For a long time, women's work has not been valued very highly, mainly because of the belief in many cultures that whatever is undertaken in the house is a natural duty and/or act of love for the husband and the family. Indeed, in many parts of subsistence Africa, the heavy duties performed by women in preparing, planting, weeding, and harvesting crops are regarded as ‘domestic’ commitments and hence not serious labour. This situation can hardly be said to be characteristic of only ‘non-developed’ societies, in which patriarchal attitudes are still dominant, since according to a 1985 study, although women make up more than half of the world's population and do two-thirds of the world's working hours, they receive only one-hundredth of the worl'ds property. This state of affairs, however, is now changing, because as women everywhere unite in order to achieve legal, social, and economic equality, the value attached to their work naturally increases.
