Interpretación de datos

In 1952, just two years before the redevelopment of the Tole Estate, Phyllis Kaberry published her classic study Women of the Grassfields.

Though focused on the Bamenda Grassfields, her findings seem largely applicable to the present South West Province as well. Throughout her book she emphasises the contradictory position of women in society.

On the one hand, there is the general recognition that women play an indispensable role in society as child bearers and food producers. Women are themselves fully aware that they are in some ways the ‘backbone of the country’. They take great pride in their skill and competence as farmers as well as their responsibility for feeding and caring for the household. Men are often the object of derision, being referred to as incompetent, even worthless, unable to care for themselves and too irresponsible to take care of their children. One of the women told Kaberry:

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Gender and Plantation Labour in Africa

A woman is an important thing. A man is a worthless thing indeed, because a woman gives birth to the people of the country. What work can a man do? A woman bears a child, then takes a hoe, goes to the field, and is working there; she feeds the child (with the work) there. A man only buys palm oil. Men only build houses (Kaberry: 1952: 150).

The men did not hesitate to confirm women’s vital role in society. One day Kaberry questioned the chief of Nso about the rationale for the following customs: the existence of a ‘cry-die’ of four days for a woman and only three for a man; the planting of four cocoyams at the birth of a girl and only three for that of a boy. The chief answered:

A woman is a person who gives birth to a person. Women are very important people. Women are like God because they give birth to the people (Kaberry 1952: 150).

In contrast to all this, women also appeared to be subordinated to patriarchal dominance. Kaberry found that women exercised considerable freedom in the management of land and the crops which they produced, but they did not own the fields (see also Goheen 1993, 1996). They were normally accorded access to land and other means of production in order to fulfil the economic roles expected of them, but this access was conditional and could be withdrawn. Their access to land depended on their acceptance of the feminine roles and labour obligations assigned to them by the male household heads. If a wife persisted in efforts to leave her husband, she would be stripped of her land rights in the husband’s village and forced to separate from her children. Although women’s productive and reproductive roles were of vital importance to the family and to society at large, they were expected to obey male orders and to accept male decisions. When questioned on this matter by Kaberry, the councillors of the chief of Nso replied:

Yes, a woman is like God, and like God she cannot speak. She must be silently. It is good that she should only accept (Kaberry 1952: 152).

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Chapter 3: Female workers

Of course, this does not mean that women were without power individually and collectively to resist male abuse of power. For example, women’s control over the household food supply demonstrated men’s day-to-day dependence on the women’s work and good nature.

These contradictions in women’s position may not be as puzzling as they appear at first sight. Control over women’s vital productive and reproductive labour constituted the basis of men’s prestige, power and wealth in society. Goheen (1993) writes in this regard:

Women grew the food crops and were expected to provide the necessities of daily life from their farms. Women’s productive labour freed men to participate in (lucrative) trading networks; their reproductive labour increased the size of the household and thus the status and the labour force of the male head. Any surplus value women produced over and above that required for household needs and petty barter was in the hands of men, who retained the profits. It is therefore not surprising that with the introduction of the capitalist system men tended to strongly resist female migration and employment. They tried instead to intensify the exploitation of female labour by seeking women’s assistance in local cash crop production (Bukh 1979).

Despite the existence of strict patriarchal controls over female labour, the Tole Estate management decided to recruit female pluckers in 1958 when a number of the tea bushes planted had reached maturity. There are a number of factors that appear to have influenced managerial decision:

(1)The then expatriate managers were hardly familiar with gender roles and relations in Africa. However, they were often acquainted with, and had been employed on, tea estates in India and Sri Lanka, where plucking was done mainly by women. If women in Assam were plucking tea, why could women in Cameroon not do so?

(2) Due to the high employment rate of women on tea estates in Asian countries and elsewhere, tea plucking had to a large extent come to be identified as ‘women’s work’.

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Gender and Plantation Labour in Africa

(3) On the basis of the Asian experience, there was a general belief in international management circles that female pluckers tended to be not only cheaper, but also more productive and more subservient than male pluckers (Kurian 1982; Elson & Pearson 1984; Heyzer 1986). The idea of enjoying these benefits on the Tole Estate must have been particularly attractive to management.

(4) At the time the Tole Estate was opened, there were already some women working on the CDC estates, usually on a casual or seasonal basis. These were mostly the wives of estate workers and women from the surrounding villages. (5) And finally, the management was confronted by a serious shortage of male labour on the plantations during the 1950s due to the spread of local coffee and cocoa production. This gave the impetus to a larger recruitment drive among women (Gwan 1975: 178). In 1957 it was reported that

the rapid changeover from subsistence farming to cash crop farming in the banana areas of Victoria and Kumba, and the coffee areas of Bamenda Province, has affected the labour market. Workers from these areas who previously sought wage-earning employment on plantations now work for themselves or their families .... An increasing number of women are taking up light employment of an agricultural nature. And for them the main centre at the moment is the Tole Tea Estate which employs some 400 women in light weeding, pruning and plucking.1

Not unexpectedly, managerial efforts to recruit an adequate supply of female labour proved rather disappointing for a considerable time (see below). Gradually, however, the number of women who were willing to work on the estates increased. Evidently, this was because plantation labour was one of the rare jobs opportunities in the capitalist sector for illiterate and lowly educated women eager to escape the ‘back-breaking’ work and patriarchal controls in the local communities (Obbo 1980).

The estate labour force rose steadily up to the mid-1980s, when the economic crisis gave rise to mass layoffs (see Table 3.1). In 1988 the estate employed 1,604 permanent workers, 63% of them

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Chapter 3: Female workers

being female workers. Table 3.2 shows that female workers are concentrated almost entirely in the field; only a small minority are employed in the tea factory as sorters and packers, in the child care centre, clinic or office. A clear division exists between the predominantly illiterate female pluckers and the educated female office workers and nurses. The latter tend to look down upon the pluckers and treat them rudely when they visit the office or clinic. This is a continuing source of conflict.