“Enabling women to shape public policy”
A sociologist by training, Joséphine Ouedraogo has been a minister in her country, Burkina Faso, on two occasions and is now its ambassador in Rome. She discusses the progress and the challenges of gender-equitable development in Africa.
You have held high political positions. Did you encounter any difficulties because you were a woman?
Joséphine Ouedraogo: I have held two ministerial roles as part of my career under exceptional circumstances. The first was as part of the revolution led by Thomas Sankara. I was appointed Minister for Family Development and National Solidarity from 1984 to 1987. The President was very committed to promoting female empowerment and five women joined the government – budget, environment, culture, social action, health – compared to the usual one. I was called on a second time in November 2014 to be Minister for Justice, as part of the transition government which followed the overthrow of Blaise Compaoré. It was a very intense period with permanent social upheaval. I did not experience any particularly chauvinistic behaviour or discrimination during these two extraordinary nation-building experiences, perhaps because, as the Moré proverb goes, “In times of war, you do not have the time to beat your wife”.
On the other hand, in other roles, particularly at the international level, I have seen traps set for women: to induce mistakes we are denied the support to which we are entitled or information is withheld from us. Some colleagues feel humiliated because their line manager is a woman. These are not open battles, but rather expressed as resistance, insubordination, or indifference.
What progress have you noticed in terms of female empowerment in the African countries you are familiar with?
Of course, the well-known obstacles have not disappeared – unequal access to education, training, employment, persistent pressures of traditional practices, such as early or forced marriages, patriarchal and religious guardianship, etc. However, it is important to highlight what is improving. Women hold an increasing number of parliamentary seats in Rwanda (61%), South Africa (46%), Senegal (41%) and Ethiopia (38%), and a third of government positions in Burkina Faso. Globalisation has broken societal and economic moulds, offering opportunities to the workforce. We see illiterate women going on business trips to China or the United States, female scientists being recruited internationally. Women are less confined to domestic work and are demonstrating their abilities in the labour market. Over the last twenty-five years, a stronger African civil society has emerged and women are very committed to social struggles.
Unfortunately, the trade-off for these opportunities is very harsh. The privatisation forced on social policies (education, health, etc.) creates inequalities. Essential services are even less accessible to disadvantaged people. Overall, insecurity is increasing on all levels and poor women are subject to its multiple consequences – violence, migration, exploitation, trafficking. For women, in addition to these classic problems, there are the effects of the global destructuring of African societies, which have lost their endogenous social safety nets.
What priorities would you assign to public policies to guarantee better access for women to economic and political life?
I think that public policies should aim to achieve equitable development that aims to satisfy the basic rights of all men and women. No government can achieve this by excluding a part of the population from decision-making processes at all levels.
And the whole system of exclusion affects women and girls first, more so than men. Therefore, we must ensure that women’s voices are heard to enable their involvement in all areas of activity in society. They should be able to express themselves freely, particularly when it comes to drawing up public policies. In 1985, we did this by gathering 5,000 women from all the country’s provinces to define the guidelines of a family code that abolished traditional rules on inheritance, age of marriage, polygamy, childcare, etc. If women were more involved, many of the problems affecting them, such as rural households’ access to clean water, energy, and technology, would have been resolved long ago