Aboubacry Mbodji
29 November 2007
column
In the Senegal, issues relating to violence, to right to work and to discriminations against women in working environment, cannot be understood without a detailed analysis of multi-secular historical context, which have founded the economic, social and political status of women yesterday and today.
It is not of our intention to exhaust a so vast subject in the economy of a presentation. Our purpose will especially try hard to ask fundamental questions by hoping that a more deepened study will be able to be carried out to enable a more exhaustive analysis of the subject.
What is the role of the traditional institutions and religious practices in the promotion of the right of the woman to work? By traditional institutions, it is not only necessary to hear the formal institutions, but also modes of organizations or the forms of practices codified by tradition and by religion. The influence of tradition and religion on the life of the individuals appears to be obvious, but this one hides the worst forms of discrimination against women on the one hand, and obstacles in promotion and protection of their right to work on the other hand.
What are the traditional institutions and the religious practices with harmful effects on the right of women to work? What are the worst forms of discrimination which follow from it? Are there good recommendable practices? How to change status quo? What have to be the actors or the institutions of such change? From which actions and strategies can we lead such a desired social change?
In fact these are the fundamental questions in which our presentation will try to bring answers.
I. Traditional institutions or customary practices
In spite of the importance of its contribution and its role in the traditional society, the position of the Senegalese woman seems to challenge yesterday as today the human dignity, as much discriminations are numerous, structural as inhuman. Traditional institutions and customary practices seem to have sealed the position of the woman as insignificant citizen, or anyway, been born to be dominated by the man.
1.1. The matriarchal system
Following the example of the African traditional societies, the Senegalese society seems at first glance to idealize the woman with regard to its position, with its social status, with its instructive and economic role. She is honoured and seems to occupy an important place in the matriarchal system. However, this situation following from the functioning of the matriarchal system of the society, which would have been able to lay the foundations of an egalitarian and no-discriminating society, hides to a certain extent the influence of the traditional institutions and the customary practices with tendency to relegate the woman in the background in the distribution of its economic, social and political functions.
If the political institution of matriarchy put the woman in a privileged position which could enable her to play entirely her economic, social and political role within the society, one can realize obviously with the analysis of this system that this role was generally figurative: it was not indeed a real exercise of power. Certainly, there were exceptions, particularly in certain ethnic groups of the Senegalese society (to Wolof, Fulani, Soninke, Bambara, Diola, etc), where one noted the existence of queens who occupied at the same time economic, social and political functions (example: Ndete Yalla Mbodj who was queen of the Walo until 1853, Alin Sitoye Diatta, queen of Kabrousse who was deported of her natal Casamance in Gabon by the French colonists).
Apart from these rare exceptions, the status of the woman in the Senegalese traditional society in comparison with the possession and in the transmission of power seldom gave her possibility to achieve high political functions to the men.
1.2. Patriarchal system
As social practice, the custom appears in all respects in the Senegalese traditional society as the symbol of the submission of the woman to the man. It forces the woman to dedicate an almost complete submission to the man: spouse, father or brother. This structural presentation profoundly anchored in tradition and customs constitutes the main discriminating factor for the access of the woman to the public and political sphere. If this situation is based on a patriarchal organization of the family and the society, it is necessary to emphasize that the passage of matriarchy in patriarchy was historically long and laboured.
Reasons advanced in the course of history are numerous, even if the motherhood (matrilinéarité) could be considered to be the consequence of motherhood, owing to « mystery of conception » which engenders the unification of the child with its mother and, by way of consequence, to the maternal family, due to the power of life which it detains and from which the man is excluded by ignorance of his role in the process of delivery. This situation is transformed in fatherhood (patrilinéarité) when at least two elements converge:
* the realization of the role of the father in the conception of the child and the progressive transformation of the economy of survival into a trader economy, requiring the knowledge of its descendant in order to enable the transmission of treasures collected which only man has found it, at a given time, loaded
* The recognition of the role of the mother which has moved it away during a moment of the conception and tasks of reproduction.
This postulate of economist origin of the patriarchy which consecrated the economic, social and political domination of the woman seems to be of a key importance. It has enable to understand that the economic and conditions to reach it could be a way to drive to social change.
1.3. The institution of polygamy
From all institutions or traditional practices, polygamy appears to be the one which is in the centre of debates, in the fact that it is holder of numerous forms of violation of the rights of the woman. It draws its legitimacy at the same time in the custom and in religion, particularly Islamic. The practices of the lévirat (after the death of the husband, the woman must marry a member of the family of the deceased, most often one of the brothers of the husband), or of the sororat (practice of remarriage of a widower with the sister of his spouse, particularly when this late has small children), are common practices in the Senegalese society which violate systematically rights and fundamental freedom of the woman.
1.4. Slave state practices and their after-effects
The institution of slavery was and is another pain and social tragedy in the African countries. Even if it has been eradicated in all ethnic groups of the Senegalese society, it still remains some after-effects which constitute the worst social forms of discrimination in a way to keep the woman in a situation of extreme domination as long as she will exist.
1.5. The harmful traditional practices violating the woman dignity
In the Senegalese yesteryear society as that of today, there are several types of harmful practices such as female genital mutilations. These have a negative effect on the health of the mother and the child. The most frequent female genital mutilations in certain ethnic groups of the Senegalese society such as Fulani, Soninké, Bambara and Diola are the following:
* the incision or "Sunna" according to the Muslim religion which seems to leave undamaged the female sexual organs and that consists of taking away a small end of the clitoris or in proceeding to the injection or boring of the organ
* the removal which consists of severing the hood of the clitoris or in proceeding to the excision of a part or the half of the small lips of the organ
* The infibulation which consists of cutting entirely the small lips, the clitoris and sewing the big lips together by leaving only a small orifice which allows the passage of urines and menstrual flux.
In the Senegal, the realisations of inquiries on these practices reveal that excision represents 85 % of female genital mutilations, for reasons related to nutritional taboos and to force-feeding.
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