A Changing Mindset on Childbirth in Western Africa

Americans are a bit fascinated with polygamy. Big Love, Sister Wives – it seems men with multiple spouses are getting quite the media foothold in the United States.

In Senegal, polygamy is a daily, accepted reality. But ask a Senegalese person why it’s so commonly practiced here, and the most common answer you’ll receive is that it’s done for one primary reason: for procreation.

Children are revered here in West Africa. Having a huge brood is smiled upon, regardless of the resources one has to provide for a plethora of offspring. If there isn’t enough food to go around, extended family members have no problem pitching in. In general, the more kids, the better.

That’s why I’m curious to see how Senegalese president Abdoulaye Wade’s recent statements on family planning will resonate – if at all – with the public.

“We cannot impose on our people contraceptive methods, but should explain to convince them that they are responsible for the number of children they give birth to in terms of providing them with quality education, health, shelter and all the necessary basic needs in life,” President Wade said at a recent International Conference on Family Planning in Dakar.

My outsider’s viewpoint is that it’s going to take much more than just education and availability of contraceptives for family planning in Senegal to change or happen at all. It’s going to take a true cultural and mental shift, especially in rural places far outside the capital city.

The United Nations is determined to make it happen, though. The U.N.’s Population Fund is getting a grant-funded boost that will give underprivileged women in Africa contraceptive implants. The U.N. estimates the project will help prevent some two million unwanted pregnancies. But in Senegal, the pregnancies often aren’t unwanted (and despite the poverty, the quality of life isn’t nearly as bad here as in other African nations).

Do you think family-planning initiatives will have success in Africa? Why or why not?

CLIO TALKS BACK: Eleanor Rathbone and the Endowment of Motherhood in Britain

From 1908 on Eleanor Rathbone (1872-1946) served on the Liverpool City Council in England and later became one of the first women to be elected to the British Parliament. Throughout her life she concerned herself with the plight of the disadvantaged – be they British children, Indian women, African victims of female circumcision rites, or refugees from Nazi Germany. She clearly understood how dependent women had become in British society as well as elsewhere.

Rathbone opposed the idea of a “family wage” paid to employed men, advocating instead a plan for family allowances whereby the husband’s employer, or in case of his unemployment, the state, would pay a separate allowance for each child directly to his wife. By this means she hoped to enhance the oppressed and narrow lives of working-class wives and mothers. The notion that wives and children were necessarily men’s dependents seemed, to her, demeaning.

Eleanor Rathbone viewed this economic approach to empowering mothers as part of a “New Feminism,” by which she meant dealing with women’s needs in women’s terms. In 1924 she elaborated her views in a widely-read book, The Disinherited Family, in which she argued that the time had come to focus on the problems of women in the family. Not surprisingly, it was her controversial insistence that the family allowance be paid to the wife/mother that stirred up the most resistance.

Opponents of the plan included Millicent Garrett Fawcett, Rathbone’s predecessor as head of the National Union of Woman’s Suffrage Societies. Fawcett, herself an economic thinker, feared that such payments to the wife and mother would undermine the sense of responsibility of men – husbands and fathers – by degrading their hallowed role as economic providers. This, she feared, would destroy rather than stabilize the family. Eleanor Rathbone strongly disagreed.

In 1925 Rathbone responded to Fawcett’s concerns by rolling out a visionary agenda in which she suggested that merely clearing away the old laws or seeking equal pay for equal work did not go far enough. Finally the time had some, she argued, to “demand what we want for women, not because it is what men have got, but because it is what women need to fulfil the potentialities of their own natures and to adjust themselves to the circumstances of their own lives.” This, she claimed, was the agenda of the “New Feminism.”

Rathbone’s plan was ultimately incorporated into a “Family Endowment Act” by the British Labour Government in 1945, immediately after the end of the Second World War.

Clio wants to know what you think about the notion of employer-allocated or state-allocated family allowances as a means of empowering mothers. Is this still an attractive solution for women today? Your comments are, of course, welcome.


Sources:

1. Women, the Family, and Freedom: The Debate in Documents, vol. 2 (1880-1950), documents 88-91: Family Endowment and the “New Feminism.”
2. Susan Pedersen, Eleanor Rathbone and the Politics of Conscience (Yale University Press).

CLIO TALKS BACK: Why did so many young Irish women leave Ireland?

Early Irish Immigrants

In the years 1885-1920 nearly 700,000 mostly single women under the age of 24 left family farms in Ireland to seek a better life in the cities of North America. They travelled by themselves across the Atlantic Ocean. No family members – no fathers, mothers, husbands or brothers accompanied them. Single women emigrants from Ireland in these years outnumbered male emigrants – exceptional among European migrants to the New World.

Why did so many young Irish women emigrate? In those years of great deprivation following the famine years when Ireland’s potato crops collapsed, they simply sought a better life, one which would – according to Janet Nolan – allow them to reclaim their earlier status, to earn their keep, to marry as they chose, and – most of all – to create lives free of severe hardship. Many (well over two-thirds) first sought employment as domestic servants in the cities of the eastern United States. They generally married after a few years and often bore large numbers of children. Upwardly mobile, many of the offspring of the families these young women founded, obtained an education and became wildly successful by the standards of the land their mothers had abandoned.

What is striking in Nolan’s account of this emigration in her book, “Ourselves Alone,” was that, very unusual for the times, the young women’s travel was mostly financed by female relatives. Networks of older women helping younger women. Older women sending back money to help their little sisters and nieces emigrate as they had. In Nolan’s words (p. 95),“They were the first generation of Irish women to realize fully their own social and economic modernization as women.”

Then, when the emigrant women were settled in their new country, many of them sent money home to assist those who had remained behind – for example, to purchase a horse to replace the one that had died. Ironically, “the most expendable group in post-Famine Ireland – dependent daughters and sisters – became the saviors of a society that could not have remained intact save by their emigration and their remittances” (p. 71).

Some of these emigrant women and their daughters became prominent labor organizers in the U.S. Nolan names Kate Mullany, organizer of the laundry workers in Troy, New York; Leonora Barry, head of the women’s work committee for the Knights of Labor; Mary Kenny O’Sullivan, of the A. F. L. [American Federation of Labor]; Leonora O’Reilly, of the Women’s Trade Union League; and Mother Jones (Mary Harris Jones) and Elizabeth Gurley Flynn, respectively founder and leader of the Industrial Workers of the World. All these women activists supported equal pay for equal work and the rights of laboring women.

Clio celebrates the courage and initiative of these thousands of Irish emigrant women to bettering their condition by “packing up and leaving,” to create new lives in a new country.

Source: Janet Ann Nolan, Ourselves Alone: Women’s Emigration From Ireland, 1885-1920 (University of Kentucky Press, 1989).

Virginity, Teen Pregnancy, and Scholarship

School girls in Sierra Leone

Bo, Sierra Leone's second largest city has started a new scholarship program to keep girls in school. The only catch...they must remain virgins through their educational career to keep the scholarship. City councilman Mathew Margao said the scholarship will ensure that “80 percent of school going girls keep their virginity until they finish their educational life”. Margao added that, “the council will hire female medical personnel who would prove the authenticity of the girls virginity”. The council started the scholarship in response to a reported rise in teenage pregnancy from the Ministry of Gender and Social Welfare. There were 500 reported secondary school pregnancies in Kailahun a town to the east of Bo.

Pregnant teens in Sierra Leone face greater risks at childbirth. They accounted for 40 percent of all maternal deaths in 2008. Family planning experts say that sex education and contraceptive use do more to reduce unplanned pregnancies amongst teens. But in Sierra Leone where 70 percent of pregnant teens are already married one might argue that these pregnancies are planned. Even the youngest teens in Sierra Leone sometimes look forward to becoming mothers. They are unaware of the risks they might face during childbirth or the possible neonatal affects on the baby. Those teenage moms who do survive the ordeal of losing a baby are sometimes eager to try again. Our culture tells us that losing a baby at birth is either God’s will or caused by witchcraft.

Many parents sometimes encourage older, wealthier suitors for their teenage daughters. This is not to say that young girls don’t date boys their own age. But many young women , especially from low income single parent households are encouraged to find men who will provide for them financially.

While the idea that the government in Bo believes it lawful to violate the bodies of young women with its virgin scholarship is problematic, the real question of how to effectively combat teen pregnancy in Sierra Leone still remains.

When the powers that be conceived 'free healthcare for expecting mothers and children under 5', it was simply to fight the nation's discouraging maternal mortality rates. It was not a holistic women’s reproductive health policy to address all aspects of women’s health. Sierra Leone’s private and public health systems have yet to adequately address the issue of teenage pregnancy so politicians in places like Bo have to find their own solutions.

The most ostentatious efforts to target teenage pregnancy by NGOs or the Ministry of Health are limited to outdated bill boards warning girls to refrain from getting pregnant least they become drop outs with no opportunities. The health NGOs and the public health system refuse to acknowledge that teenage girls in Sierra Leone will discover  and experiment with their sexuality much like girls all over the world. Teenage girls in Sierra Leone will have sex with boys their age and with men much older than they are. Some will do so of their own free will while others will be seduced by wealth, status, etc.

Teenagers need to be properly educated and counseled about the consequences of being sexually active in a modern world. They need to have access to contraceptives. I once interviewed a young woman in Freetown who said she didn’t use condoms because she was afraid it would get stuck in her stomach. Who is going to teach her otherwise? Politicians like councilman Margao?

Egypt's Nude Revolutionary

Twenty year old Egyptian blogger Magda Aliaa el-Mahdy rose to stardom after delivering a stick of dynamite via her blog, 'A Rebel's Diary', in what she described as being in the spirit of the revolution.

Who is Aliaa? Nowadays she's known as the Nude Revolutionary and the dynamite was - you guessed it - a nude photo of herself online, which sparked outrage from both conservatives and liberals in Egypt alike. Here's her take on why she took such controversial measures:

"Put on trial the artists' models who posed nude for art schools until the early 70s, hide the art books and destroy the nude statues of antiquity, then undress and stand before a mirror and burn your bodies that you despise to forever rid yourselves of your sexual hangups before you direct your humiliation and chauvinism and dare to try to deny me my freedom of expression".

The North African country, with a population of roughly eighty-five million, is a largely conservative society.

Earlier this year, inspired by the wave of uprisings that struck the region following Tunisia's ability to send their long-time dictator Zine El Abidine Ben Ali packing, Egyptians from all social and political classes took to the streets with a unified dream of doing away with a system that had outlived its stay.

As punishment, Egypt's Supreme Council of Armed Forces (SCAF) subjected women to humiliating 'virginity tests', which entailed having a soldier insert two fingers into their croch. Once again, as discontent returned to Tahrir earlier this month, women's bodies were targeted.

Women's rights advocates like award-winning Egyptian writer Mona Eltahawy believes that El Mahdy's act not highlights how in times of extreme repression sex and nakedness becomes the only weapon of political repression for women. In a recent article in the Guardian, she argues:

When sexual assault parades as a test of the "honour" of virginity, then posing in your parents' home in nothing but stockings, red shoes and a red hair clip is an attack towards all patriarchs out there. 

While Mahdy's act has been hashtagged (#NudePhotoRevolutionary) and her name tweeted and Facebooked endlessly, others did not receive such attention. Samira Ibrahim, the only one of the women subjected to "virginity tests" who is taking the military to court for sexual assault, has neither a dedicated hashtag nor notoriety. Another woman, Salwa el-Husseini, was the first to reveal what the military did to them, but news reports have said she can't raise a lawsuit because she doesn't have identification papers. 

Not only did el-Husseini speak out, she courageously agreed to be filmed at a session of testimonies on military abuses. Again, hardly anyone knows her name, her recorded testimony isn't racking up page views, and she was called a liar and vilified for speaking out. Both women have vehemently maintained they were virgins. 

If "good girls" in headscarves who kept their legs together only to be violated by the military speak out and no one listens, what's the message being sent?

Whether or not El Mahdy's act was revolutionary or not it has definitely sparked a debate as to how far women should go in pushing the boundaries in their fight for a more inclusive society.

One question that probably pops in your head is: had she been a man, would the publics reaction have been different?

Critics argue that the embattled blogger not only insulted revolution but has tarnished the uprisings image.

“#nudephotorevolutionary was the most daring conflicting act I’ve seen for a long time but was also the worst thing that happened to the liberal movement in Egypt,” Kamel continued. According to Kamel, he feels that her actions have caused more harm than good. Her actions have done “nothing but stir a debate and allow the conservatives to have one more reason to call for an Islamic state and blame liberals and seculars for this. You will probably see one of them saying this is how all women will act if Egypt isn’t saved by an Islamic leader."

In the aftermath of her public expression, El Mahdy has been slapped with a lawsuit as the Coalition of Islamic law graduates in Egypt filed a case against the blogger and her boyfriend, Kareem Amer who also appears nude on the site, for 'violating morals, inciting indecency and insulating Islam'.

In her defense, supporters have established a Facebook page in which they vow to also get butt naked in an act of self-expression. According to Eltahawy, El Mahdy's nudity was a way of extinguishing the 'dictators of our mind'.

Perhaps, but is this the way to do it?

I remember when I was still living on the streets and working as a delivery person in New York City while cleaning houses on the side. The delivery service was a family run business and in the midst of being delighted to finally have someone pay me for once, I didn't even consider that the $20 a day for over eight hours of work was meager. Then a good friend C told me to quit that job and go art model.

I thought she had lost her mind. Now, it's not like you think. It actually entailed going around to art schools and posing.

To convince me she said, "once you drop the clothes, it's done and you got a new career."

The idea didn't sound bad to me, especially after discovering that NYU paid a hefty $18 per hour and most classes were four hours long. The major feat was challenging a lot of societal mishaps in the process but eventually I saw this as a great way to rekindle the artist in me, revolutionize my thinking and love my body.

So, I did it. After some time I was the most sought after model circulating the art scene and I felt empowered, liberated and I was an entrepreneur.

I use this example in an attempt to paint a visual image of one way in which nudity was used to empower an individual.

However, in the case of Egypt's nude revolutionary, my question to readers is: Is any time the right time for the clothes to come off when advocating women's rights? Is this truly an act of self-expression?

What They Bear. Why They Run.

This week, millions of people in the Democratic Republic of Congo (DRC), a war-ravaged African country, voted in their second ever presidential and parliamentary election.

With a population of over 70 million and one of the highest occurrences of rape in the world, the New York Times reported fear of violent outbreaks due to Congo’s elections because of fraudulent politics and, essentially, DRC's reverse development. “This year the United Nations ranked it dead last of the 187 countries on the Human Development Index.”

The Democratic Republic of Congo is also known to be one of the worst places on earth to be a woman.

In mid-May, a study in the American Journal of Public Health, found that 400,000 females aged 15-49 were raped over a 12-month period in 2006 and 2007. The greatest numbers of rapes were found in DRC's North Kivu. There an average of 67 women out of 1,000 have been raped. At least once. That’s 48 women an hour.

Imagine. Having to go into a forest. The only place. To find food. For your children.
Imagine. Emerging raped. Not once. Not twice. Every time. Any time. Whenever.
Imagine. Returning home. And being raped. By your partner.

According to the Christan Science Monitor, this is daily life for Congolese women. “Rape is becoming part of the culture,” said Michael Van Rooyen, the director of Harvard’s Humanitarian Initiative and an expert on rape in the Congo.

One Man’s Journey for Congolese Women
For two years, Londoner Chris Jackson has lived in absolute dedication to sport, not just as a human rights advocate but also as an athlete and spokesperson for Congolese rape victims. He’s completed myriad heroic athletic acts to raise awareness of the horror women in Congo live every single day of their lives. Rampant and repeated sexual violence. Rape as a weapon of war.

From Cassatt to Woodman: Ideal Space

This week, I led a discussion in class about the feminine ideal, the American-born artist, Mary Cassatt, and the use of space as a metaphor for sexuality/gender roles. It was a rich conversation but I was surprised at how accepting the class was about the assigned role of domesticity to a specific gender (feminine). While considering the prevailing concepts of what feminine beauty looked like--and what it promised the viewer--we compared two images, Cassatt's Mother and Child and Kenyon Cox's Eclogue:

Mary Cassatt.  Mother and Child.  1905.  Image courtesy of the National Gallery of Art Collection online.

Cassatt's work is an Impressionist version of a popular theme of mother and child. While the usual religious symbolism was omitted, the implicit piety of motherhood still resonates. As a matter of formal analysis, we discussed the "feminine" distinction of inhabiting predominantly domestic spaces. In addition, we considered the use of contemporary, "real" women as a means of subtly challenging the historical infrastructure of the feminine ideal.  Consider this while looking at Cox's Neoclassical version of his subjects.

Respecting the Earth's Mother

Photo caption

“We realize there is still a long road to go down to achieve respect and dignity for indigenous women. We need to build an inclusive network that can persist over time,” says Tarcila Rivera Zea, Coordinator of the Network of Indigenous Women of South America.

Throughout the world, first peoples or indigenous peoples find their languages, cultures, values, environments and in some cases their lives under constant threat. In every corner of the world, indigenous people are among the poorest, most socially excluded and discriminated against groups. In many respects the world's natives, who account for nearly 350 million out of a global population of seven billion, remain an occupied people.

Before occupation, indigenous women held a respected role in society with regards to property ownership, decision-making as it related to the community and were in control of their bodies.

Civilisation coupled with climate change has changed this reality as women are no longer able to rely upon the elder who was the keeper of herbs to assist in health care issues. Nowadays, women are forced to seek western means of health services but due to their status of living in poor, rural and under-developed areas many perish during childbirth.

In the Congo, where indigenous people represent nearly two percent out of a population of almost four million, women are discouraged from accessing proper health facilities during childbirth due to the negative stereotypes surrounding native people. According to a recent survey, the Congolese Association for Health in Cuvette-Ouest found that of the five hundred and twenty women of child-bearing age, only eight delivered at a health centre.

Besides ill-treatment from health care workers who may view these women as being from a distant culture, high fees, lack of education and language barriers all contribute to leaving this vulnerable population to fend for themselves.

Traditionally, we were taught to honour our elders and to respect tradition. That's all lost now. Indigenous peoples are the keepers of the original law, which is the belief that we as souls are placed on Mother Earth to act as caretakers. All life including the plants, animals, sea and other human beings are our kin and should be treated as part of ourselves.

Given this reality, colonial governments have a responsibility to implement free health services, cultural sensitive training for health care workers and education in schools about tradition and reverence to those that are our global elders.

The following is a short video documenting indigenous women who have been forced from their lands.

Weekends with Georgia O'Keeffe: Beauty in Simplicity

Georgia O'Keeffe at her home in New Mexico. Image via proustitute.tumblr.com

I am fascinated by the lives of artists. I appreciate the work they produce, but I also love learning about the person behind that creativity, their life's journey, and how they spend their time. That's why I was delighted to read Weekends with O'keeffe, a book of journal entries, poetry, letters, and detailed observations made by writer and librarian C.S. Merrill. The author lived and worked closely with artist Georgia O'Keeffe during the later years of her life in New Mexico.  Merrill's meticulously detailed writings transport the reader to 1970s New Mexico, and feel as if they are an honored guest in O'Keeffe's home.

A journal entry from May 31st, 1974 reads:

Women Artists Represent!

Xochitl Guerrero. Duality of Life and Death. 2011. Acrylic on canvas. Painting at the Forrealism Exhibition, November 2011.

This past weekend was a sweet milestone in terms of developing an art practice and a community here in Oakland, CA. Where to begin, really...

First, I'm proud to say that a dear friend of mine, Lulu, was there to share the experience in displaying work. After a year of taking classes, stressing, and alternately enjoying the art making process, we were invited to submit work for a group show. And, what a group show it was! As a part of a larger art event, Oakland's Art Murmur, the Forrealism Exhibition was a glimpse into a longstanding and thriving community of established Bay Area artists.

Arab Hip Hop Queen Malikah

Daily life for women in the Arab world is never an easy task in a male-dominated society. So imagine being one of very few female emcees taking on the testosterone-driven world of Arabic hip hop. But, MC Lix aka Malikah, which means Queen in Arabic, is doing just that.

Born into a Lebanese/Algerian family in Marseille, France in 1986, Malikah has spent the last nine years not only establishing herself as a well respected MC but also letting the world know that Arab women have something to say and should be respected.

Proclaimed the "Best MC in Lebanon" after making her mark on MTV Hip HopNa, Malikah has become the voice of female empowerment through her music. One of her trademark songs is Ya Imra’a, which encourages women to fight for their rights and freedom -- despite all the obstacles they face in the Middle East and North Africa.

Here's a little taste of the Queen in action.




At the onset of her career, Malikah faced her own obstacles. Besides battling her male counterparts, she was also forced to cover her face whenever making public concerts due to the opposition she faced from her family of being a rapper. On stage, Malikah is a force to be reckoned with. She is hardcore and serious when it comes to politics and social issues, but smooth when it comes to singing about love and friendship.

Currently, Malikah is hard at work creating her debut album, The Coronation. Here’s a link to her MySpace page to keep up with all her doings.

Pacific Standard Time: Women and Art in Los Angeles

This fall the art world buzz is centered on Los Angeles, California. The city is the focus of Pacific Standard Time, a collaboration between more than 60 cultural institutions across Southern California telling the story of the birth of L.A.'s art scene. West Coast art and artists broadened the landscape of contemporary art. New York had a more established modern art scene, and set the pace for much of what went on in the art world.For many years, Los Angeles was considered an artistic underdog (the area was more known for its sunny weather and movie stars than for fine art), and the contributions of its artists weren't taken seriously. But L.A. artists rebelled against the arts establishment, introducing new materials and work methods, and truly enriched American art. There were many women artists at the forefront of art making in the "wild west," and they made important contributions.

Betye Saar's The Liberation of Aunt Jemima, 1972. Photo via Netropolitan.org

One woman who played a prominent role in the postwar Los Angeles art scene was Betye Saar, an artist who is best known for her assemblage pieces depicting themes of racial pride, spirituality, and ancestral history. Saar created her works with objects she collected in her travels to places such as Mexico, Europe, and Haiti as well as flea markets around Los Angeles. The artist is one of several featured in Now Dig This! Art and Black Los Angeles 1960-1980, an exhibition currently on view at UCLA's Hammer Museum as part of Pacific Standard Time.  Saar seamlessly wove found objects with those of significance to her own family, thus placing her personal legacy within a larger historical context. She also collected racist memorabilia, giving figures and images trapped in stereotypical roles new and more empowering meaning, thus "liberating" the characters, and in turn the hearts and minds of African Americans. Her repurpose of this memorabilia reflected a new consciousness that was beginning to take hold in Black America, which was in a state of great change from the Civil Rights and Black Power movements.