARCH REPORTsociety. For there is also a group of families supported solely by the woman'searningsŠowing to a husband's death, desertion, unemployment or ill health.Large numbers of market women in the Salisbury area are responsible for thesupport of their families;14 in a study of the workforce of an industrial estate, over80 per cent of the women residing on the estate were shown to be the sole incomeearners for themselves and any children.15 Clearly, information is needed on meansof income, and income distribution within households, as it is important for a wholerange of research informing policy-making: the study of costs of inflation; researchinto the benefits of food subsidies; into the effects of minimum-wage legislation; inthe promotion of employment opportunities and health education; and inmeasuring the incidence of poverty.Secondly, the informal economy. This has recently been 're-discovered',stimulating an active debate on whether it should be encouraged or discouraged,separated, integrated or policed. In Zimbabwe some of these informally employedpeople have been described as 'pirate taxi operators, vegetable hawkers, curiomakers, backstreet bicycle repairers, builders, furniture makers, tailors, prosti-tutes, shebeen queens, shoe-shine boys, herbalists ... all of whom are ignored inofficial definitions of economic activities'.16 Women play a larger role in theinformal economy than they do in the formal, largely because of the restrictions onentering the formal labour market. Rural women weave baskets, crochet babyclothes, cardigans, bedspreads and table-cloths, sew and knit, grow vegetables,make cloth flowers, straw mats, pottery tea-sets and home-made peanut butter, inan attempt to earn some money. Urban women sit in overcrowded 'sweatshop'conditions, sewing for retail outlets, or walk the rich suburbs selling crochet dressesto White women; they sit near bus stations selling handfuls of tomatoes and onions,or outside beerhalls selling sadza and nyama. The living standards of the popu-lation in both urban and rural areas depend as much on these informal transactionsas they do on those in the formal sector, and sometimes more; yet they are notvalued in national accounts and are disregarded in policy-making.Thirdly, the assessment of development in general, and of aid programmes inparticular, has shown how neglect in scrutinizing women's roles has been a cause ofsome of the failures. Development always brings changes in the division of labour,and Boserup was among the first to demonstrate the dangers of depriving women oftheir productive functions and to point to the widening gap between men andwomen.17 Several case-studies have demonstrated that development programmesignore or misconceive women's roles and needs.18 These studies were carried out inmany different countries, and their implications for Zimbabwe are considerable.For example, the access of women to the means of production has been shown to bean important factor in the productivity of an area. Most important of all is access to14 L, Bonnerjea, 'Market Women: One Response to Men Being an Unreliable Source of Income'(Salisbury, Univ. of Zimbabwe, Centre for Applied Social Studies Report, 1981).15 J. May, African Women in Urban Employment (Gwelo, Mambo Press, Occasional Papers,Socio-Economic Series 12, 1979), Table 6.16 R. Davies, The Informal Sector: A Solution to Unemployment? (Gwelo, Mambo Press inassociation with C.I.I.R., From Rhodesia to Zimbabwe 5, 1978), 4.17E. Boserup, Women's Role in Economic Development (London, Allen and Unwin, 1970).18J. Giele and A. Smock (eds), Women and Society: An International and ComparativePerspective (New York, Wiley, 1978).LUCY BONNERJEA165land, and many land-distribution programmes have foundered on the error of notallocating land and control to women as well as to men. Zimbabwe, too, embarkingon an ambitious resettlement plan involving both refugees and landless peasantsfrom overcrowded communal lands, needs seriously to consider where women'sroles lie.There exist numerous examples of'invisible' women both in the First Worldand in the Third World. They are invisible in data-collection and invisible inpolicy-making. This is not simply a question of race or class or of women's rights. Itis all these and more. It involves racial inequality, class inequalities and the lack ofself-determination for women. And as subsistence farmers, it is women whoprovide the food that is eaten by the poor. If development is a process which ismeant to benefit the poor, then planners should pay more attention to thesubsistence sector and to the people who work in it.