Women Put to Work in North Africa
Some of the Berber tribes of North Africa yoke their women to the plow with their oxen, and thus make them work in the field. Even aged grandmothers and great-grandmothers are treated in this manner, but they trudge along the furrow with amazing cheerfulness. They do not feel any degradation, because they have never been used to anything else. - A Berber chieftain who was remonstrated with for putting his own aunt, a woman over ninety, to work in the fields, replied, calmly: “Women are bestowed by Allah for pleasure and profit. When they grow too old and ill favored to give pleasure we turn them to profit.” This is the prevailing sentiment throughout North Africa, except with some of the Bedouin and Kabyle tribes, among whom there is a more chivalrous feeling toward women.— Selected.