Reply #248: The reason women do most of the work ...

[HamdenRice]

is because they own their own farms. They are working for themselves and typically control their land, the crop -- and after harvest, the granaries. This is traditional, and does not apply only to educated women.

Women do most of the work in southeast Asia as well, but the men then own the crop and control the granaries.

The widespread ownership by women of their own fields and crops in West Africa gave rise to the phenomenon of women being the primary marketers of crops -- the famous "market women" of Ghana and Nigeria who constitute powerful economic, social and political forces in those countries, who have brought down governments simply by refusing to feed the cities.

In urban areas of those countries, market women have catipulted their control over the trade in crops to control over the trade in appliances, electronics, etc. In other words, "Crazy Eddies" in Nigeria is more likely to be "Crazy Edwina's." As urban areas have grown, they also predominate as landlords.

Obviously, these societies remain sexist, but how you could lump them together with societies in which women are confined to the home, veiled and not allowed in public, even without being an expert, is utterly beyond me.