Intra-household gender relations and women participation in non-industrial private forestry in the Southern Highlands of Tanzania

This paper draws on a study conducted in the selected districts of Iringa and Njombe regions in the Southern Highlands of Tanzania where over the past decade Non-industrial Private Forestry (NIPF) has emerged involving village-based domestic investors. Data for the study were largely collected using focus group discussions (FGDs) of men and women tree growers. Data were analysed using content analysis focusing on the emerging themes, subthemes, and patterns. The paper shows that gender division of labour characterizes silvicultural practices in private forestry. Men play a key and dominant role in decision making on the allocation of labour and marketing of timber. We argue that, given this arrangement, as long as men continue to dominate the market sphere, mere ownership of woodlots by women is not a feasible pathway to having control over income obtained from the sales of timber from their woodlots. To address this, the paper comes up with some recommendations.

Cognitive Dissonance and Fertility Rates: A Comparative Analysis of Attitudes toward the Gender Division of Labour in East Asian and Western Industrial Societies

Based on data from the International Social Survey Program (ISSP), this study examines the extent to which cognitive dissonance regarding egalitarian attitudes toward the gender division of labour are associated with fertility rates in sixteen societies, representing Anglo American, Northern European, Western European and East Asian regimes. The findings show that although levels of support for gender equality in the realms of the family and the market are positively associated with fertility rates, an even stronger relationship to fertility emerges when weighing the differences between the levels of support for gender equality in each realm. The findings lend some corroboration to McDonald’s hypothesis, which suggests that declining fertility rates are influenced by contradictory expectations between gender equality for women in the home and market.

Migration, Modernization, and Social Change

Chapter 8 unlocks the inter-relationship between migration and modernization by analysing attitudinal changes associated with urban living such as attitudes towards gender division of labour, women’s higher education, and participation in the labour market, to generate broader understanding on women’s empowerment. It also assesses whether, how, and to what extent gender and generational relations are redefined and impacted in relation to migration. It does so by analysing gender roles, attitudes, and aspirations regarding major institutions and practices including marriage, divorce, dowry, and inheritance that govern gender relations. It presents the actual situation of the members of these families on each of these accounts to examine whether there is consistency between what they think and what they practice. In this process, it identifies the factors that are conducive towards progressive attitudes and practices, and those which impede progress, the key determinant of qualitative changes and a migrants’ prospects for a better future.

The Hassle of Housework: Digitalisation and the Commodification of Domestic Labour

This article revisits materialist second-wave feminist debates about domestic labour in the context of digitalisation. Using a differentiated typology of labour, it looks at how the tasks involved in housework have undergone dramatic changes through commodification, decommodification and recommodification without fundamentally altering the gender division of labour in social reproduction, drawing on recent research on the use of online platforms to deliver social reproductive labour via the market in a context in which reproductive labour sits at the centre of an intense time squeeze. It reflects on the implications of the commodification of domestic labour for feminist strategy. The author points to the inadequacy in this context of traditional feminist strategies—for the socialisation of domestic labour through public services, wages for housework or labour-saving through technological solutions—concluding that new strategies are needed that address the underlying social relations that perpetuate unequal divisions of labour in contemporary capitalism.

Fostering Entrepreneurship at the Spanish University

In this chapter we discuss the policies for fostering entrepreneurship at Spanish universities and how these policies may be related with the low participation of women in university spin-offs. Using our results from the first part of the EQUASPIN project1, we also discuss the effects of the gender division of labour on the creation of freelance work within the specific framework of knowledge-transfer companies. We also present some of our findings with regard to gender differences in both the creation of spin-offs and the role of the university system in the production and reproduction of gender inequalities.