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Women and the Changing Urban Household Economy in Tanzania

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  11 November 2008

Extract

Women in Tanzania's largest city, Dar es Salaam, used to be described as ‘relatively inactive’ as regards paid work or self-employment.1 One study undertaken in 1971 found that only one-fifth of urban women were either working for wages (13 per cent) or earning their own sources of income (7 per cent).2 The situation could not have been more different in the late 1980s, with as many as 66 per cent in Dar es Salaam being self-employed. Although about the same proportion of women were in some kind of paid employment as during the previous decade, it appeared that since then many of them had been leaving their place of work to farm and to engage in small income-generating projects, known as miradi midogo midogo or shughuli ndogo ndogo in Kiswahili3.

Type
Articles
Copyright
Copyright © Cambridge University Press 1989

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