ABSTRACT
Income generating opportunities for women in Zaire have fluctuated in accordance with political and economic changes, from the colonial period through to the seventies and eighties. In the economic system that has developed with the penetration of capitalism in Zaire, petty producers of food in rural areas and of goods and services in the "informal sector" of towns have reduced the costs of the labor force for capitalist enterprise. Belgian colonial rule and the penetration of capitalism changed the economic as well as the political base of the different ethnic groups in the Belgian Congo. By the end of the colonial period, by making the most of the very restricted opportunities open to them, some women were beginning to find means to achieve some autonomy. The greater autonomy and independence of women in the towns than in rural society, and the wealth achieved by some of them, is affecting the organization of family and kinship.
