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Research ArticleArticle

Gender, Land, and Trade

Women’s Agency and Colonial Change in Portuguese Guinea (West Africa)

PHILIP J. HAVIK
African Economic History, January 2015, 43 (1) 162-195; DOI: https://doi.org/10.3368/aeh.43.1.162
PHILIP J. HAVIK
*Philip J. Havik is senior researcher at the Instituto de Higiene e Medicina Tropical (IHMT) of the Universidade Nova in Lisbon where he also teaches the History of Medicine. His multidisciplinary research centers upon the study of public health and tropical medicine, state formation & governance, cultural brokerage and female entrepreneurship in West Africa, with special emphasis on Guinea Bissau. His publications include “Female Entrepreneurship in West Africa: Trends and trajectories,” , 10:1 (2015), 164–177; and (Munster: Lit Verlag, 2004)
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Abstract

The present paper discusses the issue of gender and land tenure in former Portuguese Guinea, currently Guinea Bissau, during a crucial period of colonial transition from the nineteenth to the early twentieth centuries. It provides novel insights into the local dynamics of women’s agency with regard to their control over land based upon kinship and marriage and its use as a strategic resource in social, cultural and economic perspective. After summarizing the recent debate on women’s position in (West) African and (post-) colonial societies with regard to their access, rights, and control over land, the changes that occurred in a (proto-) colonial context from the late 1800s to early 1900s are identified. The question of resource control is then illustrated with certain cases of women simultaneously acting as planters and entrepreneurs during and after the peanut boom and by means of quantitative data on land concessions and legal titles. The case of Portuguese Guinea illustrates the need for a reassessment of women’s strategies to gain legal tenure, with or without male collaboration, despite legal reforms which excluded certain social groups from access to land titles during a period of sustained economic and political turmoil.

  • © 2015 by the Board of Regents of the University of Wisconsin System
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African Economic History: 43 (1)
African Economic History
Vol. 43, Issue 1
1 Jan 2015
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Gender, Land, and Trade
PHILIP J. HAVIK
African Economic History Jan 2015, 43 (1) 162-195; DOI: 10.3368/aeh.43.1.162

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Gender, Land, and Trade
PHILIP J. HAVIK
African Economic History Jan 2015, 43 (1) 162-195; DOI: 10.3368/aeh.43.1.162
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  • Article
    • Abstract
    • Land Tenure and Changing Gender Relations in Africa: An Overview
    • Women, Land and Entrepreneurship in West Africa
    • Portuguese Guinea: Shifting Patterns of Resource Control
    • Women As Planters and Traders in Portuguese Guinea
    • Conclusions
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