Revisiting Boserup’s Hypotheses in the Context of Africa

This chapter highlights the relevance of Ester Boserup’s hypotheses for women’s empowerment in Africa and thereby reassessing the status of African women in contemporary time. The chapter attempts to answer the following questions: Does gender inequality persist in Africa, and, if so, are the factors sustaining the inequality the same as those identified by Boserup? For this purpose, relevant indicators were compared and contrasted for a total of 48 Sub-Saharan countries at different points in time, spanning the period from 1995 to 2005. The indicators taken into consideration were the Human Development Index (HDI), the Gender Inequality Index (GII), the Total Fertility Rate (TFR), and the Gross Domestic Product (GDP) in absolute and per capita terms. The result found a negative correlation between per capita GDP and both the total fertility rate and the gender inequality index. It also found that the higher the human development index, the lower the total fertility rate and vice versa. Thus, revisiting the Boserupian model in the context of Sub-Saharan Africa has provided us with insights about the interrelationships between gender, population, and development. Since Sub-Saharan Africa is less industrially developed, has the highest fertility rate, and has a wider gender gap than other regions around the globe, the attainment of the MDGs (particularly goal 3) is crucial for Africa.