Producing Women and Progress in Zimbabwe: Narratives of Identity and Work from the 1980s

This book presents empirical and interpretive approaches to the question of who women workers of postcolonial Zimbabwe are and what they wish to gain in the way of progress.Christine Sylvester moves between theory and on-the-ground narration with such grace. Fans of her feminist theorizing will find that her thinking about Zimbabwean women's lives will make them all the smarter.Cynthia Enloe, Author of ManeuversThis book provides vital exploration to the study of gender and labour relations in Zimbabwe. [The author] breaks new ground by incorporating theoretical perspectives with African women's everyday life and everyday experiences. This is an important book, timely in the sense that it departs from treating women merely as objects, but as subjects with voices to articulate their own history.Seki Nzenza Shand, Academic Development SpecialistThis book presents empirical and interpretive approaches to the question of who women workers of postcolonial Zimbabwe are and what they wish to gain in the way of progress. Through interviews with over 300 women across four economic sectorsof the late 1980s' economy, and with over 150 experts working with women, the study finds that women workers are neither easy to characterize or set on "a" course of progress for themselves―points that supervisors and development experts do not seem to realize and accommodate. The study draws on a wide range of theoretical orientations and evokes images of "women" and "progress" from the prodigious imaginative literature that has marked Zimbabwe's postcolonial years.