West African women’s need to form their own federation

9 At the worldwide Congress of the Women’s International Democratic Federation in Vienna in June 1958, delegates from French-speaking Africa discussed the need to unite on the West African level. [20] That wish came to pass in July 1959 in Bamako, during the First Congress of the Union des Femmes de l’Ouest Africain (UFOA), which was attended by delegates from Guinea, Dahomey, Senegal and French Sudan. [21] The historian Ophélie Rillon explains that UFOA activists inserted their point of view into the Pan-African discourse that male leaders of the time – including Kwame Nkrumah, from Ghana, Sékou Touré, from Guinea and Modibo Keïta from Mali – were engaging in. They achieved that by insisting on the cultural dimension of Pan-Africanism which was less of a focus of concern for male leaders of the time, who were more interested in Pan-Africanism’s political aspects. [22] Due to having received the same colonial education for girls that encouraged acquiring a shared African culture and common values, several of the educated women felt a sense of belonging to what they defined as a shared “African culture.” [23] In the 1960s, that culture was the lever for West African engagement, not only within UFOA, but also more broadly in the construction of this “female Pan-Africanism.” [24]

10 On the English-speaking side of things, there were two initiatives, one after the other. First, in late 1959, women from the Federation of Sierra Leone Women expressed interest in organizing an encounter for West African women in 1960. The goal of that consultation would be to discuss their situation and to prepare themselves as well as possible for meetings of international women’s organizations, in order to showcase their stance as African women. [25] Next, the Conference of Women of Africa and African Descent (CWAAD) took place in Accra from 14 to 21 July 1960. The idea for that conference had arisen in 1958, when the Ghanaian president, Kwame Nkrumah, backed the first encounter of independent African states with the All-African People’s Conference, in Accra. He promoted not only new forms of solidarity between African nations, but also between those nations and African diasporas. [26] Inspired by that discourse, the Federation of Gold Coast Women, led by Evelyn Amarteifio, strengthened its transnational bonds, welcoming Pan-African figures from the diaspora into discussions. Starting in 1958, Evelyn Amerteifio, with the collaboration of Claire Drake, Dorothy Padmore, Shirley Graham Du Bois and Amy Jacques Garvey, began organizing a conference of African women and women of African descent. As a result, a total of 150 delegates from West African countries, as well as from the United States and the West Indies Federation, took part in the Conference of Women of Africa and African Descent in Accra.

11 During that conference, tension was running high between the Ghanaian women organizers and Nkrumah, who wanted to play a central role, directing the women’s discourse. By the end of the conference, the delegates had formulated the idea of organizing an encounter every other year, in different African countries. Nkrumah’s intrusion in the women’s organization movement after the conference brought that initiative into question. [27]

12 It was in the context of that effervescence that Felicia A. Ogunsheye had written to Fatou Cissé, general secretary of UFOA, to Evelyn Amarteifio, president of the Federation of Gold Coast Women, and to Rena-Karefa Smart, general secretary of the Federation of Sierra Leone Women, in order to assemble West African women delegates for Ibadan (Fig. 4). [28] Thus she became a standard-bearer for the desire for union and debate on a larger scale. The encounter aimed to go beyond the schemas inherited from colonial history and the linguistic fractures which that history had introduced; it also intended to do without the patronage of male leaders of Pan-Africanism. [29] In Ibadan, the process of self-definition of a West African brand of women’s activism was a central theme that ran along two paths: the delegates’ reflections on their own specific identities as West African women, and the distinction between West African and European women’s activism.

Fig. 4. Getting ready for the Ibadan conference, 1960 (© Ogunsheye Foundation).

African Women: “Basic elements” of independent nations [30]

13

Now that they had achieved independence, [African women] had to face new tasks in nation-building. Improved status for African women was the basic element in their society, whose rate of progress is determined by the rate of progress of the women. [31]

14 During plenary sessions, which all delegates could attend, speakers came to a common definition of African women’s national role. It fell upon these citizens of newly or soon-to-be independent nations to build, and to heal wounds, tasks at which they believed themselves to be naturally skilled. The mission was to begin in the home. In those years, independence leaders promoted a nation-family model “based on defining families as the basic cell of society, and the leader as a father figure: the “father of the country” or “father of the national family”. [32] This assimilation of political relationships to family relationships – which is quite common in various nation-building contexts – also includes a gendered dimension. [33] Typically, African women activists in the 1950s and 1960s often portrayed themselves as “good wives and mothers” who had to run their household harmoniously as “good wives to current leaders”, whom it was their role to support, as well as “good mothers to future leaders”, whom it was their duty to educate. [34] That idea was only partially reworked in Ibadan: delegates desired to promote a moral obligation to women’s public engagement, both because of their specifically feminine qualities (pacifism, willingness to listen, being understanding) and by virtue of their role in educating citizens of nations of the future. Thus women were seen, and saw themselves, as the first link in the process of newly independent nations achieving success.

15 Nevertheless, the delegates focused more on the rights that their maternal status granted them than on their maternal duties within the home. As cornerstones of their homes – and thus their nations – the delegates were demanding new political and social rights so that their actions could reach beyond the domestic sphere in their independent countries. That discourse also came with a transnational dimension: women’s patriotic duties were in keeping with their innate pacifism, which must move beyond the home and spread throughout Africa. Only women – because of their inherent skills – could provide a specific kind of care, both to the nation and to its external relations, meaning women should become agents of Pan-Africanism. Women’s entry into the “political” sphere of international relations by virtue of a gendered perspective on “care” was still innovative at that time. The delegates promoted care ethics with an eye on raising their social profile both nationally and internationally. They aimed, for instance, to run hospitals, despite the fact that they were limited at the time to positions as nurses or midwives; to enter governmental institutions, while they were still usually secretaries or assistants; to become champions of peace by trying to stand up to what they analyzed as a male penchant for domination and violence.

Fig. 5. African women, “factors of peace and union” in African society”, [35] August 1960 (©A. Adio-Moses – personal archives).

16 Independence was expected to create a disruption that Lady Ademola, the Nigerian president of the Nigerian Council of Women’s Societies, explains captivatingly:

17

Changes taking place in Africa at the present moment are affecting the very roots of our political, social and economic structure. Such changes constitute a challenge and demand a planned programme. We need to harness our woman-power as well as our man-power to meet this challenge. This is the time for women to accept responsibilities in the affairs of their country. [36]

18 In this time of burgeoning independence, the African women’s idea was to embrace functions normatively seen as masculine: national and international political and socio-economic engagement. While some of the activists had done so previously, the idea was to promote those new roles massively at the regional level. (Fig. 5). [37]

West African and European women: a different kind of engagement

19

It was not a suffragettes’ meeting. […] It was difficult to get the women to talk about their rights or lack of civic rights. […] This confirmed the view that West African women had always had a status in their society and are not obsessed with the struggle for equal status with men obtaining in the Western world. [38]

20 With these words, F.A. Ogunsheye summarized another tendency that crops up during the conference’s plenary sessions. Reports from those sessions state several times that the delegates want to go in a different direction than European women activists in their national contexts. They declare that they are not seeking equality with men, a fact that can be explained historically by the role of “the African woman” who, through her financial autonomy and economic activities, is already assumed to possess a de facto equalitarian position. This assertion was not applicable to all West African women. It did, however, reflect the position of the majority of the delegates: educated women who played substantial roles in their countries’ economic and social dynamics. [39] What’s more, although the speakers never mention inequality or seeking equality, they were trying to integrate women into the state apparatus, from which they were still excluded. They promoted the idea of women taking advantage of cracks opening in the system to enter male-gendered institutional structures, in order to design economic and sociopolitical programs that would be more favorable to women. They also defended the idea of collective action intended to improve their representations and their social, economic, political and familial roles.

21 Some participants insisted on the fact that the demands being made were absolutely devoid of aggressiveness and based on peaceful negotiation. This portrayal of “the African woman” as economically powerful to the point of being heard without having to adopt an anti-establishment approach should be qualified simply by referring to the many struggles women had been involved in over the preceding years. [40] Despite the latent contradictions due to the difficulty inherent in attempting to create a unified definition of numerous and diverse national struggles, the main goal was to define African women’s activism as being independent and distinct from European women’s. The issues, stakes and tensions brought out by this process of self-definition appear clearly in an analysis of the thematic discussions that took place during the conference.

From the family to national politics…

Fig. 6. M. Guèye speaking at the session whose theme was “The African family in transition,” 9 August 1960 (© Ogunsheye Foundation).

23 “The exigencies of modern life disrupt traditional society […]. Modern life impinges on age-long customs,” M. Guèye, from Senegal, is declaring in Fig. 6. “From this turmoil, the African woman experiences a nervous exhaustion which is new to her,” [41] she concludes. Director of the Action féminine organization, and a representative of Senegal’s Ministry of Planning and the Economy, she spoke to several delegates’ concerns as they emerged during various themed sessions focusing on family, male-female relations, and sexuality for married couples. Those concerns were hardly new: since the early twentieth century, colonial administrations, both British and French, had been expressing anxiety over how to reconcile “Western modernity” and “African tradition.” [42] That preoccupation was also still central in nationalist leaders’ speeches, and was the subject of much debate amongst women activists at the national level. Nevertheless, the issues were raised here in an innovative way. Previously, discussions about the family and marital relations rarely addressed the relational aspect of couples’ lived reality, which was often discussed in terms of material rights and obligations. What’s more, in the exchanges at this conference, women’s sexuality was at the very core of the debates, and it was addressed in discussions about sexual education, the family and family planning. [43]

24 For the delegates, sexual education was primordial. It needed to take place at home and be extended at school. The idea of including men was envisaged as well: “This [sexual] education should concern both girls and boys, who should be educated about their responsibilities as husbands and fathers.” [44] The delegates considered that the “fear” of becoming pregnant was too often seen by women as the best protection against their husband’s attentions. They condemned that practice, emphasizing the idea that physical relations between husband and wife should be seen as a moment of elevation of women’s moral condition. The conference speakers also pointed out that women shouldn’t worry that refusing to yield to one’s husband would affect his virility, and explained that the connection between virility and intercourse was no more than superstition. They concluded that the dissemination of knowledge about sexuality was necessary in order for science to get the upper hand over a whole substratum of superstitious beliefs. [45]

25 Another aspect of the discussion focused on family planning. The delegates made precise proposals for educating the largest possible number of women about these subjects. They believed that it was important to establish contacts with women from different backgrounds (urban and rural, educated or not) in order to discuss family planning. To that end, they suggested drawing up a list of “the clinics and doctors who are available to counsel mothers and fathers” [46] for each country. Those listings were also intended to be distributed in the countryside, in order to encourage those practices beyond urban areas. By the same token, they believed that it was high time to “encourage women to study medicine and to practice in rural and urban areas, as many women would feel freer to discuss these family planning problems with women doctors.” Lastly, these themes also needed to be taken up by women’s groups. [47] The sense of duty that the delegates – who were, for the most part, educated – felt toward rural women emerges clearly in these discussions, which is not unlike the stance the first educated activist women in the early twentieth century had taken toward their un-educated sisters. [48] Nonetheless, the family planning that these activists from well-to-do backgrounds sought appeared to be at odds with some rural women’s desire to have more children. [49]

26 The conference speakers’ analytical framework for women’s sexuality provides other clues to their social trajectories. For the delegates, access to family planning would be reserved for wives and mothers. Those services would not be made available to prostitutes or to women having pre-marital sex or in adulterous relationships. That stance corresponded to a goal of reconciling the activists’ project of modernization with the national and religious customs that a number of political leaders championed in the early 1960s. [50] But this highly normative analytical framework also bears witness to the fact that, collectively, the delegates presented themselves as defenders of moral values that de facto excluded certain women’s rights to control their own sexuality and reproduction. Although the goal was to provide scientific explanations on the subject of sexuality, which was seen as being too frequently interpreted through the prism of superstition, certain practices, such as abortion, did not enjoy the same analysis. A campaign to discredit abortion by presenting it as dangerous for women was proposed at the conference. Nevertheless, although they championed maternalism, asserting the centrality of marriage and maternity, measures were proposed to make motherhood less onerous. Motherhood should be chosen, not imposed by men; governments should take mother’s and wives’ needs into account by providing education, opening day-care centers and ensuring better working conditions for women, thereby enabling them to be independent.

27 The topic of relationships within nuclear families and extended families was posed in an interesting way. The delegates emphasized the idea that, “there appears to be too much interference from in-laws” [51] and insisted on the need to regulate those relationships:

28

[…] it is agreed that parasites must not be encouraged. We owe our very closest relatives, i.e. mother and father, an obligation to care for them, but distant relatives should be discouraged if our own family unit is not to suffer. [52]

29 The encounter between the “modernity” – of the nuclear family – and the “tradition” – of the extended one – was crucial, and required a strict definition of women’s “family obligations” [53] in order to guide African women in managing “the African family in transition.”

30 The issues of nuclear families, as well as of women’s sexuality, were interpreted in highly divergent ways on the continent during the 1950s-1960s, leading to reflections upon the effects of urbanization, modernization and new, paid jobs. National and local social contexts were decisive in these debates. What was innovative was that the delegates tried to erase those local fault lines by seeking a consensus that could demonstrate the West African cohesion they were claiming, as well as the need for common policies. [54]

31 Lastly, the delegates insisted that optimal family management would free up time, enabling women to become involved in national politics. The emphasis was on the need for West African women to think for themselves rather than being influenced by their husbands, to exercise their right to vote and to stay informed about national political issues. [55] So it was suggested that women’s groups should use classes and films to promote women’s knowledge and exercise of their rights as citizens. [56] They should also form groups to encourage women from all social backgrounds to vote and to be active citizens. The activists emphasized the importance of women’s civic engagement on a national level, which they saw as the keystone to engagement on an even broader scale.

32 Once again, national realities bore witness to a situation that was far more complex than the report’s apparent consensus would imply. Women’s suffrage and right to hold office was still quite recent in most of the countries present at the conference, and had yet to be achieved in others (such as Sierra Leone, where only women in the capital had the right to vote; or Nigeria, where only women in the south could cast a ballot). Furthermore, even in countries where women’s suffrage had been legally achieved, there were still large pockets of resistance to it, and even reluctance among some portions of the female population. Thus this appeal to political citizenship for women hardly went without saying in the context of many national realities, even if those fault lines tended to disappear during the search for consensus at the conference.

… toward a female Pan-Africanism?

33

We agreed that most West Africans who have gone through these French or English universities have unconsciously imbibed a foreign way of thinking. So it would be really in our interest if everything possible could be done in order to start thinking in an African way. One member suggested that since French and English systems are among the best in the world, it is essential we base our system on theirs. We disagreed with her because we can study – history, geography, botany, geology, literature, languages and African art with an African bias. [57]

34 One crucial demand for the delegates was to educate the elite to be proud of their African culture. It was, in their eyes, the first step towards creating Pan-Africanism. As this excerpt suggests, that meant, most notably, freeing minds from the colonial inheritance. A reform of school curricula would be necessary in order to achieve that. Starting in primary school, delegates recommended teaching hands-on “African” techniques, like weaving raffia, basket-making, dying and weaving cloth, etc. Those reforms were envisaged as being carried out at the national level, but the women at the conference also discussed measures that could be taken at the regional, West African level. It would be appropriate to organize school exchanges in order to build a stronger sense of African community, and to instill that sense in children from a young age. That circulation should take place both physically, with students actually going on visits, but also culturally, with people, knowledge and savoir-faire circulating. Below is a list of recommendations drawn up to encourage the “Africanization” of school curricula:

35

• “Penpal” contact among people of West African countries.
• West African holiday tours.
• Organise holiday colonies.
• Women’s conferences and seminars, as they deserve every encouragement.
• The establishment of a liaison between all women’s and girls’ organisations in the countries of West Africa.
• A federation of West African Youth movements.
• Exchange by means of magazines. [58]

36 The idea was to reduce the cultural distance between independent states through a common core curriculum. Having experienced the advantages of contact between West African peoples, the delegates wanted to reproduce them for school-aged children, and through education.

37 Language policies were another aspect for encouraging discussion and exchanges, particularly through teaching both French and English in all schools, starting at primary level; teaching both languages on radio and television, promoting cultural exchanges among Africans in order to get to know each country’s music, literature and mores. The need to Africanize curricula was connected to African nationalist movements’ reflections about education at this pivotal moment of achieving independence. [59] The ideas were hardly original, but what was new was casting them as key to raising (Pan)African youth; in that, the conference’s proposals went beyond the strictly diplomatic discourse of a good many male Pan-African leaders. In addition, they proved that women felt sufficiently legitimate in the spheres of education and culture to overstep the boundaries of gender and make suggestions meant for a broader audience, not just for women.

Fig. 7. The West African delegates in Ibadan (© Ogunsheye Foundation).