Gender inequality and economics in sub-Saharan Africa
Rates of domestic violence or the relative risk of premature death for women in sub-Saharan Africa are higher than in any other region. However, the economic forces that can drive discrimination in this region are not very well understood. “The starting point of the AfricanWomen project was to try to better understand women’s position in households and society in sub-Saharan Africa not only in the present but also in a historical perspective,” explains project coordinator Catherine Guirkinger(opens in new window) from the University of Namur(opens in new window) in Belgium. “There has been little quantitative analysis on the impact of colonial policies for example on women’s relative well-being.”
Education, fertility and family law disputes
The project, which was supported by the European Research Council(opens in new window), focused on two lines of research. First, Guirkinger and her team looked at the evolution of women’s well-being in the Democratic Republic of the Congo during and following colonial times, building original databases from a large set of archives. Guirkinger looked at issues such as education and fertility, and the outcomes of family law disputes. The aim was to better understand key trends that have influenced women’s welfare. “Our work suggests that specific colonial policies – such as pro-birth policies – that have been somewhat under the radar, have had deep consequences for the lives of women,” she says. “This will certainly lead to more research in the future.”
Understanding how decisions are made in families
Guirkinger also investigated the allocation of resources within families and how new economic opportunities or policies may modify these allocations. For example, in partnership with the Belgian Development Agency(opens in new window), she studied the impacts of an intervention designed to facilitate women’s access to economic opportunities. “Some fascinating results came out of this work, especially regarding the invisible costs borne by women, and how the targeting of interventions needs to take polygamy into account,” adds Guirkinger. Guirkinger notes that the literature typically describes polygamous households as inefficient, because wives are in competition. Guirkinger’s research however is somewhat more nuanced. She found that inefficiencies in polygamous households are not so much the result of competition but rather the fact that women lack agency. “Cooperation is the most economically efficient thing to do,” she notes. “But if you have little influence and no say in a household, there is no incentive to cooperate meaningfully.”
Anti-poverty interventions and further research
Guirkinger believes that this work could have policy implications. Anti-poverty interventions typically target only one woman within a household, which means targeting one wife in the case of polygamy (which is frequent in West Africa). “Our research suggests that interventions would be more successful if both wives were to be targeted directly,” she says. “This implies a subtle but impactful modification in the design of policies.” The project also looked at including husbands in interventions targeted at married women. “The results are subtle but suggest that bringing men on board early could avoid some backlashes,” adds Guirkinger. The research on the Congo is also continuing. Guirkinger recently partnered with demographers to recover data from the country’s one and only census conducted in the 1980s. “A new research line, inspired by the work in Benin, is about the role of evangelical churches in certain parts of Africa, which are attracting women in particular,” she remarks. “Our data suggests that women may be converting to help their economic emancipation, to escape from the traditional social order.”
