Review Of The Book Women And Development In Africa By Michael Kevane
Women and development in Africa, first published in 2004, mirrors the evolution of interdisciplinary studies regarding women, gender, and development in Africa. The author applies the “economic method” to the analysis of gender and development in Africa. It emphasizes the interactions between choices made by individuals and the social environment that structures these choices. In the book, gender plays a role in limiting women's choices in some African countries. Men here are neither seen nor portrayed as a single enemy. Instead, when men and women seem to be obsessed with a social structure that knows better days, it can recover from a healthier operating standard for both sexes. The author addresses critical arguments on this topic easily and vividly, combining model descriptions and empirical evidence. For Kevane, most theories about female dependence do not follow internal consistency tests and cannot be verified. They are not based on specific assumptions and do not elicit logical inference. Discrimination is rejecting as an explanation of the importance of gender at individual levels.
It comprises 11 chapters; appendixes contain introductions to necessary economic tools such as supply and demand analysis, game theory, and regression analysis. The appendix includes an introduction to essential economic tools such as demand and supply analysis, game theory and regression analysis. The first three chapters prove kevane's theory. Chapter 1 gives an introduction to the subject and structure of a book. Chapter 2 provides an overview of poverty and conflict in Africa and provides reasons for continued underdevelopment in Africa. Chapter 3 contains the conceptual framework that runs through the rest of the book, discussing both the origin of gender structures and basic economic concepts. Kevane establishes that gender is the sum of social habits and that development only increases opportunity and choice. The author makes it clear that social scientists often estimate causal relationships that the analysis of interdisciplinary research cannot support.
Chapters 4 through 9 show how to apply these basic economic concepts to specific problems. Chapters 4 to 6 focus on three examples of economic structure. Land ownership, labor control, and marriage markets are three primary examples. Chapter 4 focuses on land ownership for African women. A thorough review of anthropological literature effectively illustrates the diversity of the landholding system in Africa, although it is better to characterize these systems than to account for changes in the system over time. The story of land ownership changes seems to focus too much on changes that have weakened women's land rights. Without reliable longitudinal or retrospective evidence in some countries, it is difficult to decide whether individualizing land rights always punish women. Kevane deals with some of the social structures in which gender works. Chapter 4 deals with the location of a husband or wife and changes in the right of inheritance, such as nobility, Islam, and marriage ownership. Chapter 5 on the control of workforce in African villages presents assumptions derived from anthropological literature, enabling better experimentation experience using regression techniques.
Broad discussions of Burkina Faso's wealth and the allocation of time for Mosi show how differences in social standards and family bargaining can constrain men's and women's choices over time allocation. Kevane suggested that although some societies suggest that some men do not protect women's land access when helping them avoid their obligations to sisters and wives, the 2004 debate limited colonial traditions to the nation and state. A wide range of studies in Chapter 5, "Mosie and Booth" by Becky Faso shows that some men share social and economic wars with their sisters and wives. Chapter 6 applies the supply and demand analysis tools to the wedding market. As shown in Chapter 5, the debate is fascinating, anthropological evidence and provides an analytical model for the wedding market. It also focuses on how the bride and groom balance the marriage market by investigating the experience of the African marriage market. Anthropologists and historians can appreciate Kevane's supply and demand analysis of several customs in Chapter 6.
In the next chapter, Kevane explains causal relationships and some social science methods. Chapter 7 compares and contrasts the first-stage negotiation model of households in the context of Africa. It reviews empirical evidence for testing these household models based on expenditure and production data. The increase in empirical evidence (as well as Africa) rejects a single model that does not share personal preferences and resources within the household. Chapters 8 and 9 provide insight into how gender discrimination can be transmitted between generations for both male and female proper treatment and education. In South Asia, it is more visible to prefer a son, but in Africa. One traditional assumption is that the basic African family unit is mother and child. In Chapter 9, education is an investment for family owners. However, African families do not intentionally ignore the health and nutrition of their sons and daughters. While boys are more likely to be treated and redistributed from adult material, their health and nutrition performance generally does not show much difference between girls and boys. However, investment in education is likely to be more biased towards women. Kevane discusses three possible explanations and examines empirical evidence. He argues that investing in school education depends on the sex of children, the sex of their parents, the social and cultural norms, or the work of their peers. He uses three economic models to illustrate this, proving that most African women have more sophisticated investment options than they can face.
Chapter 10 and Chapter 11 have more questions than the previous chapters. Chapter 10 discusses development projects for women but focuses on microfinance. Even a single qualitative assessment of the credit and savings program in Buckynapaso suggests a discussion of some quantitative impact assessments conducted in Africa. Since there is still little empirical evidence in Africa, it is difficult to conclude conclusively how small loans affect women. Chapter 11 discusses gender and politics more tentatively, as explained by several key issues such as the HIV/AIDS in Botswana, the Women's Anti-discrimination Convention and women's political role. The situation is grim for women. Men are not interested in changing their gender preferences for economic activities. Although there are references to women's care at home in the discussion of labor control, this work tends to be underestimated, especially considering how important it is to the daily and daily lives of women at home. Women take care of children, patients, and the elderly; they cook, clean, and do voluntary social activities. Women have a significant but unrecognized essential workforce that consumes a lot of time and energy. Most studies of time allocation showed that women worked much more hours than men, and kevane ignored it. For example, a study in Kenya showed that women work 56 hours a week, and they spend 10 hours more on collecting trees and water than men. Therefore, the book discusses GDP measures of national income without mentioning other ways to explain women's work and welfare. Surprising and exciting here is that even feminists, an apparent reference to sexual discrimination and does not become interested.
While complaining about subtle nuances, negotiated meanings, and the complexity of dominant power, we may have lost confidence in expressing anger at the so apparent shortcomings and patterns of discrimination that girls and women face. It does not mean that Kevane's analysis is merely a male-centric model. If possible, he adopted a social structure approach that emphasizes how social institutions, social norms, and power work and how to shape individual choices in a patterned way. This approach is very familiar with gender research in Africa but poses an exciting challenge to neoclassical economics. Most obvious is the rational selection theory and model challenge of maximizing utility, which is too weak to understand the differences in power, form and social norms and the impact of qualifications on people's behavior.
Kevane is good at criticizing Becker's domestic economy and classic model of the family for a starting point of the criticism feminist. This criticism helps explain a clear empirical trend such as raising a mother's income would improve children's welfare more than their fathers'. Also this criticism helps explain the fact that in many cases women's incomes are not maximized by family choice in economic activities for men and women. These criticisms help explain clear empirical trends such as improving mother's income, and in many cases, women's incomes are not maximized by family choice. He adopts a negotiation model in which women's bargaining power is, and control over their income, land and other assets makes a difference. Therefore, studies have shown that the more negotiating women have about land, labor, and income, the more different their preference will be from their preference for men, and their responses to price incentives and policy interventions will also vary. When women earn higher incomes, the result is a substantial and significant decrease in child malnutrition.
The second major challenge posed by Kevane's tactics was even more interesting to me. In the discussion of a sociological approach to the theory of gender differences, "Gender and Development" raises an interesting question of human altruism. Kevane's theory of social biology has evolved a lot from the determinism of political insecurity, and he has begun to wrestle with evidence that shows humans, in general, behave altruistically. The importance of this is the fundamental challenge it poses in the neoclassical assumption of human nature, particularly in rational selection theory. When profitability is uncertain, it helps parents understand why they invest in their children's future, and why husbands do, and wives negotiate and share in some cases other than to give up personal economic benefits and personal power. Kevane points out that much more research is needed to carry furniture models that exceed the limits of utilities' maximums and negotiation models. While Kevene's microeconomic focus on personal choices also provides many useful insights, it does not touch women and many important issues and perspectives on development. Focusing on parents investing in their children's education does not take into account the critical role of universal primary education in encouraging female admissions in Africa. Nevertheless, the book will be comprehensive in handling the field and serve as an introduction to great subjects to college students. What I am lacking is the debate over why sex analysis was considered less in neoclassical economics. At first, Kevane said, "An insight into women's shortcomings is one of the most interesting and difficult features of economic life. " A thorough investigation of the paradigms and practices that created this terrible blind spot is undoubtedly central to the project. Women and Development in Africa is a unique and rare book. The advantage of this book is its ability to interpret anthropological literature using economic methods and propose hypotheses that can be tested empirically.
A book is a welcome addition to the literature on women and development. There are many popular but unproven assumptions about women in Africa. Kevane did his best to purify existing empirical evidence but did not mention the weaknesses and reliability of this estimate, which is not based on national investigations. The fact that there is little reliable evidence of the size of the total population, let alone the adult population of many countries involved. There's a lot more to do as Kevane concludes. This book is an excellent guide to unexplored land. Unfortunately, the author seems to think that viewing data quality and historical evidence is less important than playing with algebra in maximization problems or manipulating unreliable data in suppression.
