Every so often, though, you happen on a gem. In a big old Brazilian house in Ouidah, Benin, you find one. The downstairs rooms are filled with an excellent exhibition on Women in Africa (done in association with the Museé de la civilisation in Quebec city, as it happened). As is often the case for me, the museum visit was made worthwhile by a single item.
A Beninese sculptor had made a big sundial-esque platform, a circle divided into hours. On that platform were about a dozen finely made bronze statuettes depicting the different jobs a rural woman here takes on each day. The statuettes started just before 4 AM and petered out around 10. If a woman here gets in 6 hours of sleep, she's pretty lucky indeed. I know this. Indeed, I think I know a fair bit, by now, about women's issues in the developing world. For some reason, though, I found this mildly tacky piece of art pretty affecting.
It's hard to overstate how much work African women do. It's a pretty universal experience, especially in smaller villages, to find all the women pounding millet (I wouldn't want to armwrestle any lady over the age of 12 here!) while simultaneously tending several children, cleaning and maintaining the house, and doing pretty much everything else that needs to be done. Not only do women do more than 90% of the domestic work, but they also do more than 50% of the farm labour, often bent double in the fields hoeing by hand with a baby strapped on their back. On top of this, it's women who sell the produce at market. What are the men doing all this time? Quite often getting drunk and listening to the radio. This is much less a charicature than you might think - although of course men do put in work on the farm. Men also take a majority of paid labour, but with that so hard to come by, there's a lot of room to sit around while the women do all the work. Not for nothing have plenty of studies confirmed that a dollar of aid money is twice or thrice as effective if put in the hands of a woman.
The real danger of charicature here is not, though, the depiction of men as lazybones, but of women as some sort of meek domestic slave. The real picture is far more complex than that. Locals often make the point to me that women have a great deal of power over the home and community where most people spend most of their time. There really is a great deal of reverence accorded to women, to their mysterious knowledge and their role as mothers. There are also plenty of women who've escaped and made it as salaried workers, or quite often as rich traders. All across West Africa you come across the "Mama Benz", matriarch of the market, named for their favourite make of car. Many of these women are very rich. All these examples come up regularly, but I think there's a real danger of whitewashing the truth.
No amount of cultural specificity or "local values" can erase the fact that life for most African women is far harder than it need be. Neither can any amount of familiarity with the culture keep this from making me angry on a daily basis. Aside from superhuman workloads, women (rural and urban alike) have to face a society that's incredibly permissive of men and restrictive of them. They may face genital mutilation, and they often face a culture that regards the beating of one's wife as part and parcel of marriage. When I talk about women with local men, the power dynamic is a curious one. Men know they're on top, to be sure, but there's a real undercurrent of fear - fear of these people who can somehow juggle so much in a day while the poor fellow can't keep his bar tab straight.
I shouldn't be too facetious about West African men. I do, reasonably often, meet men with progressive views, or at least people who acknowledge that improving the place of women is vital for society. Too often, though, you chat with a "progressive" man for 5 minutes and wear right through the progressiveness. There are lots of allies here, but not nearly enough.
My position here, as a white, male, feminist visitor is pretty awkward at times. I don't think I necessarily have the right (or the power) to change how men here relate to the women in their lives, but I try to argue the case whenever it comes up over beer. I'm forever explaining, for example, exactly why I think it wouldn't be nice to my partner at home if I took a wife here. This results in many giggles. Every so often, though, I find an argument that gets through. I sometimes find myself telling local guys that learning to cook or clean will get them big points with the ladies... not the tack I'd like to take, but hey.
Above all, what I'd love would be to have more chances to discuss the issues honestly with women. But that's damn hard. Women are much less likely to speak French, are much less often found out in social situations, and are much more likely to get yelled at for wasting their time talking. It really is the language barrier that's the biggest problem, as my life on the road is full of interactions with the women in the markets and food stalls. Indeed, I think "getting sassed by market ladies" ranks up there as one of my big daily activities. Sass yes, serious conversation on social issues, not so much.
I actually find the absence of female conversation in my life pretty exhausting . At home I'd say the majority of my friends are women; I've always found women easier to connect with than men - or at least than "men" in the sports-talkin' emotion-ignorin' sense. In any case, to go from my Canadian millieu to a world where men and women often lead lives unrecognizable to each other is a stress. If I were to avoid conversation with jackass men, I'd have a lot of lonely evenings on my hands.
This is why I often envy the female backpackers I meet - although on the West African trail there are few women travelling solo. A solo woman has the advantage of being able to use her Western-ness to gain access to traditionally male social spaces, while also being able to connect as a woman, with women. Alas, the language barrier is still a big problem here, but women generally have a better chance of bridging the gap on a day-to-day basis than I do.
What viewpoints you might get from those women, of course, is a different matter. When I was in Ghana, hanging around the university crowd, they had an event to discuss on-campus sexual harassment. Some 75% of female students listed "wearing provocative clothing" as a proximate cause - and these are the most educated and priveledged girls in the country. I certainly get laughed at as much by women as by men whenever I talk up equality, and often get the most stringent arguments against it from women. That being said, it's rare for me to have these conversations with women alone; I suspect many of them would have a different answer about how they feel about, say, polygamy (which remains common) if their brother/husband/neighbour weren't there to report on it.
I feel the need to hedge a bit more here. There are many, many women who do at some level escape from all these strictures. I don't want anyone reading this to think that there's some parade of women going by with their heads bowed - it's nothing like that. Quite the opposite, actually - women in West Africa are usually a stronger and more exuberant presence than men. That they are so with such greater obstacles in front of them speaks volumes. I also don't think there's a lot of point in talking broadly about "solutions" here. The role of women's issues in the "development" discourse, and indeed the role of "development" in the feminist discourse are both discussions that I don't nearly have enought of a grasp of to comment on. For me, it's more a question of my experience as a traveller - and there, it's often a strain.
Peace
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