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

Awra Amba, a current experiment of utopian socialism
Atnafu (2005/76-80) measured during his survey the participation of men and women, and of kids
and girls, to household and farming chores, through declaration of people.
Adults
Children
Children
/ adults
Women
(%)
Men
(%)
Women/
men
Girls
(%)
Sample (person number) 80 80 80 80
Kids
(%)
Girls /
kids
Fetching water 98 69 1.42 31 19 1.67 0.30
Collecting fire wood 44 99 0.44 6 19 0.33 0.18
Cooking food 99 71 1.39 9 4 2.33 0.07
Taking care of animals 99 99 1.00 19 19 1.00 0.19
Caring for small kids 100 99 1.01 81 69 1.18 0.75
Bringing goods to market 98 99 0.99 9 14 0.64 0.11
Washing clothes 88 94 0.93 19 16 1.15 0.19
Cotton clearing 99 81 1.22 31 29 1.09 0.33
Spinning 96 88 1.10 19 13 1.50 0.17
Non weighted average 91 89 1.06 25 22 1.21 0.26
Table 5:
Participation rate in % to different household chores according to sex and age acc. to
data by Atnafu (2005/76). Colours show the most inegalitarian cases.
The nine identified household chores were equally shared between the sexes, except six of them,
presented below by decreasing order of difference between the sexes (see Table 5):
- Collecting fire wood: men were responsible of that 2.3 times more often than women, kids 3
time more than girls; the reason given for this was that men want to protect females from any
problem they might face outside the village (At05/75);
- Cooking food: women cooked 39 % more than men, girls 2.3 times more than kids,
- Fetching water: women did that 42 % more than men, and girls 67 % more than kids (see
Picture 11),
- Bringing goods to market: girls did that 57 % more than kids, but children rarely made this
activity,
- Spinning: girls did that 50 % more than kids, but children also rarely made this activity,
- Cotton clearing: women did that 22 % more than men.
The difference is very noticeable for collecting fire wood, noticeable for cooking and fetching water,
and low for the three last chores. The few chores made mainly by women do not have lower status
than the traditionally male chores (At05/80). The average participation is slightly higher for women
than for men (91 and 89 %), and for girls than for kids (25 and 22 %): but without knowing the
weight of each of these chores, it is difficult to give a real meaning to these figures.
The eight identified farmer tasks are on average done by men 25 % more than by women (see Table
6). The difference is quite constant between sexes, except for two tasks, which require without doubt
the most physical strength:
- Ploughing: done seven times more by men than by women,
- Threshing: done two times more by men than by women.
However, men as much as women weed the land. In the peak season of agricultural work women
often ask other members of the family (and especially to their older children) to watch their children
and feed them while they work in the fields (At05/78).
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