Wishful Thinking: Theory and Practice of Western Donor Efforts to Raise Women's Status in Rural Africa*

This chapter considers shortcomings of western donor agency intervention and recommends alternative measures for easing rural women's workload. Western donor agencies' response to recent research findings has been conditioned by uncertainty. The existing literature on rural women in Sub-Saharan Africa is primarily in the form of field studies by social scientists, especially anthropologists. Western donor agencies were establishing much more serious and better funded women's programmes. The chapter critiques some of the assumptions and aims of western donor agency intervention in relation to African rural women. While Roger's anti-domestication argument has successfully exposed the fallacy of the 'homemaking' image for African women, western perceptions of women's working life in rural areas remain slanted. Home economics, formerly termed 'domestic science', is a western approach to women's household management. Teenage girls, who in many African countries are school-leavers with up to seven years primary education, tend to have less time commitments.