ABSTRACT
In many developing countries, one of the consequences of the world recession that started in the late 1970s and the economic restructuring programmes that followed has been an expansion of local women’s organisations to cope with the new hardships they face as a result of the imposition of various austerity measures.1 From the neighbourhood committees and communal kitchens of Peru, to the mothers’ clubs of Brazil, and the 1985 demonstrations of women in Sudan against rising prices, women have been active in responding to the new pressures they face. Similarly in urban Tanzania, women’s economic associations and networks increased in number and expanded in size in the 1980s as more women became involved in income-generating activities. Tanzania, like many African countries, was
severely affected in the late 1970s by pressures from the world economy and drops in export commodity prices, which contributed to a dramatic decline in the real wages of workers. This crisis, followed by a series of economic reforms which had a negative impact on industry, pushed large numbers of women, in particular, into informal income-generating activities.
