AfricaResource: The Place for Africa on the Net

This is not an argument that women are not oppressed on the African continent. What I argue instead, is that if there was ever a valid argument for the universalized oppression of women, the agency that has been most responsible is the state, modeled on its Western counterpart. In both its colonial and post-colonial forms, the African state has discriminated consistently against women. The post-colonial African state, continuing the colonial assault, has done a lot of violence to women's struggle for equality, equity and justice.

By Mojubaolu Olufunke Okome

Introduction

African women in the United States are faced with many challenges. There is first and foremost, the need to adjust to a new society, find one's feet and take care of one's responsibilities. These are no different from the challenges faced by many immigrant groups newly arrived on these shores. African women however, face the burden of devising pro-active mechanisms to deal with the stigma that is often attached to their existence, especially by those that purport to be their friends and defenders. One would be hard put to find evidence of the positive portrayal of African women in the media because they are often brought to public attention as objects of pity, those beset by the oppressive weight of patriarchy, those burdened by responsibilities that are made heavier by the refusal of their husbands to share in the responsibilities of housekeeping, and most significantly, those poor women who were genitally mutilated by their barbaric kinfolk. An extensive search of media and other sources of information on African immigrants to the United States largely gives information on "female genital mutilation". Without much ado, I would hasten to reject this terminology, which has become a fixture in contemporary feminist and popular discourse. Instead, I will use the term, female genital surgeries. The rationale for this rejection is that it is not the intent of those who practice the various forms of genital surgeries to wreak violence on their girls and women. To properly understand both the phenomenon, and construct viable solutions, it is incumbent on those that are bent on saving African women either from themselves or from their "brutal" societies to understand why such practices persist.

In the United States, this problem becomes even more complex because of the growing number of African immigrants on these shores. Some are women on whom genital surgeries have been done. Some, due to their belief systems, are desirous of ensuring that their daughters have such surgeries. For women who have had genital surgeries, going to the hospital for gynecological treatment entails becoming a veritable spectacle. Everything almost comes to a standstill, in order that the doctors in training, or the experts on hand observe firsthand, this atrocity. For such women, seeking medical care becomes associated with indignity. They are thus unlikely to go to the hospital willingly, except under the most dire of circumstances. When such women are interviewed, and they express their support for the practice, are they laboring under false consciousness? Are they foolish, or worse? It is impossible to make any rational determination without stepping back from the environment created by the furor over "FGM". What is clear is that such women must be protected, and their dignity ensured. There is ongoing effort to arrange for them to be accompanied to the hospital, especially by the group, RAINBO. These efforts are commendable, but must be expanded. For those who insist that genital surgeries are an integral part of their culture, criminalization is unlikely to solve any problem, instead, dialogue, discussion and the devising of solutions which incorporate their ideas is the only way to begin any kind of campaign to eradicate female genital surgeries.

In the drive to "protect" African women from "violence", most analysis fails to explore the history of violence, or the causative factors on the African continent. Instead, those who spearhead the "FGM" eradication drive have chosen to focus on only violence to women's bodily integrity, as they define it. Are we to assume that if women have had genital surgeries, they are unable to participate meaningfully in the social, economic, and political lives of their community and nation? If they have never had surgeries, are they so enabled, or empowered?

Roots of Oppression: State Class and Gender

This is not an argument that women are not oppressed on the African continent. What I argue instead, is that if there was ever a valid argument for the universalized oppression of women, the agency that has been most responsible is the state, modeled on its Western counterpart. In both its colonial and post-colonial forms, the African state has discriminated consistently against women. The post-colonial African state, continuing the colonial assault, has done a lot of violence to women's struggle for equality, equity and justice. Alavi, in his study of Pakistan and Bangladesh, argues that the colonial state was created with an agenda of dominating society, thus, with its strong bureaucracy and military organization it is overdeveloped vis a vis society. This overdeveloped state which is built on the culture and thought of the colonizer then dominates post-colonial society through the use of compulsion and violence. Ake similarly argues that the reality of the state falls short of its idealized form, and for women, this is especially true. The facade of what the state ought to be covers numerous ills. The state is an instrument of domination which retains its colonial characteristics, as such, it guarantees the rule of law only for the bourgeoisie. Essentially, the state remains an arena of class struggle. Essentially, it also is controlled from the outside by multilateral organizations such as the World Bank and International Monetary Fund; by transnational corporations, as well as official and unofficial creditors. Many of these institutions make policy for African countries. Many interfere in the daily management of the polity to such a significant extent that the state becomes a mere "window dressing". Thus, the relations of power within many African countries are not autonomously determined. Indeed, some have argued that they never have been. Whatever inadequacies we then lay at the foot of the state, we must attribute in part to the external controllers of the state, even those that claim to be progressive defenders of the rights of women. The reason for this contention is that while some organizations/institutions claim to be the defenders of human rights, they support the entrenchment of structures of domination that further erode what little power the individual has vis a vis the state. People who are hungry and beset by anomie are not necessarily interested in, or capable of making claims on the state for the expansion of their rights or the defence of rights that are taken away from them.

The understanding that the state is an arena of class struggle explains the practice of tokenism in all former attempts to join the bandwagon of "integrating women into development" both in the West and in Africa. These integrationist attempts have largely benefitted the bourgeoisie, both male and female, thus, one cannot equate the struggles of all women to a universal experience of patriarchy.

Commenting on the Effects of the Colonization of Africa, Robertson and Berger said the following:

Foreign domination with its extension into neocolonialism has introduced new class cleavages into African societies, sometimes onto a relatively egalitarian base, sometimes into previously stratified social structures. While earlier patterns of inequality usually intensified during the colonial period, new class systems also have developed in accordance with changing forms of capitalist penetration.

Many of these processes of social transformation have been detrimental to women. Their previously dominant role in food production has often been overlooked or ignored in the process of developing new crops and farming techniques, yet there have been fewer opportunities for them in newer capitalist enterprises than for men. This has left disproportionate numbers of women in economically precarious positions at the lower levels of the socioeconomic scale (9-10).