Gender

8^th of March 2014

One of our sessions at the training center dealt with gender equality in Senegal. It was facilitated by Awa, a new grandmother with a rare queenly presence. I hope to get to know her on both a professional and personal level over the next two years. She wanted to clarify the position of women in the Senegalese culture, and challenge our preconceptions as Americans. Senegalese women, she said, are not docile and submissive. They do not obey their husbands and fathers out of fear or lack of self-esteem. They are not lacking in will power or ambition. They do make sacrifices, but not only for their fathers’ and husbands’ sake. They make sacrifices for their families as a whole, for their children who need them. A Senegalese woman is the hearth of a household. The home is her domain, and she sustains it in all things.

My mother at CBT, Ami, works hard. She takes care of 6 children on a daily basis, including a 3 month-old baby. She cooks three meals per day, and carefully portions them out of each family member. She cleans and sweeps the entire household everyday. She washes the entire family’s laundry.  Somehow, she finds time to sell bread and ice to the steady flow of customers who come to her door. She is not always patient with her children, and always voices her displeasure. She makes sure that they obey her orders, and that they follow Senegalese customs rigorously. Sometimes, she argues with her husband, and always holds her own in a conversation. No doubt about it, my mother is a strong woman. And yet, she is a strong woman that makes many sacrifices. Now that her eldest daughter, Jara, is living a newly married life in Dakar, she is essentially alone in shouldering the bulk of the work. My father, a fisherman turned marabout in his old age, does little around the house. While she labors, he spends much of his time lying on a mat outside reading the Quran. Surely, his work is important too; but the differences at least are glaring.

Awa tells me that it was hard for her husband decided to take a second wife. She says that she could have left him, and that she seriously considered it at some point. After all, she has made a name for herself, a name that belongs to her and only her. She is an accomplished and respected professional woman with her own bank account. But if she did leave, who would take care of her children? And as a self-respecting woman, could her really leave without putting up a fight? And what would her family say and think of her? So, instead of swallowing her pride, she maintained it by staying. She recognized that the sacrifice she was making—accepting her husband’s decision to take on another wife—would also help conserve a most precious gift: family harmony and unity, paramount in Senegalese culture. She says it was definitely worth it. She even developed an intimate relationship with the second wife over time.

But, not quite understanding the explicit meaning of her words, I had to ask: what about your own personal happiness as a woman? She told me that the pursuit of happiness is not a priority in Senegalese culture. Here, people do not believe that one can be in a constant state of happiness, so they do not aspire to it. Just as there are happy moments, there are unhappy moments. One cannot be without the other. Both contribute equally to weaving the fabric of life. When faced with repeated failure, a Senegalese person will accept it as God’s will. They make their peace with it, then move on to other things. They do not linger.