This collection of articles grows out of a symposium on the subject of women and work in Africa held on the Urbana-Champaign campus of the University of Illinois in the spring of 1979. The organizing committee for that program sought first, to update the field of economic studies of women in Africa and second, to provide a forum for the exchange and stimulation of ideas among scholars and professionals concerned for women in Africa. The publication here of the majority of the symposium papers represents a logical final step in the fulfillment of the objectives of the symposium program committee.

EDNA G. BAY is an Africanist historian who received her PhD from Boston University in 1977. She has done field research on women in Benin and has written on women's political activities in precolonial West Africa, particularly in the kingdom of Dahomey. She is currently Assistant Director of the Graduate Institute of the Liberal Arts at Emory University.