The mother and the bread winner

The book examines the interplay between technology, social organization and gender, based on an ethnographic study among the Gumuz in the Benishangul region of Northwestern Ethiopia. It draws on and criticises the analytical framework built by Boserup (1970) and further refined by Goody (1976), i. e. that the type of farming technology a society uses determines its social organizational principles (particularly marriage practices) and defines gender roles and statuses. Accordingly, traditional societies who practice hoe-farming depend on female agricultural labour, and this neccessitates a need for compensating the birdes family in the form of bride wealth payment. Furthemore, the high valuation of female labour induces a polygamous form of marriage. This crucial economic role of woman is stipulated.