Women in Africa work twice as much as men rising before dawn, and working until they are the last to go to sleep at night.
Across the 47 nations of sub-Saharan Africa, women are responsible for producing 80% of Africas food. These rural women are responsible for doing 80% of the work to provide the proper transport and storage of Africas food. They are responsible for doing 90% of the work to process Africas food. And, they are responsible for doing 60% of the work to market Africas food.
They also have the total responsibility of bearing and rearing the children, and all of the household chores.
In addition, they are responsible for providing 90% of the water, wood and fuel needs of the household which can mean carrying water jugs on their heads weighing as much as 70 pounds each and walking 3-6 hours each day to fetch water and firewood.
Despite the fact that their work goes unsupported, unnoticed, and unacknowledged, and despite the fact that they are unskilled, illiterate, undernourished and without voice in the decisions affecting their lives, African women are meeting the basic survival needs of an entire continent.
Although women in Africa produce 80% of Africas food, they own 1% of the land and receive only 7% of the agricultural extension services.
Although women in Africa store, harvest, and market the majority of Africas food they receive less than 10% of the credit given to small-scale farmers.
And, in the area of technology, as an agricultural professor in Nigeria said, "Were our ancestors to suddenly come back to life, they could pick up the same old familiar tools and go to farm on equal terms with our present-day farmers because nothing much has changed since their time."
Instead of the African woman being acknowledged, empowered or recognized for her extraordinary contribution to the African continent she has the lowest socio-economic status in all of African society.
Power relations are so securely established that she may be unaware of her subordinated position and may accept her inferior status because she cannot imagine any alternative to it.
She may believe that the inequalities exist because of her individual misfortune rather than social injustice, and that her oppression is divinely ordained or biologically determined.
I wonder what will Africa look like, when the power of 100 million African women is unleashed through simple, affordable interventions!
Sources: http://www.thp.org/awffi/awffi_brochure/bro_contents.html
http://www.un.org/ecosocdev/geninfo/afrec/vol11no2/women.htm