The History of Gender Inequality: Analysis of Gender Inequality as a Colonial Legacy in Africa

Abstract

The colonial legacy of African underdevelopment is widely debated but hardly written. Boserup’s theory advances the argument that African system of government prior to the colonial one had a deeply encultured notion of gender inequality. However, this work is set forth to argue that colonization was a radical disruption that brought serious imbalances that include gender inequality. Within the process of colonization, gender inequality helped as one of the tools to advance Africa’s underdevelopment. Against Boserup’s view, this paper will investigate the hypothesis that African gender inequality and female disempowerment are rooted in the colonial epoch. It is argued that the arrival of Europeans in Uganda ignited a century-long transformation of Kampala including a gender Kuznets curve. Boserup’s theory relates that as men rapidly acquired literacy and quickly found their way into white-collar employment in the economic system built by Europeans, women took longer to obtain literacy and enter decent jobs. Among other factors, this is one of those that gravely created a noticeable gap which aided gender inequality between the African men and women. Different works by African scholars will be consulted in attempt to clarify the argument that Boserup’s theory provides the incorrect view about African normative culture. Boserup argues that after Uganda’s independence in 1962 another wave of inequality took place as some women got educated and got decent jobs while some continued operating within the informal traditional economic system. In her writings, Boserup seems skewed towards the argument that African traditional system always had gender inequality embedded in it, but she does not care much to elaborate the background framework that makes her have that view. It seems somewhat indefensible to argue that brutal elements of the society like gender inequality are rooted within the traditional norms because that may create a situation whereby the underdeveloped gender, due to love of their tradition, do not make effort to better themselves. It is for that reason that this paper adopts analytic theoretical framework to critically analyse Boserup’s theoretical view that gender inequality was rooted in the indigenous African norms.