The jobs performed by males and enslaved females in African societies included salt and gold mining, and textile production. In Cabo Verde, African enslaved males were responsible for introducing the technology for producing cloth in the sixteenth century, a task which was considered to be suited to women (Kriger, 2006, p. 131; Liberato, 2017, p. 58). In the seventeenth century, the Akan, Ga and Adanme groups that were employed mainly consisted of men working in the gold mines that existed in the region, which came to be known as the Gold Coast (Rucker, 2015; Austin, 2005). In the mid-nineteenth century, chief Soba Kiborongongo of the Southern African region of Catumbela employed enslaved persons in the salt mines, with salt traded for imported goods such as alcoholic beverages and textiles. Enslaved persons, both male and female, worked in the mines and played the role of carriers, connecting the production hubs with the market in Benguela (Douville, 1832, p. 17). ${ }^{1}$ Upon seeing African women performing manual roles in mining and ploughing the fields, European travellers deemed African societies to be inferior, disorganized and degraded. Although female European peasants also cultivated the land, it was believed that manual labour was essentially male, with women of the elite restricted to occupying domestic spaces. Certain notions regarding work and gender led to the contextualization and classification of African, Indigenous American,  
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[^0]:    1 Arquivo Histórico Militar, Lisbon, 2-2-3, doc. 14, Francisco Xavier Lopes, Descrição da Catumbela (Usos e costumes dos seus indígenas e construção do reduto de São Pedro), 1847, fl. 4.