Zambezia (4983), XI (i)ESSAY REVIEWA FEMINIST VIEWTHIS PAPER DESCRIBES the feminist challenge to the social sciences anddiscusses some of the issues emerging from this confrontation. It then reviewssome of the social science literature on Zimbabwean women. An attempt ismade to look at this literature in terms of the values both of feminism and ofacademic social science.FEMINISMFeminism is often seen as very different from the academic search for anunderstanding of societies. However, feminism has attempted to learn fromand contribute to the social sciences, in particular sociology and socialanthropology, attempting to describe and explain equality and inequalitybetween the sexes. Feminism begins with an awareness of inequality, and withthe knowledge that it neither began with modem capitalism nor automaticallydisappears in socialist countries.But what is feminism? At one level it is an attempt to insist upon theexperience and the very existence of women. Itchallenges the credibility of thesocial sciences at two levels. Firstly, it identifies sexism as a prevailingideology in all societies, in that it generalizes from the experience of onesection of society, men, to create an explanation of the experience of both menand women, of the organization of society as a whole, and of the powerrelations within it. Secondly, it sees sexism as justifying the distribution ofadvantages which arose from the sexual divisions: the division that it bothignores and conceals.Throughout history women have fought for improvements in their lives.However, in relation to the Western academic world, feminism emerged in the1960s as a movement organized against the oppression of women. In practicalterms it struggled initially for equal educational and employment opportunities.But there was an early recognition that the liberation of women required theelimination of the social and material basis for that oppression, which meant afundamental change in the social structure. This involved massive demands:for a shift from corporate profits to socially useful facilities; from defenceexpenditure to expenditure on health and education; it required also a radicalreorganization of work and control over work, and a democratization of healthfacilities, education and the media. Women's priorities challenged the vestedinterests of the armed forces, the big corporations, the hierarchy of the civilservice Š and the priorities of most governments.1 The movement turnedfrom demanding 'equal rights' within societies to questioning the structure andinstitutions of these societies.'S. Rowbotham, L. Segal and H. Wainwright, Beyond the Frangments: Feminism and theMaking of Socialism (London, Merlin Press, 1979),59FEMINIST SOCIAL SCIENCEOver the last two decades feminist academics have also attempted to assess thebasic theories, paradigms and methodologies of the social sciences. They havefound these to be defined largely by models representing a world dominated byWhite males, and studies to be limited by the particular interests, perspectivesand experiences of that one group. As feminist academics challenged theseinterpretations, the structure of power and knowledge was shaken and newmodels of society began to emerge.The main criticisms have centred around the consequences of the'objectivity' of the social sciences. It has been pointed out that important areasof social enquiry have beeo neglected because of the use of certainconventional field-defining models. Firstly, the focus on the public, official andvisible definitions of situations has been queried; it has been suggested thatunofficial, supportive, private and invisible spheres of social life andorganization may be important. Secondly, the assumption of a 'single society'has been attacked. It has been demonstrated that men and women may inhabitdifferent social worlds, Thirdly, it has been argued that the emphasis uponWeberian rationality in explaining human behaviour and social organizationdenies from the start the existence of the equally important element of emotionin social life and structure.2 Fourthly, it has been stressed that in several fieldsof sociology sex is not taken into account, yet it may be amoEg the mostimportant explanatory variables. Overall the critics argue that mainstreamsociology tends to explain the status quo and does not explore socialtransformations, and that methodological assumptions and techniques limitthe perspectives taken and produce partial and distorted findings.In relation to anthropology the criticisms concern the ease with whichmany anthropologists move from biology to culture, suggesting that thewoman's role in reproduction is responsible for the earliest forms of divisionsof labour, and hence for the inequalities that followed. This explanation,however, does not identify the link between motherhood and culturalinequality, and does little to answer feminist questions. Although thereappears to be much information on women, little of it comes from women. It isinformation from men which is presented as society's reality, rather than asonly part of the cultural whole. As one author has phrased it: 'What women dois perceived as household work and what they talk about is called gossip, whilemen's work is viewed as the economic base of society and their information isseen as important social communication,'3 Kinship studies are centred onmales and marriage systems may be analysed in terms of men exchangingwomen. These are examples of a deeply rooted male orientation, and allacademic discourse can be filtered for these biases inherent in it. Biases aresimply values, and for the academics who do not conceive of the socialsciences as objective, the values are inherent in the ways data are collected,analysed and interpreted. Anthropology carries with it a double danger: thevalues that anthropologists themselves bring from their own backgrounds, andthe values perceived when the society under study expresses male dominance.2A.R, Hochschild, 'A review of sex role research', American Journal of Sociology (1973),LXX VIII, 1011-29.3R. Reiter (ed.). Towards an Anthropology of Women (New York, Monthly Review Press,1975), 12,60METHODOLOGYThe methodology used in the social sciences has been identified as one of thebarriers to a full understanding of societies. A large part of the feministcritiques of the social sciences has consisted of uncovering presuppositions ofthose who deny that they have them and use them. The question then becomeswhether there is a conflict between women's values and the values of socialscience. Feminists have stressed that they are not attempting to be 'value free'.By creating a dialectic at the ideological level, feminists attempt to create theconditions in which a different kind of methodology may be approached. Somesocial scientists have agreed that freedom from values, or objectivity, is notpossible.4 However, for many, to speak to a feminist methodology is clearlypolitical, controversial and indicative of personal or political sympathies.Feminist social scientists counter this argument by demonstrating that in'value-free' social science the place of women is subordinate, ignored andinvisible. Women appear only as they are relevant to a world governed by theprinciples and interests of men.Feminist academics stress the need for a reflexive sociology, wherepersonal experience is used to formulate hypotheses. They criticize the distinc-tion between objectivity and subjectivity built into science at all levels, andreproduced in the divisions between the production of our knowledge and itssocial uses, between knowledge and experience, between experts and non-experts, between the focus of our knowledge and the structure of social andeconomic power in society. And lastly, feminists have begun to insist on inte-grating theory and practice, and to avoid the type of academic discussionwhich renders research findings inaccessible to those who do not have thesame background, training and vocabulary. This is particularly importantwhen researching relatively powerless groups; research must be presented in ameaningful way to those studied.WOMEN AND THE FAMILYOne area to which feminist academics have contributed considerably is thestudy of'the family'. Four basic assumptions have been questioned.Firstly, the notion that families were primarily biological units functioningin isolation from social forces and institutions, such as churches, governments,the availability of employment and access to land. Evidence was gathered toshow that the concept of significant kin had changed dramatically, expandingand contracting as support by kin was more or less necessary. Stone Š who isnot a feminist in the sense that he does not start from the assumption that thereis oppression of women Š has documented the ways that the bureaucraticnation state in England deliberately set out to weaken kinship as a rival systemof power and to press for values of loyalty to State and Sovereign.5 Similarevidence has been collected for underdeveloped countries following theemergence of centralist usually socialist states. The redefinition of kinshiphas interesting consequences for women, who may be either isolated andpushed into private, marginal positions, or 'liberated' into equally marginal, butnow public positions in relation to the economic organization of scoiety.The second issue queried was the notion that family relationships are the4H. Becker, Sociological Work ("London, Allen Lane, 1971).5L. Stone, Family, Sex and Marriage 1500-1300 (New York, Harper and Row, 1977).61only area where significant emotional contact takes place. It was argued thatthe preoccupation with marital love ignored other forms of relationships, inparticular same-sex relationships, which have remained neglected.Thirdly, feminist social scientists warned about the danger of assuming aunity or complete harmony of interests among members of the same family.Material was collected on the different perceptions by spouses of theirtwo standards of living within families: that of husbands, in contrast to that ofthe wives and children.Fourthly, role theory has been strongly criticized. Role theory has been animportant part of functionalist theory and was used to provide explanationsfor what was seen as the harmonious functioning of families and societies.However, functionalism has been criticized for presenting a static and conflict-free picture of society, and for avoiding issues of power and strategies forchange. There is lack of theory about what generates change and this isprecisely what feminist academics have been searching for. Their alternativeapproach has been to stress that the family should be seen as a cultural entityand an ideology which exists for a larger social purpose: recruitment intohousehold and class. The family can thus be seen as a unit providing normativerecruitment to household activities, which in turn can be seen as part of a largerprocess of production, reproduction and consumption, and which varies byclass. These types of explanations are very different from earlier biologicalones.ZIMBABWEAN FEMINISM?Zimbabwean social scientists have in the last few years also turned theirattention to the study of women and have raised various issues about women'sroles in Zimbabwe society and the economy. The resulting studies have beenvery different: different in their approaches, in their aims and in their focus.Perhaps the main difference in approach is the dichotomy betweenconventional 'pure' and 'applied' science: studies which are academicallyorientated in contrast to those which have a practical focus. Secondly, thestudies have different academic reference points: sociology and anthropologyask very different questions and use different theories to explain perceivedphenomena. Thirdly, some of the studies are feminist and some are not. In otherwords, some start from the assumption that women are oppressed, seek toillustrate the contradictions and the conflicts of their lives, and relate them tothe economic and political systems in which they live. These raise differentquestions and frequently employ different methodologies. While they are'biased' in the sense that they do not adhere to traditional values of'objective'empiricism, in other ways they go much further than empirical data-collectingsurveys. The non-feminist ones approach the study of women in the same wayas they would any other subject, using the paradigms of their respectivedisciplines.One of the consequences of this is that there is often little in commonbetween studies on women: the common focus is in some ways less importantthan the different approaches to it. Conceptually the studies are far apart;however, precisely because they are so different and because they are expectedto be similar, it is important to bring them together and explore differences andsimilarities, as well as the implications for women as the subject of academicresearch and for women as participants in the social change that these studiesare trying to document.62The first study to be briefly discussed is The Genuine Shona by MichaelGelfand.6 It is an attempt to describe the culture, philosophy and ethicalbehaviour of the Shona-speaking peoples; it is not a book concerned primarilywith women, but with traditional Shona society, and as such it is a classic of itskind and a major source-book for social scientists. The emphasis on traditionalsociety is both its strength and its weakness. It is its strength because it is apioneering attempt to describe the Shona at a time in the country's historywhen ethnographic interest was overshadowed by political events in thecountry. It is its weakness because the approach idealized the Shona and treatsthem in the 1970s as if they were unaffected by contact with capitalisticsociety. There is no recognition of the systematic transformation of thecountry; of the effects of the creation of the land shortage, of the imposition oftaxes, of the exploitation of the labour force and the serious consequences forAfrican family life. This approach is unconcerned with change; it is descriptiverather than analytical and resorts at times to sweeping generalizations. Theearlier criticisms of functionalism are particularly relevant here; a picture of aconflict-free society has been presented Š well-meaning and romantic, butunhelpful.These criticisms apply particularly to Gelfand's comments on Shonawomen. Firstly, there is no mention of any changes in the economic and socialpositions of women. Their contact with Western capitalism, whether directlythrough the marketability of their agricultural surplus, or indirectly through theeffects of labour migration, is ignored. Changes in their status, their work andtheir responsibilities remain unexplored. Secondly, the only analysis of theposition of women is in relation to, and subordinate to, 'the group'. Gelfandstates that a wife cannot dispose of her earnings without her husband's consent,and that no agreement that she might wish to make is binding. He then asks ifthis is conducive to making a 'peaceful group', and concludes that it is. Awoman's 'make-up' is thought to 'oblige her to seek his protection'. Andbecause she is completely dependent on her husband, Gelfand argues that sherespects him.Gelfand's concern with women is never with them as women. He hasaccepted the subordination of women to collective values. Implicitly therebywomen cannot have valid needs of their own, if those are in conflict with theneeds of society. His generalizations reflect this lack of acceptance of womenas a definable group with their separate rights. But where is there evidence inShona society for the complete dependency of women on their husbands?Where does dependency, when it does exist, ever lead to respect for those oneis dependent on?Joan May's African Women in Urban Employment1 is a practical policy-orientated discussion of the factors influencing the employment of women inZimbabwe. It has a theoretical section, discussing the legal position of Blackwomen, employers' attitudes and industrial legislation. It then discusses asituational study of an industrial estate in Salisbury (now Harare). It stressesthe importance of the contributions of women to household incomes and shows asensitive awareness of the conflicts for women who have ties to both urban andrural homes. It identifies the major obstacles to wage-earning employment as6M. Gelfand. The Genuine Shona: Survival Values of an African Culture (Gwelo. MamboPress. 1973); reviewed ante (1973), III, 102-3.'J. May, African Women in Urban Employment (Gwelo, Mambo Press, OccasionalPaper, Socio'-Economic 12. 1979), 83 pp.. ZS2.00*.63general unemployment, employers' resistance, the legal position of women,and inadequate education. The recommendations include the provision oftraining to 'convey employers' expectations' and the provision of an agencyserving as a women's bureau.The study is a good empirical and sociological one; the questions it raises arespecific and answered quite clearly. However, the focus of the study is narrow.Part of this narrowness is due to the constraints of industrial sponsorship ofresearch and inherent in the use of sociology to support industrialdevelopment; part of it is due to the narrowness of empiricism which assumesthat an understanding of a phenomenon is possible through the collection of'objective' facts. As a result there is considerable information on the personalroles of women in relation to their homes; there is nothing on their involvementin wider organizations Š in political parties, women's organizations and tradeunions. Surely relating Black women to the political structures of Zimbabwe isas important as a part of their lives as workers as their marital status is. Theattempt at objectivity results in a subjectivity that is limiting. The sectiondiscussing employment and fertility is particularly narrow. The focus onwomen as child-bearers raises important issues that are not discussed: if child-bearing is no longer seen as a barrier to employment, should it now be'neutralized', or should there be an awareness and positive acceptance of theimportance of reproduction to society? The latter has policy implications.Secondly, there is little causal analysis in the study; it is descriptivewithout attempting explanations. The connecting factors between the legalposition of women, employers' attitudes and industrial legislation are neverexplored. However, it is only when these are identified that the system can beunderstood and explained.Thirdly, underlying the study is an assumption that women should beincorporated into the present labour-market structure, without changes to it.The conflicts between women's needs and the labour market's requirementsshould, however, lead to a reassessment of the kind of society that one is tryingto create, rather than assume and implicitly argue for an increase in thecontribution of women to the economic production of the country's wealth Šat times mainly the wealth of the multinationals Š irrespective of the costs.The Western European model of harassed mother, full-time employee andpart-time housewife is not necessarily one that Black women should be fightingfor; nor is the White Zimbabwean model of employment combined withdomestic servants and one of the highest living standards in the world one thatmost Black women can realistically strive for.Women in this study are not seen as a class: there is little concern withstructural change in the labour market or in the country as a whole; there islittle discussion of the impact that women could have, and maybe should have,on changing patterns of urban employment. The focus is incorporation ratherthan challenge.In summary, the study is a good descriptive one, offering considerableinformation on the constraints and working conditions of urban women. But interms of academic sociology it is atheoretical Š which means that it is limited;that in terms of the values of feminism it fails, in recognizing discrimination butnot oppression, which is not a semantic distinction but a conceptual one. Theformer demands equality of opportunity, the latter, structural change.Olivia Muchena's Women in Town has the same focus as May's study:urban women; however, it has different aims and a different methodogical64approach.8 It Is an attempt to provide base-line demographic, social andeconomic data about women in towns, as well as providing a framework forassessing perceived needs and perceived deprivations. The questions asked inthis study are very general, the aim being to present a picture of who the urbanwomen in Highfield are, and to use the picture for possible developmentprogrammes aimed at improving the quality of life of the urban woman.Muchena uses the concept of social visibility to organize the material thatshe has collected. Thus she divides the study into women's familial and extra-familial roles, familial and extra-familial status, and social visibility. Theresult is interesting and useful data, which altogether presents a clear andinteresting picture, both 'objectively', of the women in terms of their personalcharacteristics, and 'subjectively', in terms of their own perceptions andjudgements. The focus is as much on the extra-familial roles as on the familialones; and the participation of the women in community or public activities isdocumented. Throughout the report the author offers vivid explanations andinterpretations of the data collected, and these add enormously to the reader'sunderstanding.However, Muchena seems to be caught between two aims: to provide anacademically good report, conforming to empirical paradigms of sociology;and, as she says (p.2), to raise the consciousness of women Š and that ofsociety at large Š as a preliminary step towards change. The former aim hasbeen achieved largely at the expense of the latter. The model that she uses doesnot allow her to achieve the second goal. The report is not concerned withcausality, nor does it deal adequately with change; it merely touches on thepower and political vitality of women as a class, motivated and organizing andmoving in new directions. Women in Town is, in effect, a good introductorystudy which Muchena should extend. A sequel would require her to go beyondthe data and the interpretations, and to relate all to a theoretical understandingof the position of women in Zimbabwean society and economy, and to abstractfrom the particular to discuss the less empirical, more consciousness-raisingissues.Siphikelelo Chizengeni's Customary? Law and Family Predicaments9uses a different approach in discussing the position of women in Zimbabwetoday. She starts with an awareness and discussion of change. She contraststhe needs of the 'old society' Š an agrarian, communal society, characterizedby an intricate kinship network Š with the needs of present-day Zimbabwe,and suggests that customary law needs to change to fit them. She begins with anexplict theoretical position and concrete hypotheses about the discriminationand hardship caused to women by customary law, and tests these usingobservations of court proceedings and interviews.She starts by discussing nine case histories, then describes the legalsystem, elaborates on the meaning and administration of marriage, the statusof women, and property rights. She discusses two legal and social problems in8O. Muchena, Women In Town: A Soclo-Economic Survey of African Women inHighfield Township (Salisbury, Univ. of Zimbabwe, Centre for Applied Social Sciences, 1980),97 pp., Z$3.00.9S. Chizengeni, Customary Law and Family Predicaments: A Report on the Applicationof Customary Law in a Changing Society and Its Effects on the Family, with SpecialReference to Women and Children in Zimbabwe (Salisbury. Univ. of Zimbabwe, Centre forInter-Racial Studies, mimeo, 1978), 78 pp., ZS5.G0.65greater depth: the custody and guardianship of children, and deceased estates.The stated assumption throughout is that national social change implies theutilization of society's most powerful tool: state power. This requires that thelaw be employed as an agent of social change, and the report is concerneddirectly with areas where this is perceived as necessary and with the ways itcan be done.While the orientation towards change is one of the strengths of thispamphlet, it is not developed adequately either conceptually or practically.There is little awareness that change involves conflict, and that in this instanceit is the rights of individuals that stand in contrast to the rights of the group, orwomen's needs that are in conflict with those of the family as a unit. The authorseems unaware that the family is based on a division of labour which inpractice, although not in theory, requires inequality. Thus, strengthening thefamily in its present role may in fact weaken women's rights to 'equality andfreedom'.Secondly, the triangle of State-family-individual remains unexplored. Notonly is there a conflict of interests between choosing to strengthen individualrights or familial stability, but the State itself may have its own demands. Themost frequent of these has been labour mobility. In Zimbabwe the effects ofWhite settler policy requiring cheap labour began as early as 1893, with adirect confrontation between settlers and the Ndebele, the military defeat ofthe latter and the disintegration of the traditional Ndebele social structure. Thecurrent government's priority may be the increased agricultural productivity ofthe rural areas. Whether capitalist or socialist, governments are involved inattempting to form certain kinds of societies, and are concerned with larger andmore complex issues than that of strengthening the liberal and democraticrights of individuals. Thus the political use of law and of social policy remainsignored.Joan May's Zimbabwean Women in Customary and Colonial Law10 issimilar to Chizengeni's Customary Law and Family Predicaments in bothaims and structure. It, too, aims to show the effects on women of theapplication of customary law to most areas of their lives. May begins bydiscussing various theoretical perspectives on women in traditional societies ingeneral, and in Shona societies in particular. She stresses that women are andalways have been social actors who work in a structured way to achievedesired ends and goals. She then describes some of the applications ofcustomary law in relation to bridewealth, marriage, inheritance, divorce andthe custody of children. She also draws attention to the fact that the LancasterHouse Constitution offers no safeguard against gender-based discrimination.Her book is important in drawing attention to many of the problems arisingfrom customary law in the 1980s. However, many of the shortcomingsdiscussed in relation to Chizengeni's report are present here, too. Maypresents a strong case for changing the present system, but she does notexamine the possible directions that these changes may follow. Inherent in thisbook is the assumption that change should lead to increased individual rightsfor women. This is presented as a neutral premise, and is neither discussed norquestioned. However, a focus on individual rights, as opposed to a focus on thekind of society one is trying to create, is not a neutral, value-free orientation. Itis the Western, capitalist model of development, and its relevance to10J. May, Zimbabwean Women in Customary and Colonial Law (Gweru, Mambo Presswith Holmes McDougali (Edinburgh), Zambeziana 14, 1983), 128 pp., ZS8.80.66underdeveloped countries can and should be questioned. Other models ofchange do exist; socialist models tend to emphasize obligations rather thanf iglits. The result Is a different kind of theory, a different law and a different-;ociety. It is in this context that the last section on socio-legal engineering is,hort and disappointing. A good comparative description of what othercountries ha¥e done would have been invaluable; this one, however, is-uperficial. We are left with May's overall message, that the 'farthing legacy'm Zimbabwe is oppressive, discriminatory, and causes much suffering; but we.Ł\re left searching for ways of changing it.The above studies have been shown to be very different, yet they do havevommon features: all are concerned with women, yet none of them is feminist;. til are rooted in empirical data-collecting social science, and none of them goesbeyond it to contribute to social theory; none of them questions themndamental basis of the structure of society.In contrast, other studies are feminist; they do begin with the oppression ofwomen and seek to illustrate its nature and its causes. Four approaches will bediscussed: a report by the Zimbabwe Women's Bureau, one by the Ministry ofCommunity Development and Women's Affairs, A. K. H. Weinrich's recentpublications, and an article by Angela Cheater.The report of the Zimbabwe Women's Bereau, We Carry a Heavy Load,is feminist in both theory and methodology.'l Its starting point is the attempt toavoid 'new forms of subordination and oppression of rural women', and it isconcerned with the marginalization of women. The methodological approachinvolves the use of quotations and of photographs to present the views of thewomen themselves. This Is a deliberate move away from the presentation ofnumerous tables and figures and 'objective facts'. The methodology isqualitative and speaks vividly and strongly about the problems of rural womenand of ways of overcoming them. The strength of this report is that it combines atheoretical framework with an approach allowing the subjects of research tospeak for themselves. The framework Interprets, explains and presentsconceptual interrelations; it provides the tools with which to understand thematerial. It insists that women are not to be seen primarily as wives andmothers, but as workers; that their active role as unacknowledged producers Isimportant, as well as their central role in maintaining the families of the presentlabour force and caring for those of the future.The report is divided into two sections: one on the social status of women,and one on their economic status. An interesting part of the first section is thedescription of how women perceive themselves; it is here that the authors'framework is tested, and it is here that both the oppression and the joy of beinga woman come across most clearly. The economic section identifies access toland as the most important factor In the lives of rural women, thus raisingimportant issues for present-day Zimbabwe, and stressing that domestic workis a necessary part of the economy and that conditions surrounding it have notchanged, in that it demands responsibility and iiard work, and largely goesunrecognized. Both observations suggest that major structural change insociety Is- necessary: a redistribution of rewards and of duties.There are weak points. The material Is not presented as well as it could be;some of it reads like a list of issues with no sense of priorities. The causalanalysis suggests that previous governments, colonialism, and patriarchal"Zimbabwe Women's Bureau, We Carry a Heavy Load: Rural Women In ZimbabweSpeak Out (Salisbury, The Bureau, mimeo, 1981), 51 pp., ZS2.0Q.67attitudes generally all share responsibility for the present situation; there is,however, little theoretical discussion on the motivation for and constraints on aserious redistribution of power. The conflict between the needs of women andother aims, such as centralized control by future or present governments, is notdiscussed. However, the report is a comprehensive guide to the very diverseneeds of rural women, and although it does not offer one development strategy,it does suggest many directions for change. It is a much needed contribution tothe development debate.The Ministry of Community Development and Women's Affairs' Reporton the Conditions of Women in Zimbabwe12 sets out to 'provide baselinedata on which the Ministry could find a basis for policy formulation'. Thisbecame a large survey: 5,208 people participated, and 1,678 of these wereinterviewed individually. A great deal of information was collected and ispresented both in the text and in the tables. The focus is on identifyingconstraints on women and possible solutions to these. In terms of agriculturalproduction the constraints identified include: inadequate tools, shortage ofcattle, time-consuming tasks and discriminatory extension services. Forconditions in the urban areas the report stresses the lack of education,discriminatory hiring practices, and the lack of markets, credit facilities andbusiness skills necessary for successful informal-sector work. Health facilitiesare identified as another high priority, and the report also has sections on thelegal status of women, on women and family needs, on their participation inpublic affairs and on women's organizations.The descriptive part of the report is wide-ranging and sensitive. Therecommendations, however, are quite narrow. Firstly, there is a great deal ofemphasis on education, secondly, on the co-ordinating role of the Ministry,and thirdly, on further research for all difficult areas like 'family unification'.The report does not face the problems that it has identified. The issue of landrights is mentioned, only to be buried again; the problems of informal-sectorwork are to be met by increased credit facilities and training in business skillsrather than by ttte restructuring of the formal economy; the legal status ofwomen is to be changed by education in human rights.Solutions offered in the report are individualistic and largely apolitical.They seem to reflect the projects which the Ministry feels it can be involved inwithin the present political and economic situation, rather than those activitiesthat are needed to change, fundamentally, the condition of women in Zimbabwe.Nevertheless, the report is important in that it is the first post-independence,large-scale government report recognizing the needs of rural women indevelopment terms.A.K.H. Weierich's Women and Racial Discrimination and AfricanMarriage in Zimbabwe stem from the same research material.13 They are theresults of a survey of the major African ethnic groups and the major settlementtypes, using both questionnaires and participant observation.The former starts by outlining the changes in the economy of Zimbabweover the past century, arguing that the transformation by both military andeconomic forces resulted in reducing many of the peasant producers to semi-i2Ministry of Community Development and Women's Affairs, Report on the Situation ofWomen in Zimbabwe (Salisbury, The Ministry, mimeo, 1982), 158 pp., no price indicated.'Ł'A.K.H. Weinrich, Women and Racial Discrimination in Rhodesia (Paris, UNESCO,1979), 143 pp., FF25.OO); African Marriage in Zimbabwe and the Impact of Christianity(Gweru, Mambo Press, with Holmes McDougall (Edinburgh), Zambeziana 13, 1982), xx, 212pp., ZS9.3O.proletarians who were forced to sell their labour to survive. This transformationinvolved changes in the social structure, including the creation of new classdivisions as African nationalism developed and was countered by the creationof a petty bourgeoisie. It is argued that the major effect on women was theburden of poverty. This in turn is related to the changing function of the kinshipsystem Š instead of being part of the infrastructure regulating production itbecame a welfare institution. The penetration of capitalism had also caused thedestruction of traditional family life and given, rise to new patterns of interaction.The author assumes the need to decrease the disproportionate burden onwomen, and argues for the commuealization. of the means of production, withwomen and men sharing control equally; in this way women can be liberatedfrom their inferior position in the home and in society. She stresses that it is anillusion to think that primitive collective traditions facilitate the setting up ofmodern socialist stractures, and insists that traditional family stractures have tobe broken to allow the creation of new communities based on socialist production.This book is concerned with change and not with discrimination. The titleis misleading, for although racial discrimination is certainly part of theoppression of women analysed here, more is involved. Change is central to thebook, and there is a sense of optimism about its direction. Although the datawere collected between 1972 and 1975, the book was written later and offerspolicy suggestions for a Zimbabwe on the threshold of independence andsocialism. There are references to the enormous task facing the newgovernment and a discussion of various policies, such as the nationalizationof the means of production and abolition of private property, includingbrideweath, in an attempt to remove all traces of the capitalist system. Womenare thus seen as central to the economy and to the new society, and theirprogress depends on the successful restructuring of society. There are fewauthors who have brought together so closely the problems of development forwomen and for society, or for feminism and socialism.The global perspective does, however, rest at times on an idealism and anover-simplification which is sometimes unrealistic. The problems of massunemployment following the rejection of the capitalist mode of production aredismissed lightly, and the problems involved in the people's 'freedom todevelop their own resourcefulness in generating commodity production'remains unexplored. It is, however, precisely the constraints on these forms ofdevelopment that need to be identified, and Zimbabwe's deep integration intothe international capitalist economy needs to be taken into account. Theauthor's somewhat Utopian vision is based on a Marxist analysis of change,which does not consider that other forms of development are possible; and itsassumptions are a little didactic. However, it is based on a social theory thatoffers a theoretical basis for the review of Zimbabwe's past and future; insociological terms this is much stronger than the limits imposed by empiricism.Its concern with the oppression of women as rooted in the structure of societymake it a feminist report.Weinrich's more recent book, African Marriage In Zimbabwe, movesaway from the battle between structural-functionalist social anthropology andMarxism to explore a different area Š the interrelations between sociologyand theology. Methodologically the same comments apply: there is a looseconnection between the survey and the argument; in fact, the argument islimited to a series of statements about the role of Christianity in capitalism andsocialism, and it is not developed. The book is also not feminist: its concern lies69with the Church and with the Christian faith, which are examined in relation tothe realities of African marriage in Zimbabwe; the concern with women isalmost incidental.However, it is an interesting book. Wektrich's theoretical framework usesSegundo's basic distinction between ideology and faith to explore the role ofChristianity, It suggests that Christianity is not an immutable system, but isconstantly adapting its abstract values into new cultural forms. While faithmust remain the same, ideologies surrounding it may differ, and may also passthrough hermeneutic circles that allow people to change their customaryconceptions of life, death, knowledge, society, and so on. Weinrich developsthis in relation to Zimbabwe, suggesting for example that the independentchurches have proceeded through the hermeneutic circle and have movedaway from Western ideology. In contrast, the Christian churches still uselegislation passed in Europe to meet European problems and hence remainirrelevant to Africans. She argues that the social function of Christianity was tointegrate people into the capitalist sector of the economy, and that its role in thefuture Zimbabwe could be to integrate people into a socialist society Š withchanges in ideology but not in the essence of the faith.The relevance of the book to this essay review lies in the fact that it isasking questions about the Church similar to the questions that this review isasking about the social sciences Š is it useful for a changing society, can itmove away from supporting the status quo, can it move in new directions?Weinrich thinks that it can, and that ideologies can change while the faithremains intact: feminists believe that paradigms in social science can bechanged, while the tools of the discipline remain relevant.The last piece of work to be reviewed is Angela Cheater's 'Women andtheir participation in commercial agricultural production'.14 This article isacademically in a different league from the previous studies. It starts fromtheory, from hypotheses, and develops an argument using data to illustrate theunfolding of ideas. The main hypothesis is that the relations of production incommercial agriculture may generate structural forms that are novel,contradictory to traditional, accepted roles, and geared to an increasingappropriation of surplus from women as wives and dependent kin. Or, to put itsimply, new forms of oppression may be emerging. She presents evidence forthis, and the new forms of exploitation seem to exceed the extent ofexploitation in peasant production systems.Cheater, however, is concerned to provide an explanation as well asdescription. She suggests that the reason that a basically capitalist mode ofproduction stabilized around relations of production characteristic of apeasant system is that it has involved partial proletarianization, the creation of acategory of workers selling their labour. This system relies on increasing theappropriation of surplus through the labour of dependent wives. Her argumentbroadens out to show that cultural values are used to mystify the appropriationof surplus, that kinship systems feed into class relations, that bridewealthremains a means of controlling female labour. She concludes that there is aninherent conflict of interests, economically, between men and women, from thefamily level to levels of society in general, and that this is mystified.Her work goes conceptually beyond that of the others by seeing women asa class and stating explicitly the conflict of interests within families and within14A,P. Cheater, 'Women and their participation in commercial agricultural production: Thecase of medium scale freehold in Zimbabwe', Development and Change (1981), XII, 349-77,70communities. It has also moved conceptually beyond feminism Š it isconcerned with class formation and class oppression, and women are simply aclass in this conflict It raises important questions for feminists: whether one canbe a feminist without adhering to socialist analyses of society, and whether,when one does emphasize structural inequality and class oppression, onenecessarily loses sight of women as women. In some ways we have come fullcircle from Gelfand's book, where the group was more important than theindividual. For Cheater, too, the overall nature of society is more importantthan the rights of individuals within it. But while the former supported thestatus quo the latter questions existing society, existing inequality and existingoppression.What, if anything, can one conclude from the selection of material reviev/edhere? Perhaps one should again stress the diversity of theory and methodology,and argue that the common focus on women, while important, is insufficient todevelop either a 'sociology of women' or a feminist society. Nevertheless, eachof the authors has made a contribution to knowledge about Zimbabweanwomen, and this knowledge is important. It is a tool with which to challengeboth the social sciences and our society.Policy Studies Institute, LondonLUCY BONNERJEA71