Project description
Historical transformations of African female urban professions
Women-dominated popular professions in urban Africa – from midwives to tailors, hairdressers, aestheticians, wedding singers and market vendors – remain understudied. In several of these professions, notions such as a fixed price for services and steady working hours or workplaces do not apply. The ERC-funded WomAtWork project will carry out the first comparative investigation into the history of these professions in Ghana, Sudan, Tanzania and Ethiopia between 1919 and 1970. The project will uncover the peculiarities of these labour patterns considering their historical transformations as a result of political changes and the introduction of new technologies and commodities. WomAtWork will examine the professional subjectivities of women at work and investigate the relationship between professionals and their communities.
Objective
WomAtWork represents the first comparative investigation into the history of female urban popular professions in three African countries – Ghana/Gold Coast, Sudan, and Tanganyika/Tanzania – over the course of fifty years (1919-1970). Not only is this topic under-studied in African history, but these professions (i.e. midwives, beauticians, wedding singers, market vendors, craftswomen) are also characterised by fascinating and unsettling aspects. For example, notions such as a set price for a service and fixed working times or workplace did not apply to many of them.
WomAtWork aims first to discover the peculiarities of these labour patterns and see their historical transformations as a result of political changes and the introduction of new technologies and commodities. Secondly, it examines professional subjectivities, the work ethos, norms and values of women at work. Finally, it questions the relationship between these professionals and their communities – including in the light of the social stigma sometimes attached to them – as well as the nexus between these labourers and protest, charting when and why they laid down their tools.
Based on an innovative methodology, this project seeks to overcome the invisibility of women in official archives by weaving together different threads of sources. It begins inside those photographic archives connected with institutions that had conscious agendas of representation and routines of intense textual production (for example, missionary stations). In some cases, these visual and textual sources lead to networks or families of women professionals, whose oral history will be solicited. Third, the project aims to analyse the vernacular press combined with oral accounts.
Through these objectives and methodologies, WomAtWork will be a participant in the mission of writing a more democratic, more inclusive history, one that firmly establish the centrality of women’s labour in African his
Fields of science
Keywords
Programme(s)
- HORIZON.1.1 - European Research Council (ERC) Main Programme
Funding Scheme
ERC - Support for frontier research (ERC)Host institution
75794 Paris
France