Abstract
The recent rise of Y en a Marre in Senegal, on the eve of the 2012 presidential elections, sheds light on the emergence of the new social movements in Senegal. Social movements have generally been downplayed or overlooked in Senegal by a history written by or in favour of the ‘fathers of the nation’ and other ‘liberators’. This holds true with regards to students’ movements, as well as women’s movements.
To its credit, this book bridges the gap created by decades of gender-blind research on social movements in Senegal, whilst drawing long overdue attention to women’s social movements (WSMs), as part of a research project commissioned by CODESRIA, UNESCO and UNWOMEN in three countries. The book examines the research findings for Senegal, and was published posthumously in 2015, after the demise of Ndèye Sokhna Guèye, who led the research team.
The book is divided into six main chapters. It seeks to examine critically the range of WSMs existing in Senegal and undertakes a SWOT (strengths, weaknesses, opportunities and threats) analysis in order to assess their potential to bring about positive social transformation. Focusing on Senegalese women’s associations, groupings and non- governmental organizations (NGOs), one of the main research findings is that their capacity to build synergies and become dynamic WSMs have depended on two factors: their strategic interests in acting collectively through alliances and the profile of the organizations leading the mobilizations. International funding and/or gathering at high-level meetings facilitated their constitution into WSMs.
The study also found that WSMs in Senegal have generally lost momentum with the diminution of their radicalism and political essence. This has led them to use less offensive means of action and to be more prone to defend ‘public’ issues, such as the Gender Parity Law in politics (adopted in 2010), while ignoring ‘private’ issues, such as abortion and homosexuality. Furthermore, WSMs in Senegal were found to be internally fragmented on the basis of gender, age, ethnicity, religion, educational level and geographical location, as well as their openly claiming, or not, to be feminist. Yet, as explained by Guèye, all of these social movements have been very different from their European counterparts, in that gender, not class identity, constituted their most important organizing principle.
In addition to problems of increased surveillance and, in some instances, instrumentalization or capture by the state or political parties, WSMs in Senegal are all faced with increasing funding and capacity-building constraints, which limit their policy space. The final chapter offers recommendations for such movements to overcome their internal contradictions in order to drive change.
Guèye avoids applying a priori definitions to WSMs in Senegal and avoids defining them according to the general literature on social movements, which draws mainly on experiences in Europe, Latin America and North America. Instead, WSMs are defined in the conclusion as ‘occasional and sporadic alliances of women’s associations, groups, federations, and networks at specific times to defend a common cause related to their rights, through a series of collective actions’ (p. 115).
It is, therefore, confusing that at times the author uses the singular to talk about ‘the WSM’ in Senegal, as if it constitutes a homogeneous block, despite appropriately accounting for the plurality of WSMs in most chapters. Guèye also sometimes uses the term ‘organization’ and ‘movement’ together, as if the two were interchangeable, which they are not. As for the recommendations, they focus too much on what women and WSMs could do more and better and not enough on the onus of the policy-officials, including the state and that of donors (Chapter 5).
One of the strengths of the book is that it historicizes WSMs in Senegal, showing that women’s movements existed before independence. It illustrates that they took an active part in the fight for the right to vote and really started organizing in the 1980s, following the structural adjustment crises and other social issues, such peace and security, gender-based violence and the revision of the family code. In this respect, their conditions of emergence have differed from those of post-industrial European social movements which were, according to Guèye, more shaped by the emergence of the middle classes and modernization.
The book also demonstrates that WSMs in Senegal have been able successfully to articulate their own claims, especially when these have been different from those of ‘Western feminists’. This strongly contributed to both the decolonization of knowledge and the emergence of a multitude of women’s movements, with the creation of organizations such as the Association of African Women for Research and Development (AAWORD), based in Senegal, and at the international level, Development Alternatives with Women for a New Era (DAWN).
Another major contribution of the research is that it has successfully used mixed-research methods and focused on five major cities in Senegal to document effectively WSMs and their current challenges, the most urgent of which remains the (re)politicization and engagement of younger activists.