The gender of dependency theory: women as workers, from neocolonialism in West Africa to the implosion of contemporary capitalism

ABSTRACT

Samir Amin’s large body of work affords an opportunity to trace the ways in which he analysed class and gender in the workings of neocolonialism in the aftermath of independence in West Africa and globalisation after the end of the Cold War. Using two key texts, Neo-colonialism in West Africa (1973) and The implosion of contemporary capitalism (2013), this paper traces the way women, gender and dependency theory in Amin’s theoretical framework operate to simultaneously suggest and then foreclose recognition of how gender analysis provides vital, independent perspectives on global inequality.

RÉSUMÉ

L’important corpus de Samir Amin permet de retracer la manière dont il a analysé les classes et la notion de genre dans le fonctionnement du néocolonialisme au lendemain des indépendances en Afrique de l’Ouest, puis de la mondialisation après la fin de la guerre froide. À l’aide de deux textes clés, Neo-colonialism in West Africa (1973, non traduit) et L’implosion du capitalisme contemporain : automne du capitalisme, printemps des peuples? (2012), cet article retrace la façon dont s’agencent les femmes, le genre et la théorie de la dépendance dans le cadre théorique d’Amin pour mettre en lumière la manière dont l’analyse du genre fournit des perspectives vitales et indépendantes sur l’inégalité mondiale.

KEYWORDS:

• Samir Amin
• dependency theory
• gender

MOTS-CLÉS:

• Samir Amin
• théorie de la dépendance
• genre

Acknowledgements

I am grateful to Ingrid Kvangraven for comments and encouragement, and to three anonymous reviewers for their helpful suggestions.

Disclosure statement

No potential conflict of interest was reported by the author.

Notes

1 At the time of writing, the countries included in Amin’s study included Dahomey (now Benin), French Soudan (now Mali), Gambia, Ghana, Guinea, Ivory Coast (now Côte d’Ivoire), Mauritania, Niger, Senegal, Togo and Upper Volta (now Burkina Faso).

2 In 1995, I mistakenly stated that Amin only mentioned women once in NWA. I regret the error.

Additional information

Notes on contributors

Catherine Scott

Catherine Scott is a professor of political science at Agnes Scott College. She is the author of Gender and development: rethinking modernization and dependency theory (1995) and, more recently, Neoliberalism and US foreign policy: from Carter to Trump (2018).