Labor Organization and Gender

The daily travails of the commoners varied fundamentally with gender. Women toiled primarily in the dry fields. They often would

return home, heavily laden with sweet potatoes, only when dark fell. Work in the kitchens and piggeries also fell to female hands. Although women usually labored in their fields alone, some of their arduous tasks could be lightened through cooperative labor exchange (ogbo ). Overall, women's work was spatially concentrated and temporally demanding.

Male labor, however, was spatially dispersed and much less consuming. The male commoner's only routine job was cattle oversight; the conscientious pastol would once or twice daily determine the whereabouts of his stock. This entailed long hikes, but required only several hours a day unless the animals strayed. Because their daily chores were light, men often tended small children (feeding their babies premasticated sweet potatoes). Men generally cultivated the family dry field only if their wives were ill or recovering from childbirth. Women might complain that their husbands harvested tubers with the care and skill of wild hogs, but those without help were hard pressed. And men's work in childcare was important; one woman, abandoned by her wastrel spouse, had to place her mischievous children in a deep hole so she could attend to her crops. The few men who mastered female farming skills were teased but grudgingly admired, as were those women who reached proficiency in such male tasks as blade sharpening.

The daily schedules of both men and women were punctuated by seasonal and single-occurrence tasks. Here men usually handled the heavier burdens: clearing new umas, weeding pastures, mending and building fences and trails, cleaning canals, constructing and rebuilding terrace walls, cutting and carrying firewood, and preparing rice fields. Other seasonal tasks, such as rice transplanting, fell strictly to women, and still others, such as rice harvesting, were shared by members of both sexes. Women often joined their husbands in digging puwals, usually accomplished in labor-exchange ogbo groups. Ogbo labor debts were strictly accounted, and a woman's contribution was valued the same as a man's.

The people of Buguias usually accomplished their non-routine jobs cooperatively, either through ogbo or through a more commercial arrangement called dangas. The individual organizer of a dangas project would acquire labor in exchange for food and drink, with no further obligations incurred. The emoluments provided had to be of high quality; goats or dogs were usually butchered and

rice beer provided. Such activities were, not surprisingly, usually initiated by the wealthy.

Day to day, commoner men worked far fewer hours than did women; at the same time, adult males undertook those tasks requiring travel outside the community. Only men served the ten days annually on road corvée duty as required by the colonial government; more importantly, most trade with neighboring peoples was their prerogative. These activities were consistent with the relative lightness of men's quotidian obligations; women simply could not abandon their fields for more than a few days at a time. In the final tabulation, women shouldered the greater burdens in prewar Buguias—as in most societies the earth has known. Buguias women had considerable social standing and authority compared to women in many parts of the world, but men nevertheless held greater political and religious power, and it was they who ultimately ruled prewar Buguias.

Even after accounting for gender differences, the chores of the commoners were not all identical. Some variation could be ascribed to temperament; certain men, for example, avoided the burden of raising cattle, while others maximized their pastol commitments. Certain specialized jobs were limited by their long apprenticeships. Buguias's few blacksmiths did little but work metal, and even expert basket weavers might easily ignore animal husbandry. Both occupations passed from fathers to sons or nephews. Other specialties, such as terrace building (mastered by few) and roof thatching, entailed only occasional, supplementary employment. A few select older men, however, found full employment as ritual specialists.