 I co-ordinate development studies at the University of Pretoria and I lecture. I hope I'm not going to be tempted to lecture today. I'm not into gender and I'm also not into migration studies. So you will have to forgive me. I'm actually interested in micro and leper societies and migration in pattern parcel of micro and leper societies. My study today derived from a wild ranging study that has span to over a decade and a half. But this particular study came as a coincidence or an accident. I have been just researching on micro and leper societies looking at wake up micro dynamics for about two years when a certain event took place. It was in 2006. A demonstration by a certain group of villagers took place. They called the demonstration an environmental cleansing ritual. It was a demonstration against the firewood vendors. What attracted me was the composition of the demonstrating group. It was predominantly women, youth and a little bit of men. This event led me to start seeking for explanation. While there were many explanations, I soon realized that the explanation lay in the complex dynamics of micro and leper societies and the women living within these societies. The problem with understanding women in their position in micro and leper societies is often hampered by the dominance of a tum say scenario narrative on micro and leper systems, the suffering of women that are left behind by men who are left without their men. The destruction of families and the negative impact on agriculture. You get these kinds of narratives, especially from those that have got a Marxist leaning. This actually means that any positive aspects of migration continue to be overshadowed by the negative history of the development of capitalism, especially in South Africa. This is despite the literature that recognizes that development impact of migration that recognizes the development impact of migration in migrant households. In post-independence map particularly, statistics have actually shown that migrant households were actually wealthier. In the future, statistics have actually shown that migrant households had resources to invest in agriculture. My intention of this paper is to shed more light on this position. I also want to emphasize the positive social impact of the outmigration of men on the women's household, housewives that are left behind in rural areas, often as custodian of households assets that will include land. I want to draw particular attention to the migrant labour reserve social context and the men within these societies, and I want to attempt to situate the position of women within this broader framework. I examine the complex dynamics of migrant labour societies that are sacred traditional gender stereotypes, while also redefining women's roles at both the household and societal level. My focus in particular is how the absence of men through migration provides opportunities for women to be autonomous and to take control of household and societal decisions. By focusing on the complexity of these societies and the position of women within them, I want to eliminate differences between rural societies and to question again the risk of looking at the relationship between women and migration with a uniform eye. An assumption critical to my analysis is that many of these societies have guaranteed land rights and they have got land rights by what Nyambara calls booking the land, where they secure the land, where they leave their wives and then migrate to the cities. And that women's de facto heads of households have complete control of this land. I want to start from Bridget, all our feminist analysis of feminist literature in Southern Africa. She threw on the feminist writers emphasis that women headed households are often product of women's own initiative. And it threw on Kwaosonist 1962 view that women living in women headed households may appreciate their degree of relative autonomy. Still citing Kwaoson's work in Zambia, she emphasized the observation that the periodic absence of migrant Tonga men open to new areas of autonomy and control for women both in their agriculture work and in their social life. This is the position that I take in this study. I want to look at my methodological issues. I have already alluded to them. My work is ethnographically linked. As I said, it's work that is taken over one and a half decade and a number of papers have come out of it. Let me go to the evidence. I want to bring to attention the context. The work appeasants of the Kwaoson forest in Northwestern Zimbabwe. This is a forest that was so vividly captured by Alexander and McGregor in their book, Violence and Memory 100 Years in the Tak Forest of Materiland. This kusu, or forest reserve, is home to many victims of land evictions from white land after the 1940s. Although there were some local centripes, this context is very important because it actually grounds and gives us a basis in which to understand the dynamics in these societies. These groups were actually evicted in areas around Wulawayo where capitalism had already taken root. So upon eviction, livelihood activities or livelihoods that they adopted before eviction were continued. So what actually happened is that at the new place, there were a significant number of men who held jobs in Wulawayo and a number of men who joined later who also held jobs in Wulawayo. So this was actually a community of worker peasants. I will give a quote from Alexander and Etel. They said, men who now went to work in Wulawayo could no longer be expected to cycle. 125 to 170 miles to and from the Shangana reserve. Families would have to be divided. So the road network provided allowed men to circulate between the world of work and the rural space and to send remittances to these, those remaining behind. Now, what about the women? The women left behind started to dominate spaces. They dominated the household space. They also dominated the community space. Let me start with the household space. Women were expected to fulfill the role of a household's head by providing leadership and taking control of day-to-day decision-making processes. What is of interest and what Marxist scholars do not take into account is that these women clearly recognized their household leadership roles in these communities and executed them with authority. As nearly all households were headed by women, either on a de facto basis or dejury basis, the leadership roles had become natural, normal and they performed them without any complaints. Women recognized agricultural tasks but rarely performed masculine activities like preparing the fields. This is one area that is missing from literature where we are actually told that women are overbedent. These women are actually not overbedent. They perform leadership roles but they do not take the extra job of doing jobs that were performed by men which were often assigned to boys or hired labor. What remistances did was to allow these women or these households to hire labor to assist women. These migrant men through the income from the formal sector would employ extra helping hand besides that women could also organize communal work where they pull or they throw upon labor from neighbors by throwing a party of some sort. So these women were not abandoned as we are meant to believe in literature. The men were men in transitiy they understood very likely about the rural space. These men spent month some people spent three months some even came home during Easter and Christmas but women would constantly visit the events sector so they were not abandoned. The men's responsibility was to provide the financial resources with the women commanded in this society. Like all migrant labor society men were not expected to be in the rural space which was traditionally regarded as a woman's terrain. As boen noted in the sutu men were expected and are supposed to make money and any man found in this space was designated and called by a Terekotar name Umaslalel. This is a name that is popular in migrant labor societies. It depicts a very jealous man who cannot bear to leave this woman alone and go look for work. So what women do if they are tired of their men they invoke the word Umaslalel this Maslalel the man will take his back the following day he is gone. And then the women were also expected to take over at the communal level because in these communities men were scarce women were dominant. So in these former labor reserves the responsibility of women extended beyond the confounds of their households and to the community level. The high incidence of male migration meant that women had to represent their absent husband at the communal level and were involved in communal decisions through the village assembly. These women attended the village assembly took decisions at the village assembly. I do not mean that there were no men because there were some men that were not working there were some men that were between jobs there were some men that were tired but women were generally dominant and became part to the village assembly. In this absence of men women's membership of the village assemblies were considered normal. Women took decisions that affected their community as evidenced by the environmental cleansing ceremony that I have alluded to. Now it takes me back to the environmental cleansing ceremony that actually motivated this study. After searching for explanations I actually discovered that it was not women demonstrating against vendors because they were so attached to nature as gender literature will actually say. It was community members demonstrating against a threat to the community. The vendors were a threat and these community members happened to be only women because men were away. In the post 2000 period the importance role of women in this society was evidenced by a sitting by sitting acting head man village head in at least three of the villages. I'm going to cut my results short because I didn't know the amount of time that I was going to be given but the results from the study have challenged the tombstay tombstay narrative on the impact of migration of women by focusing broadly on the complexity of a work of peace in society and the implications for women's situation at the household and society level. By focusing on the complex dynamics of migrant labor society they actually attempted to present these societies as different kind of rural societies as highlighted by the feminization of everyday forms of decisions and activities. It also tried to show how this setting imposed an effort on the women and how they intend framed their responses to their realities confronting their everyday lives and tend them to their own advantage. In former migrant labor societies where certain patriarchal principles have long been weakened by the high rates of male migration it is not so much as a question of women assuming responsibility previously hanged by men but rather how such responsibility is played out at the household and society level over time. These societies are ostensile female spaces where the absence of men have allowed women autonomy and authority as highlighted through the women's membership of the village assembly and the setting, the sitting female village heads. The role and responsibility of women should be contextualized in terms of their sociological basis by analyzing the social context that gave women legitimacy to decision making and power to mobilize against threats. I think that's where my presentation ends.