Are cooperatives a vehicle for socio-economic emancipation of women? a case study of the Tuke Consumer's Cooperative Society in Morogoro Town - Tanzania

Chuma, Salome Zena Edward

Are cooperatives a vehicle for socio-economic emancipation of women? a case study of the Tuke Consumer's Cooperative Society in Morogoro Town - Tanzania

Date

1987

Authors

Chuma, Salome Zena Edward

Publisher

University of Dar es Salaam

Abstract

This paper is based on the question of whether cooperatives are a vehicle for socio-economic emancipation of women or not. The paper is divided into four chapters. chapter One looks into the historical reasons why women are oppressed and the efforts being made to remove this problem. This chapter also includes the research methodology used. to get the findings. Chapter Two discusses the historical background of cooperatives and their role in liberating the working class and how women are trying to use them to gain their socio-economic mancipation. Chapter Three deals with a case study of the women's TUKE Consumers ' Cooperative Society, and how it operates to bring socio-economic emancipation of its members. At the time of the research the findings showed that 80% of the members were self-employed lumpen proletariats and were not much informed of how the cooperative is being run. Thus it was operated and controlled by a few who had power over it, and employees were exploited by the few without themselves being aware of it. It was also observed that while other women's economic projects did not survive problems of leadership, TUKE survived because it was formed and taken care of by women leaders who were in the Party and the government. In Chapter Four, I concluded that women cannot emancipate themselves from their present condition, both men and women bear colonised minds and must work hard together to emancipate themselves from both colonial and patriachical 'relations. They must lead the struggle using Marxist-Leninist working class ideological tool.

Description

Available in print form

Keywords

Cooperative, Women cooperative societies, TUKE consumers' cooperative society, Morogoro town, Tanzania

Citation

Chuma, S.Z. E (1987) Are cooperatives a vehicle for socio-economic emancipation of women? a case study of the Tuke Consumer's Cooperative Society in Morogoro Town - Tanzania, masters dissertation, University of Dar es Salaam.Available at (http://41.86.178.3/internetserver3.1.2/detail.aspx)