A Model of Gendered Production in Colonial Africa and Implications for Development in the Post-Colonial Period

Abstract

This paper proposes a model to analyze the implications of colonial policies for gender inequality in Sub-Saharan Africa. The model emphasizes segmentation of production under complete specialization. It shows that the colonial production model, underpinned by occupational job segregation in the agricultural sector and gender bias in the non-agricultural sector, exacerbated gender inequality by limiting employment opportunities for women outside the realm of home production and subsistence agriculture. Over the past few decades, the resilience of parameters underlying these models of colonial production has heightened the risks of macroeconomic volatility in the region, especially where the structural transformation from low to high-value-added activities has remained elusive.