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Economic Woman in Africa: Profit-Making Techniques of Aecra Market Women

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  11 November 2008

Claire Robertson
Claire Robertson
Affiliation:
Department of History, University of Wisconsin, Madison1
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Extract

An idea which has recently gained acceptance is that peasant cultivators do in fact act in an economically ‘rational’ manner to maximise profits. It can be shown that ‘rational’ economic behaviour is characteristic of traders also. But not all the shibboleths associated with beliefs to the contrary have been swept away. In a well-known textbook on economic development Everett Hagen stated that, in order to make the shift from ‘bazaar’ to ‘fixed- price’ retailing, traders ‘must adopt a set of techniques and risks new to [them] ‘2 Here it will be evident that some of the business techniques long familiar to Accra market women have equal utility for petty retailing or wholesale dealing based on a fixed place of business. The difference between ‘bazaar’ and ‘fixed-price’ retailing is not clearly definable in terms of techniques employed. Also, education in Ghana in its present form does not ‘increase the ability of [traders] to receive information concerning improved methods and improved opportunities’, as Hagen would have it.3 Rather, the disadvantages of illiteracy are more than offset by techniques imbued by a long-established apprenticeship system for women traders.

Type
Africana
Information
The Journal of Modern African Studies , Volume 12 , Issue 4 , December 1974 , pp. 657 - 664
Copyright
Copyright © Cambridge University Press 1974

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References

Page 657 note 2 Hagen, Everett E., The Economics of Development (Homewood, Ill., 1968), p. 65.Google Scholar

Page 657 note 3 Ibid. p. 77.

Page 657 note 4 de Marees, Pieter, ‘A Description and Historicall Declaration of the Golden Kingdome of Guinea’, translated by Dantisc, G. Artus, 1600, in Purchas, Samuel, His Pilgrimes (New York, 1965 edn.), Vol. VI, pp. 286–7.Google Scholar

Page 658 note 1 Ghana National Archives, Accra District Court Records, SCT 2/6/4, 698, High Court Judgement Book, pt. 3, case 23 June 1913.

Page 660 note 1 Addae, Gloria, ‘The Retailing of Imported Textiles in the Accra Market’, in West African Institute of Social and Economic Research Conference Proceedings, March 1954 (Ibadan, 1956), pp. 53–4.Google Scholar

Page 661 note 1 Lawson, Rowena M., ‘Inflation in the Consumer Market in Ghana - its Cause and Cure’, in Economic Bulletin of Ghana (Accra), I, 1966, p. 52.Google Scholar See also Report of the Commission of Enquiry into Trade Malpractices in Ghana (Accra, 1965), p. 53.Google Scholar

Page 661 note 2 Lawson, Rowena M., ‘The Supply Response of Retail Trading Services to Urban Population Growth in Ghana’, in Meillassoux, Claude (ed.), The Development of Indigenous Trade and Markets in West Africa (London, 1971), p. 380.Google Scholar

Page 661 note 3 Lawson, Rowena M. (Jackson, née), ‘The Economics of the Gold Coast Fishing industry’, M. Com. thesis, University of Birmingham, 1953, p. 62.Google Scholar

Page 661 note 4 Garlick, Peter, African Traders and Economic Development in Ghana (Oxford, 1971), p. 52.Google Scholar

Page 662 note 1 Sai, Florence A., ‘The Market Women in the Economy of Ghana’, M.S. thesis, Cornell University, 01 1971, p. 44.Google Scholar

Page 662 note 2 Addae, loc. Cit. p. 44.

Page 662 note 3 Reusse, Eberhard and Lawson, Rowena M., ‘The Effect of Economic Development on Metropolitan Food Marketing: a case study of food retail trade in Accra’, in East African Journal of Rural Development (Nairobi), II, I, 1969, p. 50.Google Scholar

Page 662 note 4 See also Hamilton, Ruth, ‘Urban Social Differentiation and Membership Recruitment among Selected Voluntary Associations in Accra, Ghana’, Ph.D. dissertation, Northwestern University, Evanston, 1966.Google Scholar

Page 663 note 1 Katzin, Margaret, ‘The Role of the Small [Ibo] Entrepreneur’, in Herskovits, Melville J. and Harwitz, Mitchell (eds.), Economic Transition in Africa (Evanston, 1964), pp. 195–6.Google Scholar

Page 663 note 2 Accra District Court Records, SCT 17/4/16, 544, 20 March and ia September 1895, to cite only two early cases among the many arising from debt collection.

Page 664 note 1 Report of the Commission of Enquiry into Trade Maipractices in Ghana, p. 50.

Page 664 note 2 SCT 17/6/1, 68–71, High Court Judgement Book, 1930.