Fatou Diop-Sall, professor of sociology at Gaston Berger University in Senegal, discussed women’s rights in Senegal and West Africa and the steps activists are taking to see greater implementation of laws designed to prevent gender discrimination and violence against women.
PROVO, Utah (Jan. 30, 2015)—Laws protecting women’s rights have been established in Senegal and West Africa for several years, yet discrimination and violence against women is still prevalent within the culture today. In lectures sponsored by the French program and Women’s Studies, Fatou Diop-Sall, professor of sociology at Gaston Berger University and women’s rights activist, addressed the issues at the core of women’s rights abuses in Senegal and West Africa. She spoke on the importance of raising awareness of the rights women are entitled to by law.
“All human beings are supposedly, ‘born free and equal,’ but equality is not natural; it is a construction,” said Diop-Sall. “It is defined by race, gender, class, economic power and political context.”
Diop-Sall explained that the African Charter was established 30 years ago as an international standard that guarantees nondiscrimination on the basis of sex, yet it does not specify violations of women’s rights.
She argued that existing laws protecting women’s rights are often not implemented or practiced in Senegalese and West African communities because historical constructions of patriarchal systems and customs are still practiced today.
One such practice Diop-Sall mentioned was marriage of child brides to significantly older men. “Early marriage is common and exacerbates the spread of sexual disease. Husbands of child brides are likely to be much older and therefore sexually experienced, having had several partners,” she explained.
She continued to explain that imbalanced age differences between child brides and their spouses make communication about sexual relations, including negotiating condom use, abstinence or counseling together more difficult for women and young women, and that a young girl’s first sexual experience is often physically forced.
Diop-Sall said that statistics show between 3,600 and 4,000 cases of violence against women in Senegal each year. An unequal balance of power in relationships is a significant factor in the tradition of marrying young girls to older men, which in turn exacerbates violence and leads to the violation of women’s rights.
Another issue these women and young women face is illiteracy. Many women do not know they are protected from certain violations under the law simply because they cannot read. In Senegal alone, only one out of six women are literate.
“Many girls have also been forced to drop out of school where they would have had access to information and skills,” said Diop-Sall. She explained that 40 percent of the primary school classroom is made up of girls, which then drops drastically to 25 percent at the high school age, and finally 10 percent at the university level.
Part of Diop-Sall’s work as an activist and sociologist has been to disseminate information about women’s rights in rural areas, making pamphlets and other information available to women in multiple languages. With her fieldwork and research, she and her team gather information to show government officials the magnitude of the women’s rights abuses occurring in communities throughout West Africa and Senegal in spite of the laws that have been made. She said that though there are still imperfections, activists have brought about positive changes at the international and local level.
“Every single day you see different cases of abuse, and this is what made me get involved,” she concluded. “I saw all of this injustice and I wanted to do something myself.”
—Sylvia Cutler (B.A. English ’17)