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A Woman’s Strike in Burkina Faso

October 3, 2014 By Pam

14-BarbaraTypingIf women ever really went on strike and refused our assigned roles, “Everything, everything would have to change!” So wrote my mentor, Barbara Deming (1917-1984), pacifist, lesbian-feminist author-activist.

This week, the focus of my writing has been a chapter about women’s use of strikes — the collective withholding of labor, symbolic strikes (Women’s Strike for Peace), and Lysistrata actions (withholding sex or birthing). It’s an exciting action-packed chapter, fun to research. I love reading about Annie Besant and the Matchgirls’ strike in London in 1888 and the Uprising of the 20,000 shirtwaist workers in 1909 NYC and the garment workers massive actions last year in Bangladesh. All of it — inspiring!

This month, I will share tidbits from this chapter-in-progress. Today — the story of a one-day woman’s strike in Burkina Faso, the little landlocked nation in West Africa. Enjoy!

President Sankara’s “Mad Act”

14-Sankara-Quote“You can’t make fundamental changes in society without the occasional mad act.” That’s what President Sankara boldly proclaimed when he came up with the idea for “Market Day for Men.” Indeed, it seemed a mad act.

In Burkina Faso, in 1984, women went daily to the market, rain or shine, having no way to preserve food at home. They left early in the morning, often walking long distances. At the market, they selected produce and haggled with vendors to get the most out of their food money, doled out to them each day by their husbands. Then, they carried the heavy loads back home and prepared the family meal.

Joséphine Ouédraogo — On Board with the Bold Experiment

14-OuedraogoIn the few years before his assassination and the coup, President Sankara appointed several women to high positions, including second in command at the Ministry of Defense. For Minister for Health and Family Welfare, he appointed Joséphine Ouédraogo. She was trained as a sociologist and worked for the revolutionary government from 1984 to 1987.

Inspired by Sankara’s commitment to speak for the “great disinherited people of the world,” Ouédraogo worked to eradicate the custom of female genital mutilation, helped develop new laws governing family life, promoted the distribution of contraceptives, fought against discrimination, and advocated for marginalized groups. After the overthrow of the revolutionary Sankara regime, she was out of a job. In 1997, she was appointed head of the United Nations’ “African Center for Gender and Development” and, in 2007, was named Executive Director of Enda Third World, an international organization based on Senegal.

Market Day for Men — The Revolution Bursts Into the Family!

14-market-distantThe mid-1980s was a time of great change in Burkina Faso, a country that traditionally had a strict division of labor along gender lines. In September, 1984, with the blessing of both President Sankara and Minister Ouédraogo, the women in the Committee for the Defense of the Revolution called for a one-day women’s strike and, simultaneously, a “Market Day for Men.” They urged community leaders — priests, imams (Muslim prayer leaders), teachers, and news reporters — to encourage support for the experiment.

The people in the capital city of Ouagadougou were given fair notice of the event in a media campaign, but the date was kept a secret so that women would not do extra shopping the day before to spare their husbands. At eight p.m. on Friday night the word came: the strike was to be the next day, September 22.

Bright and early Saturday morning, the experiment began. Women handed over their shopping lists, and the men were on their way — in a torrential rain.

Where Are the Cashews? How Much for Mangoes?

14-Market-foodAt each marketplace, the men were greeted by teams of militant women from the Committee for the Defense of the Revolution. They stopped women from entering the markets unless they were single or had husbands who were ill that day.

The marketplaces proved alien to the men, most of whom wandered in confusion, as if they were lost on a strange planet. They asked about prices and were alarmed at the figures quoted. Not adept at bargaining, they handed over the money and hurried on to buy the next item on their lists. Finally, they carried their heavy loads home, realizing from their aching backs, tired feet, and pounding heads the frustrations and fatigue the women lived with daily.

Joséphine Ouédraogo later wrote of that day:

The atmosphere was fantastic, as much for those who “played the game” as for those who found it “absolutely ridiculous.” It was well worth it. It provoked unexpected debate in all quarters. The revolution had burst into the family and pointed an accusing finger at the masculine conscience!

To Go Deeper: 

14-Book-Cover

“Everyday Heroes — Joséphine Ouédraogo (Burkina Faso)” on the blog: Trust Africa.

“Women of Vision — Burkina Faso” on the blog: Gender Equality and Women’s Empowerment.

“The Revolution Cannot Triumph Without the Emancipation of Women: A Reflection on Sankara’s Speech, 25 Years Later” by Amber Murrey, Speech given at Oxford University, June 8, 2012, published in the International Journal of Socialist Renewal

BOOK: Women’s Liberation and the African Freedom Struggle by Thomas Sankara, Pathfinder Press, 2007

 

Filed Under: Featured Tagged With: Barbara Deming, Burkina Faso, Josephine Ouedraogo, Market Day for Men, Ouagadougou, President Sankara, Thomas Sankara, woman’s strike, women’s liberation, women’s symbolic strike

Visiting Barbara Deming, then Women with Guns

May 29, 2014 By Pam

In 1979, I boarded a Greyhound bus and toured ten southern cities, my first time south of Washington, D.C.  I traveled alone. Ah, the courage of youth!

Along the way, I stayed in women’s collectives and collected anecdotes about the range of community responses to the threat of male violence — rape, battery, abuse, harassment. Two experiences on my tour stand out as most intense, memorable, and rewarding for me.Barbara-typing-634x360One was my week visiting radical feminist pacifist Barbara Deming and her partner Jane Gapen in the Florida Keys. I’d read Barbara’s books in college (Revolution and Equilibrium and Prison Notes). Most of my understanding of nonviolence was a direct result of her writing. She eventually became my mentor. Through her, I came to understand the vital link between feminism and nonviolence.Mornings at Sugarloaf Key were spent reading, bike riding, and exploring the tropical landscape, while Jane worked in her art studio and Barbara wrote, slowly pecking out an occasional sentence on her typewriter.

In the evenings, it was another story. Their little cottage overflowed with women from around the world. We ate together around an oval table and talked, in a delicious variety of accents, of our dreams for the world, each other, and ourselves.

Later, we listened by candlelight as Barbara cast long shadows with storytelling hands. She told of her experiences during the Civil Rights, antiwar, and feminist movements and of challenging hardened hearts encountered along the way. Listening, I began to understand more about Barbara’s “two hands of nonviolence” (the one refusing to cooperate with injustice, the other extended in invitation to help build a new world). And I began to understand Gandhi’s “clinging to the truth.”

women-with-gunsTwo days after I left the Keys, I visited a women’s collective in northern Florida. These women slept with pistols beneath their pillows, prepared to use guns for self defense.

They took me to a police range and gave me a lesson in how to shoot. (That’s me in dark sunglasses, seeing a gun up close for the first — and last — time.) I remember standing beneath a blue sky with six women absolutely committed to the “I’m-not-a- victim-anymore” spirit. When they put a pistol in my hand, I wasn’t the least bit unsure. I hit the bull’s eye with all but two shots. We were all astonished. “McAllister, you’re a natural killer!” exclaimed one with her version of a compliment. “So much for aimlessness,” quipped another in a Southern drawl.

How do I explain that I was so at home with radical pacifists and only slightly less with the gun-toting women? As a pacifist, how do I reconcile these contradictory experiences?

Gandhi said, “The first principle of nonviolent action is that of non-cooperation with everything humiliating.” I believe this is the common ground I found at both communities — the total commitment to resistance. Still pondering after all these years. Stay tuned …

To Go Deeper:
I spoke about Barbara Deming at a War Resisters League panel discussion with Martin Duberman & David McReynolds on April 26, 2011 at Judson Memorial Church in NYC. I’m introduced at about the 18:30 minute mark:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=j9cMaMpMHlw

Read Barbara’s writing:
We Are All Part of One Another: Barbara Deming Reader, edited by Jane Meyerding (New Society Publishers, March 1984)
Prisons That Could Not Hold by Barbara Deming, Introduction by Grace Paley (Spinsters Ink, June 1985)

Filed Under: Featured Tagged With: Barbara Deming, Gainsville, South, Sugarloaf Key

Pam McAllister

In 1982, I edited the anthology Reweaving the Web of Life: Feminism and Nonviolence and then wrote two books about women’s use of resistance and action: You Can't Kill the Spirit and This River of Courage.

I've spent a lifetime compiling stories of courageous, creative actions, categorizing them (a la Gene Sharp), writing books and articles, speaking at university forums, church retreats, feminist conferences. I’ve also joined in the action -- antiwar protests in the '70s, Take Back the Night marches in the '80s, prison reform rallies in the '90s, and Occupy Wall Street actions in recent years.

I am currently researching more examples of nonviolent action for peace and justice around the world for two new books -- one for/about children and another about women (whose actions are still so often left out or overlooked).

Here I am with Barbara Deming, my mentor and friend, in Sugarloaf Key in the early ‘80s. The photo has faded, but the memories and love have not.

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