Feminism

"You know what 10,000 girls can do?"

"One hundred thousand loads of laundry!

Acres of sweeping!

100,000 buckets of water pulled.

Thirty thousand bowls of ceeb au jen (rice and fish)!

Five hundred thousand babies born to under-age mothers!

They do dishes, they'll collect firewood, and when you're not feeling up to the task, they'll do your work too!

Ten thousand girls?

Ten thousand plowed fields!

Millions of peanut crops harvested!

They can pound, they can pull, and if they're old enough to stand on their own two feet, they can work for you all day and night!

Just yell out your window for young Faatu or Khady to come today and see the difference that 10,000 girls can make!"

-- PCV-written entry to our country-wide newsletter, circa spring '09

There is a bit of a back-story here. Why "10,000 girls" was chosen as the demonstrative number, it is an NGO which works here in Kaolack.

It is true. This country couldn't run if not for the strong backs of women. Women who wake before sunrise, pound the millet for breakfast, do laundry while it is still cool, reheat last night's sauce over a wood fire, eat breakfast, iron and fold the clean laundry (with a charcoal-heated iron), go to the fields to weed or thin or water or harvest OR shell or roast or pound peanuts, make lunch over a wood fire, clean up after lunch, make tea (a 2 hour process), go to the fields to weed or thin or water or harvest, pull water at the well and carry it -- repeat at least 8 times, make supper, eat, fall asleep while contemplating making more tea. All of this with a child tied to your back and a few children running ragged around you. Bathing these kids at least once, if not twice, a day. Answering the beck and call of any man whose path may cross theirs. And many of these women have 5 children by the age of 24.

And they bear it all. Because it is their role. And I've been starting to wonder what it will take to for these women to have a feminist movement.

The situation here is a little different. Women are granted suffrage. However, they are not typically respected in other ways that we believe to be (in this day and age) within our basic human rights. Arranged marriages are forced on young girls (12-16); women have very little ownership over property; physical abuse is seldom followed up on by police; rape isn't seen as such a horrific crime; polygamy is the standard, etc. The usual situation here would be called "little woman"-ing at home. Men look down on women. A woman should always bring them water, a stool, or whatever they ask for. If a woman has a good idea, it is dismissed. Young girls are forced to drop out of school in order to help their mothers at home.

Then, the other day, I sat in my compound watching the "ndur naabe" (nomadic Pulaars) moving their wagons through town. It dawned on me that almost all of these carts were being driven by women.

Very few women drive cars here. Very few women ride bikes here. Very few women drive wagons here.

Then I did a little research and asking around. I found out that the rate of polygamy in the Pulaar ethnic group is much lower than that of the Wolof ethnic group.

And then I realized something else groundbreaking (well, it was groundbreaking in my mind).

The first state to allow women the vote was Wyoming.

The first woman elected to U.S. Congress was from Montana (Jeanette Rankin).

What do these two states have in common? The frontier/homestead history.

I came to the conclusion that pioneer women had to work just as hard as the men. The men came to rely on their wives as work partners. They were alone in this new world. They had no other support systems, no extended family, no neighbors down the way. They had to rely on each other. They learned to respect one another. Men and women in the west typically learned how to work together and learned that both sexes had their respective strengths and weaknesses.

Take Laura Ingalls-Wilder for instance. First of all, she hyphenated her last name! How progressive! Charles Ingalls knew that without the strength and fortitude of his wife, Caroline, they would never have survived. They typified the strong relationships that grew out of those stressful times.

So, as I watched those nomadic Pulaar women pull through town, whipping their donkeys, I couldn't help but feel a little hope. The Senegalese women are tough, they are strong, this nation has been built on their backs. The Pulaar women know it. The Pulaar men know it. They just need to help the others to see it.

What, you may ask, are the men doing while the women complete that arduous list of tasks? They are sitting in the shade under a tree, drinking tea, shooting the breeze.