Mali battles over women's rights

Rebecca Stewart
Guardian Weekly, Tuesday 7 September 2010

Deep in the vast, burnt-orange Malian desert in the town of Gao, 17-year-old Zina is getting ready for school. One of the luckier Malian women, she is among the 33% who can read and write. "I hope to be a doctor when I finish my studies," she says, through wide eyes framed by her vivid blue veil. "I'm not sure if I'll get married before my studies or afterwards," she adds "but inshallah, I'll find a good husband."

While the professional workplace is slowly opening up to women, with a few female lawyers, doctors and MPs, it remains predominantly the realm of men. I ask if she thinks she'll marry another doctor and how she feels about being equal to her husband – a privilege denied her mother. "We won't be equal," she says with a nervous smile. "I will always be inferior to my husband. That's how it is in Islam. I never want to be equal to my husband."

Zina's pregnant, 19-year-old sister Nana is giggling. "It's not like that here," she says. "Your parents chose your husband and you must obey him. It is in the Qu'ran and it is in the law."

According to Brahim Koné, president of the Malian Association of Human Rights, the position and treatment of women is one of the biggest human rights abuses in Mali today. "If the authorities aren't careful, Mali risks back-sliding," he says.

Under family law, Nana's inferiority it not just cultural, it is imposed by the state. She has a legal obligation to guarantee "obedience" to her husband. This means she can be divorced for anything from burning the dinner to refusing to have sex; she is allowed to inherit only an eighth of her husband's property if he dies; and while the legal marriage age for men is 18, for women it is just 15.

Some seeds of change were sown in Mali more than a decade ago, when the ministry for the promotion of women, children and the family, in association with certain women's groups and NGOs, proposed changes to laws that discriminated against women.

Then, in 2003, the UN Human Rights Committee said changes were necessary to bring local law into line with internationally ratified conventions. "Why did we ratify the conventions emanating from Europe and the west just to then reject the changes and say that the west is imposing its values on our society," asks Maitre M'Bam Diarra, mediator of the republic – the senior-most legal figure in the country – and a leading human rights activist.

"The changes didn't just start now," she says. "There have been several revisions coming from the fact that we need to harmonise local laws with international ones. But what is in the code [family law] is nothing new."

She is flanked by armed bodyguards. "They say that those of us who support the code are blasphemers," she says. "The imam of Kati, a town just outside Bamako, spoke in favour of it, and now he is in hiding in fear of his life."

In August 2009, the national assembly adopted the code with all its provisions. Soon after, demonstrators took to the streets in the capital, Bamako, and in Timbuktu and Mopti, shouting "Allahu Akbar" (God is great) and holding banners declaring: "No to the new code."

Weeks later, President Amadou Toumani Touré, instead of ratifying the law, sent it back to the assembly to be reconsidered "to ensure a calm and peaceful society". Touré, a former general, overthrew a military government in 1991 and handed power back to civilians the following year. He retired from the army in 2001 and was elected president in 2002. He was re-elected in 2007, in elections deemed free and fair by international observers.

The president's backing down on the code reflects the political power of those who oppose it.

"This code has no respect for the inherent values of our society," says Mahmud Dicko, president of Mali's High Islamic Council. "It's just the way our society is organised. The head of the family is the man, and everyone in the family has to obey him." The equality of women is one of the most contentious provisions in the code, along with the secularisation of marriage and the proposal to give women inheritance rights on divorce – all of which, opponents argue, run counter to Islam.

Many of those protesting against the code were women. Hadja Safiatou Dembelé, president of the National Union of Muslim Women's Associations, says: "There are passages of this code that are incompatible with Islam, and that's why we oppose it. We will never leave our religion for this code".

For those fighting for equal rights, there are two main issues. First, the interpretation of a woman's role in Islam, and second, the position of women in terms of economics and education. "It's very difficult for illiterate women to either read the Qu'ran or assert their legal rights," says Maitre M'Bam. "[But] the problem isn't the Qu'ran. It's just a question of interpretation."

Back in Gao, Zina is a symbol of the solution, of a new Mali. She is a devout Muslim and has been told the Qu'ran makes her inferior to men. But she is also part of a generation of women breaking out of the traditional mould. And it is through women like her that change will ultimately come.

Bogolan – Traditional, Commodity or Fine Art

Images of wood statues, beaded jewelry, and bogolan represent what Americans view as African culture. Thus African culture in the minds of Americans becomes a glorified homogenized icon. How do you dissect this homogenized icon in an effort to rid Americans of the stereo types of Africa? Africa is a big continent. Even in Mali where I serve as a Peace Corps volunteer there are diverse cultures and people which is reflected in the more than nine local languages and in Dogon country every village speaks a different distinct dialect.

In the Peace Corps we are trained to do development work. The message was to develop skills so that the people we work with can make more money and thus have a better life. Working with artisans a debate is in the forefront of my everyday activities as a Small Enterprise Development volunteer. The debate goes like this; to what standard of development am I aiming for and how much of the indigenous culture will be sacrificed for the development work I do.

The concepts of traditional, authenticity, and contemporary, are tossed around in the fair trade shops that have sprung up all over the western world. These concepts are coined to accompany products that have been produced in mass production to sell to western consumers. The goal is to translate long time traditional practices and motifs into commodities for the soul purpose of business. During a training in Mali that I attended a fair trade organization gave a presentation on 2009 Colors and Designs. Watching the Malian translate phrases into Bambara such as “Winter Colors, Fall Colors, Warm Colors,” was painful. There is no winter or fall here in Mali. As a volunteer put it how do you teach Malians about color when they don’t learn what primary colors are.

Many organizations have sprung up in the past decade that “Help” local international artist to achieve the goal of translating traditional crafts into commodities. People from these different organizations go to a place already producing some local tourist art and works with them in product development and business practices thus bringing in a lot of money and trade that allows the artist to become part of the middle class while hundreds of struggling artists continue producing on a small scale struggling just to feed them selves.

We criticize Africa as undeveloped and at the same time glorifying African traditions. What kind of message are we sending to people of Africa? This phenomenon can be said of Native Americans, and other developing groups of people the world over. In the development process it is important for Africa to define and redefine its own culture and goals both as nations and as individuals. I admire Africans. As much as the western world has tried to colonize, enslave or genocide the people and develop the continent, Africans have remained proud in their indigenous and diverse cultural. Bravos Africa!

Ethnography

Ethnography as defined by the dictionary is the study and systematic recording of human cultures, exactly the thing that my blog has tried to do. Many anthropologist believe that it is important for people to tell their own story.

This project was inspired my daughter Lani BonaDea. I gave my camera to two different Malians to let them tell their own story and this is what they pictured.

Owa's Family













































Awa the mother of my name sake.

Mali - A Recycling Program

We are starting to collect empty water bags that are for sell here in Mali. The need to be washed and then we will make purses or other types of bags out of them. Here are some pictures from our first days.

Bogolan Training

A volunteer in the village of Diola asked Koro to train a Women’s Association to make Bogolan. The Women’s Association takes in children who have become orphans because of AIDS. In the last year Koro has taken a training to expand her bogolan skills and now she would have the opportunity to train others.

When I first proposed this to Koro she seemed nervous this was a big step for her.

The bogolan business was booming so when the time came to prepare for the training it became more than we had bargained for. Koro had been offered 10.000 cfa a day for seven days, transportation to and from Diolla as well as room and board while she was at the training. This was a good income for Koro. She just needed to come up with a supplies and materials budget. This was not as easy as you would think. The mud which is the main dying compound needs fermenting for a long period of time in a large pot. Koro has had her pot fermenting mud for longer than I have known her. Most of the dying materials are natural plants.

We arrived in Diola with rice sacks full of plants, bark, and fabric along with paint brushes, plastic gloves, stencils, and everything Koro needed for the formation. Koro stayed with Nako the woman who runs the NGO that sponsored the training and I stayed with a fellow Peace Corps volunteer. I don’t know about Koro but I was nervous about how it was going to go. Koro and I mostly visit her family we don’t go into situations where things are not familiar.

At the start of the first day all my worries were over the women showed up enthusiastic. The big surprise for me was how much I learned and I watch bogolan being made every day. Koro started out making designs freehand going through all the color processes then moved into stencil work with applying the color white as the grand finale. We ate together, danced to gather, and made bogolan together and so much more.

At the closing ceremony the Mayor the Dugitigi, several NGO’s came and were presented with some bogolan material that the women made. Koro and I made many new friends. We contacted a woman who does trainings on how to make soap which will be my next project if I can squeeze it before I leave.

Seeing the Fruits of My Labor

Today the second literacy serious held their graduation ceremony. Thirty five Malians received certificates. They learned adding, subtracting, multiplying, the metric system, reading, writing and some even wrote poetry. The mayor and the prefect (kinda like a county executive) came to the ceremony. I gave a speech in French. In the middle of the ceremony the Mayor presented me with a banner that read in Bambara “Kori de la pe Sababula Kucala boloa baara law ya kalan soro. Which means Peace Corps works with artisans of Koutiala.


This week Koro and I did math together. We were going over the cost of some new products for pricing and sales calculation. There have been many times in the past months that I tried to facilitate tracking expenses, reassessing prices, and just crunching the numbers as a routine business practice.

When I first arrived here in Koutiala I saw so many things the Bogolan Association could do to improve their business. In the last several weeks many of these have been implemented successfully. There were things like pricing, product development which included new motifs, colors, products, and marketing; business practices such as purchase pricing and sales calculations, just to name a few.

Last week Peace Corps held an In-service Training Session (IST). Koro spent several weeks preparing new products with all the skills she has been developing over the last year and a half. This includes new designs, new patterns and new colors. A lot of these skills were acquired during the bogolan training in Segou (which is known as the bogolan capital of Mali). We were going to the IST with this product debut for the Peace Corps volunteers to browse, buy and give feed back to improve. We didn’t sell as much as we wanted to but you never do, do you. Koro did get some good feed back manly on quality control.

What I didn’t know then that I know now is that no one in the Bogolan Association knew much math. As a Small Enterprise Development volunteer I did get some training in Illiterate Bookkeeping which seems like an oxymoron. Now that most of the Bogolan Association has gone through two of three series in the Literacy program they now know what we in the States would call basic math.

At the ceremony for the Literacy II class all of this came together for me so when the mayor presented me the bogolan banner I got so emotional I had to hold back the tears because tears just are not appropriate to cry in public here in Mali. I am going to miss everyone here so much.

Journee Internationale De La Femme 2010

We celebrated here in Koutiala. I had my outfit made and was looking forward to the day. The night before I went by Koro’s for a visit. She had a head ache and said she was not going to participate in the next day’s festivities. I was so disappointed.

The next morning started with my usual bike ride. When I got home I left the house with the top of my IWD outfit and a skirt on my way to the market down the street. My host mom was dressed in her IWD outfit and invited me to go with her in the car. Now this doesn’t happen very often and I wasn’t sure where the celebration was so I took her up on the ride.

International Women's day is an important day in developing countries to rally people together for women's rights. Secretary of State Hillary Rodham Clinton identified equality for the world’s women and girls as the central challenge that will determine the peace and progress of the 21st century.

This year marks the 100th aniversary of International Women's day. In 1910, the first international women's conference was held in Copenhagen and countries around the world began celebrating the event annually beginning the following year. In places like China, Russia, Vietnam and Bulgaria, IWD is a national holiday today.

Every year, there is a theme to the day. The UN's theme for International Women's Day 2010 is Equal "rights, equal opportunities: Progress for all." Here in Koutiala there were two themes to this year’s IWD, one a National Malian theme because 2010 marks 50 years of Malian women’s freedom from colonial rule and the second a local Koutiala theme was Husbands helping their wives space the birth of their children for the health of the family. There were speakers, women from the audience giving testimonies, and theater skits with a woman dressed as a man that got a big response from the audience.

I sat with Fanta Diallo my host mom but kept an eye out for my friends the artisan women. Fanta was cooking the food for the event so she left when the time came and low and behold Koro showed up and stayed through lunch. At lunch time my friends the artisan women, Koro and I all ate lunch together. Even though my language is not that good we laughed, talked, and teased each other and just had fun together.

P.S. Kounandy is doing so much better this week.