The Senegalese Feminist Forum: A Perspective

Women in Senegal are in general confined to traditional roles. They are married at a young age; half of them live in polygynous unions and are subjects to multiple childbirths. According to genderindex.org, “Up to 20% of girls undergo Female Genital Mutilation. Most women in Senegal have no educational opportunities. Only 23 percent of females over 15 years of age are literate, while the rates for males over age 15 are 43 percent.”

Additionally, discrimination against women is pervasive, especially in rural areas. The Government frequently does not enforce anti-discrimination laws.
It is against this context that the Senegalese feminist forum was held between 7th-9th August 2009. The meeting brought together 30 women from different back grounds including community based women’s representatives, women’s human rights activists, writers, film makers, lecturers and women from the development sector.

The objectives of the Forum were:

• To create an effective feminist movement in Senegal as well as a safe and autonomous space for feminist organizing.
• To discuss critical issues affecting the women’s movement in Senegal.
• To develop strategies to promote feminist leadership in women‘s organizations in Senegal and to look into how best the charter of feminist principles can be domesticated by women’s organizations in Senegal.

The Forum was held because there is a need to strengthen the feminist movement in Senegal, create feminist spaces and to put the feminist movement of the country on a solid ground. Feminists in Senegal want the women’s movement to be dynamic, the forum was to help strategize to include the youth in the feminist struggle as the leadership believes, the youth are the future and they should take up the work of fighting for women’s rights. In spite of constant struggle, Senegalese women are still oppressed by patriarchy. Patriarchy can be defined as a social organization marked by the supremacy of the father in the clan or family, the legal dependence of wives and children, and the reckoning of descent and inheritance in the male line; broadly : control by men of a disproportionately large share of power or simply a family, community, or society based on this system or governed by men. In Senegal, patriarchy cuts across every sector of life; socially, economically and culturally. Women in Senegal are raised in a society that sees the male as the head and only occupant of a leadership position, women are taught to revere their male counter parts and always put them first. With this kind of outlook gaining access to strategic positions in the country becomes difficult. According to www. afrol.com “Senegalese law stipulates that women and men should have equal access to bank loans, but in reality women often struggle to obtain loans.” In Senegal, women are seen as second class citizens. “Senegalese law grants equal property ownership rights to men and women. Women are legally entitled to access to land, but tradition makes it impossible for them to inherit land. Similarly, women may be in a financial position to have access to property other than land, but their husbands can restrict their ability to exercise this right.”

Senegalese women are demanding and claiming their rights, organizations like Groupe de Recherche sur les Femmes et les Lois au Senegal(GREFELS )and Association of African Women for Research and Development (AAWORD) are leading the way by supporting to increase the autonomy of women and linking them with feminist and progressive groups, to build a powerful African women's movement linking human rights to the theory and practice of development and to bring forth African Women's contribution to sustainable and democratic development. The Senegalese feminist Forum sought to re-echo the voices of these women. During the meeting challenges of the feminist movement in Senegal was bought to the fore. A key challenge is the issue of religious fundamentalism. The religious system of Senegal hinders women from being bold enough to express them selves and their views.

Another challenge that came up during the meeting was the inability of people or women to affirm that they are feminist. Women identifying them selves as feminists is a challenge in Senegal, according to Marjorie Mbilinyi, board member of Tanzania Gender Networking Programme “feminist are fine with the feminist struggle as long as there is no struggle” these women do not want to own their identity as feminist, they do not own the challenges, threats, difficulty and opportunity that goes along with owning an identity as a feminist.

In solidarity, the AWDF funded the forum with a grant of US$20,000. The AWDF made a presentation on the charter of feminist principles. The charter serves as an accountability mechanism for feminist organizing on the continent and is a tool for peer review amongst African feminist organizations.

The general belief behind the African Feminist Forum is to create an autonomous space for feminists with no, ”ifs”, “buts” and “however”. The Senegalese feminist forum provided a safe space for feminists in Senegal to dream and do things differently by creating an autonomous space for Senegalese feminist, to domesticate the charter of principles in Senegal, to have a body of knowledge reflecting feminist agency that can be shared with feminist s around the region.

Thelma Owusu-Boakye (Programme Assistant, Fundraising & Communications)
with Rissi Assani-Alabi (Programme Officer, Francophone Programme Officer)

Make the World Safe for Diversity

Part of my personal reference documents are kept in the boot of my car. These references are in the form of notes and materials from the workshops that I have attended in recent times. Over the weekend whilst I was cleaning the car, I decided to go through the documents to refresh my thoughts on certain topics. It was in the process of doing this that I came across some of the notes I took during the 2nd African Feminist Forum (AFF) held in Uganda last year.

These notes were from the session “reconciling personal values and beliefs”. The essence of the session was basically to look at how personal values and beliefs influence the work of feminists fighting for equality and justice for all African Women.

A number of participants shared their experiences at this session. One person for instance mentioned an incident in which she was approached by a journalist who wanted to know if she was willing to do some research on the rights of lesbians in her country. According to this person, because of her own personal values and beliefs she quickly said no. Later upon reflecting on the issue she realized that she definitely could have handled it better.

At this session, the statistics of the millions of women who die every year in Africa from unsafe abortions was also presented. There is a huge difference between the numbers of women dying from abortions in countries where it is legal as compared to the countries where abortion is still illegal. As frightening as the statistics are and continue to be, some women are unable to be involved in what is needed to make abortion safe because of religious and moral reasons.

In his book the “Audacity of Hope” Barack Obama wrote and I quote “he believes that only a few women made a decision to terminate a pregnancy casually; that any pregnant woman felt the full force of the moral issues involved and wrestled with her conscience when making the heart wrenching decision. A ban on abortion would force women to seek unsafe abortions as they had once done in America and as they continue to do in countries that persecute abortion doctors and the women who seek their services” end of quote. This was in response to a man who approached him to say he disagreed with his views on abortion

I agree with Obama when he concludes by saying that we need to find ways of reducing the number of women having abortions.

It is extremely unfortunate for any woman to lose her life or develop a life threatening disease from an unsafe abortion. The issue on abortion has to be looked at dispassionately so as to ensure that women in the prime of their lives do not die prematurely.

I recall at the same AFF during one of the sessions I had a chat with a Sister sitting by me who thought that gay people needed counseling to reform. In her view if we continued to entertain gay people the population would decrease to a point where the human race may go into extinction. I immediately responded that I did not believe that day will ever come.

She then asked me what my own thoughts on gay rights were. I remember telling her that I believe we should learn to be tolerant of other people’s sexual preferences. She then asked me what I would do if I ever found out my child was gay. My response which still continues to be my worry is that I am afraid of how society may discriminate, label, ridicule and in some cases even abuse that child because he or she is different. I told her about the true life story of a 17 year old boy who was lynched to death by his peers because he dressed and acted like a girl. The mother of this boy never imagined that her community would be so intolerant to that extent but that is exactly what happened. I concluded by saying that it is for this reason that I want to play my role to ensure that every individual’s human rights are respected at all times.

In the words of John F Kennedy “if we cannot now end our differences at least we can help make the world safe for diversity”. Are you playing your part to make the world safe for diversity?

Gertrude Bibi Annoh-Quarshie
Finance Manager
AWDF