Savings and accumulation strategies of urban market women in Harare, Zimbabwe

Relative to female entrepreneurs in the Ghanaian context, are Zimbabwean female entrepreneurs as prepared to advance their own material conditions, constitute a commercial class, and contribute to overall economic development? This article addresses that question by exploring the historical and cultural forces that help to shape the context in which Shona female entrepreneurs operate, as well as the strategies market traders have developed in order to respond to this context. First I review some of the political economic factors that have impeded entrepreneurship in the colonial and independent eras, after which I explore the ways in which indigenous concepts of marriage and kinship have defined Zimbabwean women's social and economic status. Although these historical and cultural forces represent significant barriers to female entrepreneurship, traders have been far from passive in their response to these barriers. I then explore the various strategies female entrepreneurs have developed to maintain the value of their capital, expand their economic interests, and resist both macroeconomic and family pressures that threaten their economic survival and accumulation. The observations are based on ethnographic research conducted among Shona market traders in Harare, Zimbabwe, in 1999.