Book Review: Christine Sylvester, Producing Women and Progress in Zimbabwe: Narratives of Identity and Work From the 1980s (Portsmouth, NH: Heinemann, 2000, 296 pp., no price given hbk.)
| DOI | 10.1177/03058298000290030929 |
| Published date | 01 December 2000 |
| Author | Paris Yeros |
| Date | 01 December 2000 |
| Subject Matter | Articles |
Book Reviews
979
culture…relatio ns between ethni c groups should improve’ (p. 26 0) and that a stable
democratic orde r will guarante e long term stabilit y of the East Europ ean region .
At times, Scho pflin’s anal ysis lacks clarity in so far as it leaves the read er to
guess how the author defines th e key terms up on which he bui lds his argument.
Moreover, b eing a collection of p apers, the book to so me exten t lacks uni ty and its
architecton ic structure does not al ways provide a conti nuing bond and a nat ural
flow o f the argu ment. Yet, d espite this, t he book is informative and a u seful read
particularl y with regard to the po litics of Eastern Europe.
KLEJDA MULAJ
Klejda Mulaj is a Research Student in the Department of International Relations at
the London School of Economics and Political Science
Christine Sy lvester, Producing Women and Progress in Zimbabwe: Narratives o f
Identity and Work From the 1980s (Po rtsmouth, NH: Heinemann, 20 00, 296 pp.,
no price give n hbk.).
This study o f gender an d labour is based on research that was cond ucted in the late
1980s in Zimbabwe. At that time, Zimbab we was at a crossroads, having had
barely a decade of ind ependence, just formed a governmen t of national unit y after
several years of internal violence, and now witne ssing the rise of new social forces,
namely a labour movement striving for independence and a black bourgeoisie
seeking a doption by the state. This was also the time o f the collap se of the So viet
Union, and the state soc ialist model was l osing legitimacy world wide, while
neoliberal ism was emerging triu mphant by default. The natio nal debate thus gain ed
renewed vi gour. New claims began to be l aid on the mean ing of the nat ion and its
liberation , with the aspiring bourgeoi sie receiving the all-too-willing e ndorsement
of inte rnational financial in stitutions and ult imately winning ou t over workers and
peasants. Yet, the losers were the mselves differentiated; the least recog nised claims
on the meaning of liberati on came fro m the l east ‘civil’ voices o f the po st-colonial
dispensatio n, those of women worke rs and peasants.
In her new boo k, Christine Syl vester provides invaluable empiric al evidence o f
the gender hierarchies that permeated the moral debate from the national level
down t o the workp lace and famil y. Sylvester demonstrates how gender split class
and vice versa: ho w ma nagers, trade unionists, and male work ers, along with
develop ment experts a nd middle-class wh ite women, all shared gendered
conceptio ns of order and progress, and all at the ex clusion and assumption of the
identities of producing black women. Importantly, Sylvester inquires into, and
interprets, the sel f-understandings of women workers and peasants themselves.
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