Abstract
This book makes a successful claim of giving a descriptive account of the trajectory of continuing empowerment of the Ethiopian women. The writer has made liberal use of the first-hand experience of an Ethiopian woman, who has been the part of women’s movement in the African country. By this virtue, she is both a narrator and a subject of her narration. The writer has attempted to locate the role of women in the political, social and economic development of her country, while keeping hold of the larger picture.
The political transformation of Ethiopia from a dysfunctional monarchy into a federalised republic with democratic form of government is well captured in the text. What makes it the most interesting is the vantage point of the author! Gennet Zewide makes her observations from a very distinct vantage point, which bestows her observations with an element of uniqueness, and she provides an insight into the unseen dimensions of the Ethiopian recent political history.
It would not be a hyperbole if we say that this book is a strong statement against all the forms of discrimination and exploitation. The theme running through the book is zest for liberation, that is, the freedom from the structures of oppressions working on every individual. The author has written chapters on all the aspects of the discrimination perpetrated through the structures of oppression.
The book contains chapters which encapsulates the historicity attached with the ‘consciousness’, which the women of Ethiopia discovered in the course of their resistance against foreign powers as well as against the internal powerholding classes. Then, there are chapters narrating the economic relations with the complex multi-layered society of Ethiopia, followed by narrations of interplay of all aspects, namely historical, economic and political in the social milieu. The text is divided into four parts, with each part containing three to four chapters. The author has presented her thoughts in the form of a system-building chronicle. The order of events and observations has been followed with a discipline and the narration comprehensive and thoughtful.
In the first part, she draws the picture of the context in which the resistance of Ethiopian women is rooted. The very first chapter in this section deals with the socio-economic and political settings of Ethiopia. The historically weak position of women in the traditional social system coupled with the exploitative nature of changes introduced by modernity had burdened the lives of Ethiopian women. The author shows the standing of Ethiopia’s indigenous women’s movement vis-à-vis the erosion of patriarchy in the global settings. With the second wave of feminism rising in the 1960s, whose major demands included the economic rights of women, the Ethiopian women got an inspiration to fight for their rights. Though the writer has very clearly mentioned that the indigenous movement was inspired by the feminist mobilisation in the West, the concerns addressed by the movement at home were largely local in nature. The writer has drawn out the differences in the modes of mobilisation adopted by the women’s rights activists in the two different spheres of the world.
The most significant portion of the first part deals with the insightful description of the traditional Ethiopian society. How women are treated in a society is always an indicator of the nature of that society. Gennet Zewide has made a disclaimer in the very beginning that she too would be using ‘treatment of women’ as a barometer for judging the society, and her justification appears to be valid. She has elaborated the unequal nature of gender relations in the traditional Ethiopian marriages. She has clearly mentioned that a traditional Ethiopian marriage would establish unequal relationship that bestows authority on the husband over wife. The lopsided traditional rationality can be understood from this fact that both the tradition as well as the religions in Ethiopia insist that a wife must be faithful and obedient to the husband, while the same is not required for the husband. Even at a slight hint of a woman disobeying him, a husband is entitled to do ‘wife beating’ and other mistreatments which he might deem necessary to shape the ‘unruly’ character of the woman. The condemnable practice of female genital mutilation (FGM) is even today widespread. To ensure ‘purity’, sexual chastity and safeguard the power of their husbands over them, women are circumcised at different ages depending on the custom and religious practices of their families.
The civil law, which came up in 1960, took away the right to seek divorce from women, except under very extraordinary circumstances. Irrespective of the facts, divorce is always looked upon as a woman’s fault. The writer has brought the spotlight on the FGM. She not only questions the brutal rationale behind this medieval practice but also raises the issue of its harmful effect on the female body. FGM done without anaesthetics is a painful experience borne by adolescent girls that sometimes leads to death due to excessive bleeding. The author has made her point that the whole motive behind this exercise is to demean women. Apart from these issues, the frequent domestic violence against women and the denial of property rights to women have been highlighted by the writer.
The writer appears to be optimistic in beliefs about the future of the Ethiopian society in general, and of Ethiopian women in particular. Therefore, the second quarter of the book begins on a positive note with a rather fancy nomenclature ‘The Dawn of Change’. She has accounted the notable achievements registered by Ethiopian women in public life through their proactive indulgence in the anti-colonial mobilisations of the Ethiopian people as well as in the anti-colonial struggles to promote democracy and move towards a more equal and just society. She recounts the Ethiopian women who stood up and fought against colonialism, national oppression and undemocratic rules. As early as the Italian invasion in 1895–1896, the women had fought for the freedom and sovereignty in the battle of Adawa. Here, Zewide complains that historians have deliberately obliterated the contribution of ordinary men and women and have given all the credit of heroics to the king, queen and nobility. The sense of national pride is visible in the writing of Zewide when she says that it was Ethiopia that demonstrated to the world that a Black nation could defeat a European coloniser. Women of Ethiopia not only supported the families during the war, but they also joined the menfolk as soldiers, intelligence workers and nurses during the battle. Even during the second invasion of Ethiopia by Italy in 1935, women took up arms along with their husbands, fathers and brothers.
Gennet Zewide has captured the coming up of modern school system in Ethiopia very lucidly. She has not just stated the facts in this regard but has also uncovered the broader social changes which took place due to the exposure to modern education that spread all over the country through these schools. She states that when education in modern form was introduced by the monarchy, there were no female students in the schools. A handful of enlightened families sent their daughters to mission schools operating in the country. After the 1920s, when the situation changed for the better, the relevance of women’s education was perceived from the point of view of preparing girls to be good housewives in the fashion of the finishing schools in the schools of Europe. This fact is evident because the curriculum that the girls studied was different from that of the schools opened for the boys exclusively.
In a complaining voice, Zewide claims that the girls were not taught subjects like mathematics and sciences. In fact, their curriculum concentrated heavily on home economics and subjects such as cooking, grooming and needlework. Despite this newly found route for women’s entry into the school system, the popular view being that the girl’s education was still a negative one, it was a common belief that modern education spoils women, rendering them to be bad wives. The poor reception of women education is typical of all societies, but the author is bringing more to the table. She is of the opinion that there are four constraints under which the factors plaguing girl’s education can fall. They are economics related, family related, school related and culture related. All the four are interlinked and continue to influence each other. Within this part, the author has included life-sketch of Senedu Gebru who she believes to be the ‘agent of change’ as far as girl’s education in Ethiopia is concerned. She again reiterates that the student movements that played a very special role in unfolding of political and social landscape of Ethiopia saw great participation of women students and women youth.
The author has shared a lot of her insight over how the women have been portrayed in popular culture. She believes that, traditionally, the women in Ethiopian culture were groomed with different hairstyles, tattoos on different parts of their bodies such as neck, gums of their teeth, legs, forehead, hands and faces as symbols of beauty. With the change of time, the cultural conventions of beautification are being replaced with a plenty of modern products for all the parts of women’s bodies. Ethiopian popular culture is no different from others as it reinforces the patriarchal ideology of women’s traditional roles as mothers and wives who are not only confined to domestic domain but also are dependent and subordinate to men. The author also highlights certain proverbs which are widely used in Ethiopia from a long time; these proverbs are very strongly worded, and they are meant to repeatedly remind the place of women in the patriarchal set-up of their society. The most disturbing fact singled out by the author is when the women assume roles other than the traditional ones or demonstrate characters that are deemed ‘unwomanly’, they would be demonised and vilified. The author ends with an appeal to undermine all those aspects of culture, which oppress women and deny equality to them and devalue the dignity of women.
In a very lengthy chapter titled ‘Women’s equality and the Derg’, she narrates the struggles of women during the time when the Ethiopian Emperor Haile Selassaie was ousted by the Dergue, which was the Coordinating Committee of the Armed forces, Police and Territorial Army. Derg which ruled from 1975 to 1987 began with a promise of guaranty of women’s equality because it had declared socialism as its ideological goal, but hopes were soon dashed by land reforms brought by the military government that did not allow women to be farm-owners. A number of peasant associations were formed by the government to manage farming at the pan-Ethiopian (PA) level. Women were given next to nothing in these PAs. They were marginalised even in the Service and Producers Cooperatives that were organised under the PAs. Sensing the resentment in women workers, the government decided to make a separate forum for addressing women-specific issues, and thus the Ethiopian Women Coordinating Committee was formed. The author believes that the establishment of this committee was a landmark moment in the history of the women’s struggle.
Interestingly, the idea of celebrating 8 March as International Women’s Day was first proposed by Ethiopian Women Coordinating Committee (EWCC). Though the success of EWCC was a bone of consternation for the military government, they established the Revolutionary Ethiopian Women’s Association (REWA) in 1980 to crush the EWCC. The author terms REWA as a women’s association against women. The decade of the 1980s saw women activists struggle against the military government, which had grown autocratic and was impeding everything which stood for women’s rights. These struggles necessarily included armed resistance to which she has donated a full chapter. A large number of women leaders had to spend difficult times in jail and had to bear torture. Summing up, the author says that the women participating in the struggle were largely drawn from the urban areas, but this period galvanised them to rally for women’s equality and articulate issues such as rights, equality and development rather than welfare.
Moving to the next part, she has presented a brilliant analysis for the status bestowed to Ethiopian women under the democratic circumstances. The constitutional provisions and their making as well as their implementation have been discussed with scholarly sincerity, and at the same time, she has oscillated her temperament from one of hope to despondency and vice versa, while discussing these things. The author is a co-traveller of these processes, and is also a subject of the process which is constituted by her own involvement in the movement for transition and transformation of Ethiopia.
In ‘Empowerment for Equality’, she has discussed the evolution of the concept of women’s empowerment, where she has referred to the feminist critique of power. This theoretical shaping of the concept was effected by multiple international factors, which eventually resulted in acknowledging gender equality as indispensable to any development agenda. Women’s rights, whether it is social, political or economic rights, must find a place in any vision of collective human life. The author appears to be quite content with the systemic approval of the idea of empowerment for equality. But she has a rational assumption that unless this idea is sufficiently backed by powerful constitutional provisions, it would not materialise.
She points out that the Ethiopian constitution is one of the most gendersensitive legislations in the whole of the African continent, which she credits to the participation of women in the making of the constitution. She recounts that the first draft of the constitution had a single provision for women that read as ‘women, children and physically challenged people will have special provisions’. At this point of time, the women criticised it tooth and nail, and by organising discussion forums in the capital and other important cities, they made sure that their voices were heard in various grassroot meetings held to discuss the draft constitution so that the constitution explicitly and exhaustively declares the rights of women in all its dimensions. She satisfactorily observes that the Constitution of 1995, which was first constituted to recognise ‘rule of law’, rather than the ‘rule of ruler’, was special in many ways. And the efforts made by women in the process of ratifying the constitution by tabling their concerns to make sure that the democratic, economic and political rights of Ethiopian women are acknowledged, and all the discriminatory practices and attitudes that governed the society were redressed was exemplary. She considers the adoption of affirmative action in favour of women is the single most important achievement of the Constitution of 1995.
Talking about the life of the Ethiopian women in the New Democratic Ethiopia, the author highlights that significant steps have been taken by the government to bring equality among the sexes. The government’s commitment for poverty eradication programmes, establishment of a democratic system and maintaining peace and equality in the country. She underlines the positive role played by the institutions such as Women’s Affairs Office founded by transitional government in 1993, many other organisations such as the EPRDF Women’s League, Regional Women’s Association, Forum for Women’s Education, Ethiopian Women Lawyers Association, Women Entrepreneurs, Women in Mass Media, Women Writers Association, etc., have played a pivotal role in articulation of the interests and concerns of Ethiopian women. She lauds the ability of women of her country to speak in a unified ‘collective’ voice. The year 2009 saw the galvanisation of many women’s organisations into one umbrella organisation called Ethiopian Women’s Federation.
In the final part of her text, she has put an evaluation of all the outcomes of collective labour through the rough decades of women’s struggle. She has prepared an assessment of women’s access to various services like health, education and economic and political power. The author makes a liberal use of data collected by various government agencies as well as the international agencies. She has attempted to develop an analysis of the factors, which facilitates the women’s access to the above services, as a by-product of this study, we get a clue of those factors which are usually hampering women’s chance to access the benefits out of government programmes. This part of her writing is full of research information, and it appears that she has worked very hard to accomplish the project taken in this part.
Regarding education, she counts cost of education and religious nature of education as two main hindrances for women to access education. By provisioning for free education up to general secondary and a cost-sharing scheme thereafter curtails the problem of money to a large extent. Also, secularism in education, which simply means non-interference of religious institutions in curriculum and methods of educations, has encouraged the girl’s attendance and participation in schools. Earlier, civic education was controlled by Orthodox Christians whose logic of religious morality had propagated sexual division of labour that had forced girls to stay away from schools. Civic education with instructions in local languages and proper educational finances have contributed to improved women’s education. The author has credited affirmative action as one of the most important factors for increasing the girls’ numbers in schools and higher education.
Ethiopia has always been vulnerable to epidemics, and the hygiene levels of people has always been poor. Gennet points out that despite the fact that health has been a primary area of concern for governments in Ethiopia, they have always failed to bring out a long-term policy to address the problem. She applauds the health policy of 1993 as a comprehensive one, but due to improper implementation, it has failed. Women’s health, and especially their reproductive health, has been neglected by the policymakers. Poor nutrition, early marriages and negligence have resulted in worrisome health conditions of the Ethiopian women. Gennet acknowledges that the government has rendered a helping hand to women, and there is a minor improvement in health indicators, but there is still a long way to go. As far as women’s economic empowerment is concerned, the involvement of women in non-economic activities and their non-ownership of land is the largest cause of women’s poverty. But, there is some improvement as a study of World bank in 2008 claimed that there is quantitative evidence that Ethiopian women were developing a strong sense of ownership, and they felt that in the case of divorce, the rights of women were more secured than what was earlier. Gennet is especially hopeful of a turn around that can be brought by the micro-financing institutions that have been established by the government in the past 10 years.
The political empowerment of women is evident from the fact that representation of women in regional as well as national assemblies is increasing. She highlights that the increase in the representation of women is greater in local and regional assemblies, where decisions that directly affect the lives of the poor are made. With increase in women education and growing political awareness, the political participation of the women in Ethiopia is expected to rise further. Ethiopian women have grown in confidence, and therefore in the chapter ‘Women in Household’, the author makes a point about changing gender imbalance at the home level. Patriarchy has taken a big jolt by progress made by women, and households are the theatres where these changes can be most conveniently read. Ill-practices like wife-beating has been declared criminal by law, and due to education and awareness, women are capable of arguing for themselves in the decision-making processes at home.
The author is happy with the positive changes taking place in the lives of the Ethiopian women but she does not appear to be impressed with its pace. In ‘Unfinished Business’, she comments that everywhere in the world, women are progressing, and they have attained success in varying degrees. On the one hand, the Scandinavian countries have greatly advanced in women’s empowerment, while others such as African and Asian women are lagging behind. She believes that the major hindrance in the path of women to achieve equality is not conscious and systematic discrimination by the state, but it is the deep-rooted views and attitudes which press women’s inferiority. She appeals for a change in these attitudes, and she recommends that the best way to fight against these patriarchal tendencies is to form strong ‘collective voices’. She suggests that mind-making institutions like mass-media and academia can play a very important role in generating awareness about the gender biases, which have transfused into human societies through social constructs.
Gennet Zewide has utilised her personal insight and has produced a gem of a book in one of those areas which are categorised as ‘dark zones’. The text is rich in information, and it brings out the personal account of one’s first-hand experience as a struggle against undemocratic regimes of various types. The limitations of policymaking for a challenging society like Ethiopia has also been featured in the text. Although the unhesitating acceptance of Western models of institutions and their parameters are quite surprising for any scholar accustomed of methods specialised in non-Eurocentric approaches—resistance, freedom and empowerment—these three phases of the Ethiopian women’s struggle could not have found a better articulation than what she has provided in this book.