'It is time for Senegalese women to stop being treated as second-class citizens

A Senegalese feminist collective is concerned about putting laws on gender parity back into question.

 An election official opens a ballot box after polls close in Dakar at the end of Senegal's general election, July 30, 2017. SEYLLOU / AFP

For the legislative elections scheduled for July 31, failure to comply with the law on gender parity has caused coalitions to reject their electoral lists. This "negligence" reveals the retrograde and sexist ideology that reigns in Senegalese politics. More broadly, we note the rise of a discourse tending to discredit the law on gender parity, presenting it to the public as a "danger to democracy."

We recall that parity is not a privilege granted to women, it is an inclusive device allowing half of the population to access political positions on the same basis as men. We also recall that the greatest danger to Senegalese democracy is the rise of an extremist and intentionally obscure rhetoric that wants to exclude women.

It is time for women – who make up more than half of Senegal's population, or 52% – to stop being treated as second-class citizens. According to the Agence Nationale de la Statistique et de la Démographie (ANSD, the national agency for statistics and demography), women contribute 22% of GDP (March 2022). Added to this is unpaid domestic work estimated at 28.3% of GDP and, more broadly, the exploitation of women, particularly their bodies, in all sectors of private, professional, and public life. This brings the contribution of women to more than 50.3% of the nation's GDP.

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According to the ANSD, poverty is also less prominent in female-headed households. Indeed, it affects 2 out of 10 people (21.8%) living in a household headed by a woman compared to more than 4 out of 10 people (42.7%) in a household under the authority of a man (Enquête Harmonisée sur les Conditions de Vie des Ménages au Sénégal, or EHCVM, "survey on household living conditions in Senegal," by the ANSD, September 2021). So we women are the driving force of this country and we are preventing its collapse.

Do not rewrite our history

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We also have our place in the history of Senegal. It is worth remembering that in 1833, Ndjeumbeut Mbodj sacrificed herself by marrying a Moor to stop the war; that her sister Ndaté Yalla stood up to the colonial administrator Faidherbe; that Queen Aline Sitoé Diatta practiced civil disobedience during colonization; that Soukeyna Konaré was one of the placard bearers demanding Senegal's independence in 1958; that Sokhna Diarra Bousso gave birth to one of the country's greatest worthy sons, the founder of Mouridism. We will not allow our history to be rewritten at the expense of our fundamental rights.

Law No. 2010 of May 28, 2010, on absolute parity between men and women in elective and semi-elective bodies constituted a decisive turning point in the political history of Senegal. It reflects the application of the international, regional and national legal framework in favor of equality between women and men. Since the implementation of decree No. 211-819 dated June 16, 2011, it has raised the hopes of women from all walks of life to realize their legitimate aspirations in an inclusive and participatory democracy.