Dakar, May 24 (APS) – Senegalese academic Fatoumata Bernadette Sonko advocates “a change in the social imagination” to put an end to the “minorization of women” in society in general, in the political space in particular, in within which the fairer sex is called to “lead the fight to move the lines”.
A “sum of factors” hinders “the fragile progress of rights acquired by women”, she maintains in a column sent to the APS, pointing to the perpetuation of the “process of ostracization of women not only since the ‘deterritorialization’ caused by the arrival of the religions of the Book and colonization, but also the continuation of this exclusion by the Senegalese authorities from 1960”.
The situation is such that “without a change in the social imaginary, appointing women to positions of ‘visibility’ does not make it possible to break the stereotypes firmly anchored in mentalities”, writes Fatoumata Bernadette Sonko, teacher at the Center for the Study of information sciences and techniques (Cesti), the journalism school of the Cheikh-Anta-Diop University of Dakar.
“The law on parity does not upset the system of inequality denounced and does not change sociological reality either. It is not enough to change the political culture, but the foundations of cultural practices that marginalize them,” she observes.
“It is therefore urgent to attack the foundations of social structures based on male privileges and curricula,” writes this teacher-researcher in media and gender, author of several works, including “Women under silence in Senegal. A factory of patriarchy” (L’Harmattan editions).
Fatoumata Bernadette Sonko reports a “brutal withdrawal, followed by a draconian regime, worthy of a ‘structural adjustment program’ for women”, concerning the under-representation of women in decision-making bodies in Senegal.
She cites as an example the new government, in which four women sit out of 30 ministers, or 13% for 49.6% of the population, the same trend being observed, she says, “with the weekly appointments of the Council of Ministers for the main decision-making positions”.
Patriarchal ideology “served as a pivot for colonial policy”
“Beyond collective indignation, this minoritization of women calls out and makes us think about its origins, the ideological construction that underlies it and its legitimizing structures,” analyzes the teacher at Cesti, adding that the colonial state , in addition to the damage attributable to patriarchy, contributed to imposing male hegemony and dispossessing women, notably through the land law of 1904.
In the same vein, “the Normal School for Girls [de Rufisque] was only implemented in 1938, twenty years after that of boys, to introduce them to menial professions. To better exclude women from decision-making political life, she insists, the colonial administration ostensibly ignored their traditional power, their chiefdoms and their priesthoods.
The result is that patriarchal ideology “served as a pivot for colonial policy and its relations with the various local aristocracies, then with maraboutic circles”.
Senegalese women did not see their situation change either with the country’s independence in 1960, the new authorities inheriting “values that inferiorize women”, perpetuating them “through institutions and extending the ‘Senegalese social contract’ – expression which we borrow from Donal Cruise O’Brien – with the brotherhood leaders”.
The Family Code, which came into force in 1972, “only crystallizes the subjugation of women. Most of its provisions are unfavorable to them,” observes the teacher-researcher.
“Differentiated socialization through gender stratification creates different expectations. Girls are educated to be of service to others and to conjugate the verbs ‘to please, to have and to satisfy’ on a daily basis, NOT to be systematically assimilated in order to enter the social pattern and work for their marital success,” writes Fatoumata Bernadette Sonko.
Girls “must take advantage of a ‘short tongue’ referring to a silence constructed and validated by society, have ‘short steps’ to only cross the assigned space with male authorization, and a ‘short look’ which does not question the foundations of their subordination. Closely monitored, they undergo, at each stage of their lives, the controls of a panoptic society, in the Foucauldian sense. A surveillance that contrasts with that of boys encouraged to monopolize space, to conquer it, to build and maintain their professional success,” she analyzes.
“Women must be at the heart of the ‘Project’”
School, “a gateway used by several generations”, also has its negative influence by excluding women from the pages of history”. Toponymy, “which reflects a symbolic recognition, immortalizes the men and buries the women. Masculine and colonial, it erases them from our collective memory.”
There are also the representations conveyed by the media which “grant more visibility and weight to men”, in the form of a “distorted mirror, which is only a reflexive replica of the social configuration”, contributing to reinforce “the invisibility and inaudibility of women” in decision-making spheres.
However, argues Fatoumata Bernadette Sonko, “the rupture advocated by the government, which emphasizes the social well-being of all Senegalese, begins with the family and in the family”, of which women “constitute the base, the ‘middle post’”.
“To achieve this well-being, [les femmes] must be at the heart of the ‘Project’ of economic and social development of the new authorities”, indicates the teacher-researcher, believing that this question must be analyzed beyond the divide on the semantic debate on the name of the Ministry of the Family , in place of the Ministry of Women.
“It must go beyond this divide to provide diversified and combined responses to the daily concerns of all women such as security, the adaptability of public services and public transport, access to land and credit, “supervision of the work of domestic workers, state coverage of fertility treatments for couples experiencing reproductive difficulties, maternity leave for all, etc.”
In the same way, the “redefinition of struggles based on an endogenous schema is a priority to avoid the trap of a media feminism communicating all the time, a feminism without compass or backbone which imprisons women”.
All this to say that women’s relationship to power “must not be summed up in a quantitative enumeration of their presence in decision-making bodies or be limited to parity in terms of political representativeness”.
“The under-representation of women, which governs all areas of social life, beyond a constructed semantics, is only a continuum,” asserts Fatoumata Bernadette Sonko.
She believes that this issue “is political and political commitment is the antidote”. “It is in the political arena, a place where power is exercised, that women must lead the fight to move the lines, to appropriate it as a place of liberation, despite the high social cost of the entry ticket , refuse to serve as ‘stairs’ for men and assume their leadership instead of waiting for substitutes of recognition to get rid of their ‘glass mussoor’.”
BK/ESF
