Uanauke, Uanaume, na Ujamaa
Angela Y. Davis: Wifehood, husbandhood, and familyhood
[Scroll down for the English]
KISWAHILI
"Kwa kweli, mahali pa wanawake pamekuwa nyumbani sikuzote, lakini wakati wa enzi ya kabla ya viwanda, uchumi wenyewe ulikuwa umejikita katika nyumba na mashamba yanayozunguka.
“Wakati wanaume walikuwa wamelima shamba (mara nyingi wakisaidiwa na wake zao), wanawake walikuwa watengenezaji, wakitengeneza vitambaa, nguo, mishumaa, sabuni na takriban mahitaji mengine yote ya familia…. Walikuwa wafanyakazi wenye tija ndani ya uchumi wa nyumbani na kazi yao ilikuwa imeheshimiwa sawa na wanaume wao.
"Wakati utengenezaji ulipotoka nyumbani na kuingia kiwandani, itikadi ya uanamke ilianza kuwainua mke na mama kama maadili [haya mapya yaliyouzwa].
“Kama wafanyakazi, wanawake angalau walifurahia usawa wa kiuchumi, lakini kama [“wake,”] walikusudiwa kuwa viungo vya wanaume wao, watumishi kwa waume wao [au kazi-masiha ya mume].
“Kama akina mama, wangefafanuliwa kama gari zisizo amilifu za kujaza maisha ya binadamu. Hali ya mama wenye nyumba wazungu [katika Marekani] ilijaa utata. Lazima kuwe na upinzani."
- Angela Y. Davis, mwanaharakati wa kisiasa, profesa, na mwandishi
ENGLISH TRANSLATION
“Actually, woman’s place had always been in the home, but during the pre-industrial era, the economy itself had been centered in the home and its surrounding farmland.
“While men had tilled the land (often aided by their wives), the women had been manufacturers, producing fabric, clothing, candles, soap and practically all the other family necessities…. They had been productive workers within the home economy and their labor had been no less respected than their men’s.
“When manufacturing moved out of the home and into the factory, the ideology of womanhood began to raise the wife and mother as ideals [the newly marketed ones].
“As workers, women had at least enjoyed economic equality, but as [“wives,”] they were destined to become appendages to their men, servants to their husbands [or their husband’s careers]. As mothers, they would be defined as passive vehicles for the replenishment of human life. The situation of the white housewife [in the U.S.] was full of contradictions. There was bound to be resistance.”
- Angela Y. Davis is a political activist, professor, and author
KISWAHILI: Asante na tutaonana tena,
Mmerikani
ENGLISH TRANSLATION: Thank you and may we see each other again,
Mmerikani
Chanzo (source): Davis, Angela Y. Women, Race & Class. New York: Vintage Books, 1981, page 24.
"...the economy itself had been centered in the home and its surrounding farmland."
“When manufacturing moved out of the home and into the factory, the ideology of womanhood began to raise the wife and mother as ideals [the newly marketed ones]."
Something quite similar occurred in Japan. Up until the mid- to late 1800s, peasant women worked alongside husbands in the fields and in the threshing of rice (with new agricultural developments), had their own production of cloth, worked at inns, and worked in spinning silk.
This quote found in Walthall (1991):
"...female labor played such a crucial role in household finances that women were more important than their husbands in maintaining the family over time." (Miyashita, "Nöson ni okeru kazoku," 31-92)
Later, during the Meiji Restoration (1868-1912), with the modernization of Japan, women worked in the textiles industries (see link below). More recently, during the war and in the reconstruction afterwards, women's main role was to have children and see that the home was looked after so that the husband could spend time in the workforce, "appendages to their men" as Angela Davis said.
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Walthall, A. (1991). The Life Cycle of Farm Women in Tokugawa Japan. In G. L. Bernstein, (Ed.) Recreating Japanese Women, 1600-1945. University of California Press.
http://www.inquiriesjournal.com/articles/1369/women-in-meiji-japan-exploring-the-underclass-of-japanese-industrialization