This chapter focuses on women pluckers at the Tole Tea Estate, one of the estates owned by the Cameroon Development Corporation. It examines what categories of women tended to sell their labour power to the estate management and how this relates to customary patriarchal controls in the local communities. The chapter highlights the intensification of managerial control and exploitation of women pluckers during the present economic crisis. What emerges from the study is that even during the economic crisis the management has failed to fully control the women pluckers in the labour process. The chapter shows that plantation work plays an ambivalent role in the lives of women tea pluckers in Cameroon. Most women are still reluctant to resign and forfeit their regular monthly wage income, however meagre; but a growing number of women are no longer interested in keeping their job at any cost, especially since they have also lost confidence in the corporation's eventual economic recovery.
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