Descripción del proyecto
Transformaciones históricas de las profesiones urbanas femeninas africanas
Las profesiones populares dominadas por las mujeres en el África urbana —desde comadronas a modistas, peluqueras, esteticistas, cantantes de bodas y vendedoras de mercado— no se han estudiado de manera suficiente. En varias de estas profesiones no se aplican conceptos como un precio fijo por los servicios y unos horarios o lugares de trabajo estables. El equipo del proyecto WomAtWork, financiado por el Consejo Europeo de Investigación, llevará a cabo la primera investigación comparativa de la historia de estas profesiones en Ghana, Sudán, Tanzania y Etiopía entre 1919 y 1970. En el proyecto se desvelarán las peculiaridades de estos modelos laborales teniendo en cuenta sus transformaciones históricas como consecuencia de los cambios políticos y la introducción de tecnologías y materias primas nuevas. En WomAtWork se analizarán las subjetividades profesionales de las mujeres en el trabajo y se investigará la relación entre las profesionales y sus comunidades.
Objetivo
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
Ámbito científico
Palabras clave
Programa(s)
- HORIZON.1.1 - European Research Council (ERC) Main Programme
Régimen de financiación
ERC - Support for frontier research (ERC)Institución de acogida
75794 Paris
Francia