Women’s Labor Relations in Sub-Saharan Africa and the Global South Compared, 1800–2000

Abstract

This article places the research findings on women’s work and gendered labor relations presented and discussed in this special issue in a broader and comparative perspective. We start by contextualizing and explaining main shifts and continuities in labor relations in sub-Saharan Africa in the last two hundred years. We then compare differences between women’s and men’s labor experiences and labor relations. To conclude we offer a comparative analysis of the main shifts and continuities in women’s labor relations across several countries in the Global South. For this we draw on the case-studies analyzed in this special issue as well as on studies carried out for other African, South Asian and Latin American countries. The aim of this exercise is to show the potential of the “Global Collaboratory on the History of Labour Relations” methodology for both intra-African as well as trans-continental comparisons, in particular between countries and regions in the Global South.