Women Working for Wages: Putting Flesh on the Bones of a Rural Labour Market Survey in Mozambique*

Abstract

The life stories of six women working for wages are analysed together with quantitative data from the first ever large-scale rural labour market survey undertaken in Mozambique. Quantitative data from three provinces are used to emphasise the heterogeneity of the characteristics of women working for wages as well as to examine hypotheses about dynamic processes suggested by the life stories. It is argued that there are important methodological advantages to be gained if researchers can cross-check their own quantitative survey data with qualitative data they have collected themselves, as well as with a wide range of historical and secondary sources. The policy implications of the findings concerning the extreme deprivation suffered by many rural wage workers, the intergenerational transmission of poverty and the relative success of some rural women are discussed.