Page 173 - Arabian Studies (V)

Women’s Inheritance of Land in Highland Yemen 163
land given the weakness of the state (.dawlah). Other women who
were less troubled about not receiving a separate share in the family
estate proceeded by describing the composition of the family, and
in view of this, explained their reasons for not demanding a part in
the real property, or for leaving the claim an open one, or for
selling out the rights to land in return for a small sum of cash.
What women did not bother to mention were those circum­
stances common to all of them: what the sexual division of labour
defines as women’s work, and for the married woman, the general
character of the transfer of property and the establishment of funds
in marriage. The description below of the major patterns of inheri­
tance touches briefly on property transfers in marriage, but a word
is due here concerning the sexual division of labour.
Here as in most of the highlands, the division of labour stresses
the defensive role of men, and correspondingly, the reproductive
and domestic roles of women. In agriculture, women perform
many tasks but do not direct ploughing, irrigation, or building of
irrigation channels and of walls separating fields. They also do not
pick or market what is by far the most important cash crop, qat.
They tend the domestic animals and may handle all aspects of the
processing of agricultural production. All processing carried out
within the house is in female hands and usually directed by a senior
woman of the household. Women rarely buy and sell openly in the
market-place, though they may participate in these transactions
through intermediaries, and directly with other women outside the
market.5 Thus, if a woman is to exploit a piece of land, she must
have access to male labour at certain stages of agricultural produc­
tion. This is not an insuperable problem if women have access to
family labour, sharecroppers, and hired hands.
The circumstances particular to each woman were the
complexity, size, and history of the group of heirs to the property
on which a woman had a claim. In the area under discussion, the
number of persons exploiting an undivided patrimony varied from
a single individual to a unit comprising a total of twenty or thirty
persons.6 The more complex units were either a three or four
generation apical family, or frequently, a joint holding by brothers
|(frdreche) of three or more generations.7 Those with small holdings
(and whose houses were usually much smaller also) rarely could
maintain undivided holdings of property by such large family
groups. The land was not there to hold them: at lower economic
levels a man’s .property was most often divided among his heirs
before or soon after his death.
Although not all wealthy households were of a complex type ot
property owning group, it is not fortuitous that many politically