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.