Women: unavoidable development partners
on Mischa in Cameroon (Cameroon), 12/Mar/2011 13:28, 34 days ago
Tuesday the 8thMarch was international women’s day, and along with all the other women in Cameroon who can afford the material (or whose husband can afford it), I was decked out in my brand new official women’s day outfit, complete with frills, decorative buttons, and pointy shoulder flaps.Me and my national volunteer in our women's day outfits:you can see the slogan emblazoned across my breastsThe best thing about the fabric is the slogan; in French this is“Femmes:partenaires incontournables du développement”, which translates into English as “Women: committed partners for development.” However whoever had done the translation clearly doesn’t speak great English, as it had come out as “Women: unavoidable development partners”!Could this be a subconscious reflection of the widespread fear among many Cameroonian men of the effect that the increasing education and status of (some) women could have on their traditional dominance?A lot of men (and some women) joke a lot about women’s day and the fact that whether you have the official fabric or not has become more important than talking about the promotion of women’s rights. But I think women’s day is really necessary here- particularly in the North the subordination of women is absolutely engrained into society.Last week I was in a meeting discussing whether parents’ committees are representative of the communities in which they work. Parents’ committees do not, as a general rule, include mothers (I was at a parents’ meeting the other day with sixty men and no women). When we voted on the issue almost all the women in the room said parents’ committeesdid not represent at all the local communities. Almost all the men said they represented the local communities well.“Women are incapable of speaking in front of men,” responded one (male) community volunteer, “why should we invite them to the same meetings?”On Wednesday this week I was in a meeting with local officials to discuss the new strategy for birth certificate registration that we’re rolling out in Maga. We were debating whether it was a good idea to demand a small financial contribution from the parents for the birth certificate when one of the officials pointed out that this would probably be fine for boys, but that a lot of parents wouldn’t bother to establish birth certificates for their daughters if they had to pay for it.But despite these experiences I’m optimistic about the future of women in Cameroon: I work with some amazing women, not least my national volunteer (a well educated Muslim from a relatively poor family), who is a passionate advocate of women’s rights. The mothers’ associations I work with are composed of mainly illiterate women who do subsistence farming for a living, but are absolutely determined that their daughters and their sons will have the chance to get a good education.And women’s day does help to empower these women: on Tuesday the two mothers’ associations I work with came and danced at the local parade in front of Maga’s dignitaries. They are poor women and not all of them could afford the official fabric, and so they were concerned that they would not even be allowed to come to the parade, which is normally dominated by wealthy professionals and wives of professionals. But they did come, and one group won a prize for their dancing, and the other was the only group that the Sous-Prefet (the top man in Maga) came up and danced with. These sound like small things, but in a place like Magaeveryonenotices andeveryonetalks about it. Since then other women in Maga have been asking what they can do to form mothers’ associations too.