Awra Amba RJ 300612 EN - Contacter un comité local d'Attac

Awra Amba, a current experiment of utopian socialism
work is to serve her husband and her children (Levine, 1965; At05/80).
The situation is radically different in Awra Amba. The community was indeed founded on the
rejection of the patriarchal authority of men and the subordination of women (At05/78).
According to article 5 of the Communal Statute, activities have not to be based on sex and children
are encouraged to participate in any activity, depending on their age (Me09/29). Work, functions and
responsibilities are assigned based on ability rather than sex or age (Yi07/91). It is a social rule and a
personal behaviour.
Sexual division of work is therefore minimal. Both men and women share the work in the kitchen
and other traditional female occupations. They both share also the outside work and more generally
all traditional male occupations (At05/97). Both the mother and father share equal responsibility of
their family and of their young children (Yi07/60). No one has authority over another, and economic
decisions are on mutual consent (At05/39). There is role reciprocity: men stay at home and women
work outside, and vice-versa. There are no gender-based games (Yi07/60). Only pregnancy and
breast-feeding are the exclusive domains of women, because they are linked to a physical reality and
not to a social choice.
Awra Amba is therefore a community where men care for children, cook and spin, and where women
plough and weave. Men and women perform all these tasks side by side, while in Ethiopia (and
elsewhere…), these occupations are assigned to the other sex.
Atnafu (2005/15) sees the origin of this value in the Koran, which, according to some citations,
should give equal responsibilities to women and men. He is however unaware of texts in
contradiction with equality, such as the inheritance inequality in the Koran, giving two times more to
the man, and the sayings of the prophet, where divorce is pronounced by the man or a judge, but not
by the wife, or forbids the woman to occupy the highest position (queen). The affirmation of Atnafu
is therefore very surprising.
We analyse in detail the actuality of gender equality in Awra Amba in section 4.3 page 49.
3.2.2. Equality between children and adults
In Amhara region, children are considered inferior to adults because they are governed by ignorance
and passion. An Amhara proverb says even "infants and cattle are the same" (At05/46 & 91). After 2
or 3 years, children come to be looked on as servants, most of actions of which are ordered. At the
age of 4 or 5, children are given simple chores, such as shooing chickens from grain drying in the
sun or collecting bits of firewood. Somewhat older children are expected to protect the crops against
animals and to herd cattle, till they are 12 years old for boys (At05/46 & 87).
While all these childhood tasks are shared by both sexes, the Amhara girls begin to do distinctively
female work at about 6 or 7. It is also common practices that at around 10 years the Amhara girls
leave the shepherd's work once and for all and spend all their time about the house. They learn
gradually all the arts of the housewife. By the age of 12 or 13 they knows enough to manage a home
by themselves and are expected to be married (At05/46 & 87).
When they reach 10 or 11 the boys take part in all adult tasks, as ploughing. By the age of 14 or so
earlier, they are able to replace their father in all his activities. Very shortly, they work and manage
alone a small part of father's land; when they have saved enough grain, they are considered ready to
get married and strike out on their own (At05/87).
In Ethiopia, half of the children between the age of 10 and 14 were economically active according to
1994 census (CSA, 1994). They should be more than 42 % in 1995 according to Basu (1999), and
should be still 40 % in 2010 according to Ya08/42.
Yassin (2008/77) reports that the chores given to girls from age of 5 and above are well beyond their
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