We Women Worked So Hard: Gender, Urbanization and Social Reproduction in Colonial Harare, Zimbabwe, 1930-1956, and: We Come Here Only to Struggle, and: Second Face: Berida's Lives, and: Gender Violence in Africa: African Women's Responses, and: Women and Politics in Uganda (review)

We Women Worked So Hard: Gender, Urbanization and Social Reproduction in Colonial Harare, Zimbabwe, 1930-1956 by Teresa Barnes. Portsmouth, NH: Heinemann, 1999, 204 pp., $59.95 hardcover, $29.95 paper.

We Come Here Only to Struggle by Berida Ndambuki and Claire Robertson. Bloomington: Indiana University Press, 2000, 240 pp., $39.95 hardcover, $15.95 paper.

Second Face: Berida's Lives by Claire C. Robertson. Bloomington: Indiana University Press, 2000, 36 minutes, $29.95 video.

Gender Violence in Africa: African Women's Responses by December Green. New York: St. Martin's Press, 1999, 320 pp., $49.95 hardcover.

Women and Politics in Uganda by Aili Mari Tripp. Madison: University of Wisconsin Press, 2000, 336 pp., $55.00 hardcover, $24.95 paper.

For many years, women's studies scholars have grappled with issues of poverty, power, and gender. They have examined the ways in which class and race interact with gender and questioned whether it is more important to honor the voice of individual women or to illuminate the larger structures of society that shape women's conditions. As a result, works in Women's Studies have ranged from accentuating worthy women to studies in which little mention is made of the individual woman. Within African Women's Studies, much discussion has centered on whether Western gender categories are valid at all for African women. Many scholars now recognize that the term gender is "slippery" and "situational," while remaining essential to any analysis of people's lives. This is especially true when scholars need to explain and understand decisions of resource allocation and distributions of power. Recently, several works have appeared in the field of African Women's Studies that recognize poverty as a political and economic condition. Teresa Barnes's We Women Worked So Hard and Berida Ndambuki's and Claire Robertsons's We Only Come Here to Struggle and the accompanying video, Second Face: Berida's Lives focus on reconstructing women's experiences through the use of oral history. December Green's Gender Violence in Africa and Ali Tripp's Women and Politics in Uganda explore the participation of women in the political system. These studies seek to expand the definition of political action and demonstrate ways in which women become politicized. Placing women's political actions within the context of their daily lives, personal histories, and the larger histories of their countries, these authors assert that understanding gender is not just essential to explaining women's lives, but also to a well-grounded interpretation of history and politics as a whole. In this sense, these texts seek not so much to add politics to women's history, but to demonstrate the ways in which gender, politics, and economics are inseparable.

All these titles remain concerned with women who cope, or have coped with issues of poverty and abuse. Green points out that "[v]iolence against women is increasingly being recognized as an obstacle to political and economic development" (1). In describing the life of Berida Ndambuki, Robertson states, "If there is a dominant motif in Berida's account of her life, it is poverty and all the tremendous exigencies it imposes. . . poverty is the worst atrocity and Berida is a poverty survivor, just as others are survivors of abuse" (xvii). Lack of political voice has coincided with lack of economic opportunity. The challenges these women face remain firmly rooted in the present political system and past conditions.

Teresa Barnes asserts of the women in colonial Zimbabwe:

Beyond struggles against specific oppressions lie efforts to build or rebuild...