ABSTRACT
Ester Boserup's Woman's Role in Economic Development uses precolonial Zaire to exemplify female farming systems as an economic mode of production in Africa. This division of labor in which women do most tasks associated with cultivation was predominant in the entire Congo region. Trade, especially in agricultural products, was a largely female endeavor. But unlike trade in West Africa, trade in the Congo was never a major economic enterprise for men or women. The deterioration of the status of women in the colonial period was greatly abetted by the educational system. Women as a group were much less able to manipulate the outward symbols of "civilization," language, manners, and access to the money economy. The notion that women were economically peripheral in colonial times is still current in Zaire. This notion with its implicitly negative view of female farming continues to be accepted under authenticite.
