Prof. Dr. Fatou Sow "Relating Women in African Studies: A Critical View"
Abstract
- Abstract
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For the opening of its second international conference the Africa Multiple Cluster of Excellence invited the distinguished Senegalese sociologist, Prof. Dr. Fatou Sow, to speak about "Relating Women in African Studies: A Critical View".
Fatou Sow was introduced by Prof. Dr. Akosua Adomako Ampofo. The event was chaired by Prof. Dr. Ute Fendler, the Cluster's Vice Dean of Internationalisation and Public Engagement.
After Sow’s keynote, the Dean of the Bayreuth International Graduate School of African Studies (BIGSAS), Prof. Dr. Martina Drescher, solemnly announced that the distinguished Senegalese scholar, a veritable pioneer of African feminist studies, has been selected as the recipient of the BIGSAS honorary doctorate, making her the second person to be awarded this title to date
To find out more about Prof. Sow receiving the BIGSAS honorary award: https://www.africamultiple.uni-bayreuth.de/en/news/2021/2021-07-14_Fatou_Sow/index.html
Origins & context
- Title
- Prof. Dr. Fatou Sow "Relating Women in African Studies: A Critical View"
- Language
- English
- YouTube playlist
- Conference Modalities 2021
- Date
- October 11, 2021
Identifiers & sources
Full text
- Transcript
- good evening my name is waterfandler i'm the vice dean of internalization internationalization of the cluster africa multiple and it is my great pleasure to be the chair of this first keynote session this evening i will welcome i'm very happy and honored that i can welcome two extraordinary um colleagues uh professor fatouzou from university sheikh hunter job in dakar who was willing and who accepted to give the keynotes uh the keynote address tonight to open our conference and also i would like to welcome our colleague from uh university of ghana before we can start i would just like to say a couple of words about the procedure for this panel as this is the first one also with translation there will be an introduction first by uh then we will start a video because the conference the keynote by professor uh so has been recorded beforehand it is in french and it's subtitled in english afterwards we can have questions and answers professor so will answer in french you can answer you can ask questions in french or in english in the chat that i will read in these languages and at the bottom of your screen you will find the icon for interpretation so you will always have the the direct translation from french to english or english to french um so far about the procedure but now uh i would like i'm not sure if the interpreters already started but uh just to as a beginning [Music] i would like to wish a warm welcome to uh the uh professor of sheikh and eric and we are very honored to have you here amongst us today and we are impatiently waiting for your conference later but first of all i'm going to pass the word to my colleague who's going to introduce this conference to us the introduction to the conference and also to to our keynote speaker professor fatu so thank you very much and welcome thank you very much uh utter for that welcome thank you good evening to colleagues i'm not going to go through all the protocols again i'm sure everybody already feels very very welcome i am going to take the liberty of sharing my script and this is because i want to honor my grand ser it's no exaggeration to say that i'm absolutely delighted and i was very honored to be invited to introduce professor fatuso to this eve to as this evening speaker she's highly respected and deeply admired the pictures on the screen that i will be sharing with you were taken in 2013 during the 50th anniversary celebrations and an international conference at the institute of african studies at the university of ghana where professor so and googie wationgo were our special guests during that conference and we held a special open session with high school students that both professors graciously agreed to address magran sir fatou was a hit with the students i say this by way of introduction to show that professor fartuso is both sophisticated and also down to earth gracious and with an engaging sense of humor that enables hair to cross generations i was director at the institute of african studies at the time and um in the conference some students made a portrait of professor fatuso and i'd like to also remind her of the times that we shared together also with professor teichuamenu who was my predecessor as um as director i cannot remember exactly when i first met prof fartuso but her reputation as a feminist scholar who has worked at the forefront of women's rights um let me stop sharing my screen i'm sorry there we go who has worked at the forefront of women's rights in west africa and senegal specifically and globally more generally had preceded her for me born in dakar when senegal was still a french colony fatouso was among the very few women to enter the university of in senegal in the late 1950s she started her career at the department of sociology of the faculty of arts and human sciences of the university of dakar in 1966. a few months later the santro nacional de la rica sientifique in paris recruited her as a researcher based at the university of dakar and those of us familiar with the francophone relations will know how this worked when the department of sociology was shut down in the aftermath of the may 1968 student revolts and sociology was removed as a discipline from the academic curricula she joined the santra detude sociolux at the cnrs in paris after receiving her phd in sociology at the sarborn in 1969 fatouzou returned to dakar and took up the position at the institute fundamental da freak noir ifan or ifan for short while continuing to maintain her affiliation with the cnrs in the early 1990s she became a member of the cnrs based la batua seda societe ed development don lespes and don le thorn please forgive me i'm not a french speaker of dennis de adore university in paris she received her research director habilitation in sociology a very prestigious recognition if i may say so from the same university reflecting the preoccupation of african social sciences at the time with the new independent nation states patoso's first book les fonsioner de la ministation senegalese published in dakar by ifan was a study of the making of the states and the role of new elites in the nascent senegalese republic she has remained a passionate researcher throughout her career conducting field work in various parts of senegal on a wide range of topics including the legal and economic situation of rural and urban populations even though she had produced scholarship on women's issues as far back as the early 1960s she took on a more systematic focus on gender in 1973 when she presented a paper titled le femme africa ella division internacional du travail at the first conference of the canadian association of african studies at carleton university in ottawa shortly thereafter she published from socialite africa and this was also published by ifan in dakai in 1976 the mid-1970s thus marked a more obvious landmark in her extraordinary and unabating commitment to the cause of african women in and outside of the academy in the subsequent five decades professor so attended num innumerable workshops and conferences all over the world where she challenged the status quo of the condition of african women in her keynotes lectures and roundtable appearances and of course in numerous conversations that were in less formal settings starting in the 1980s interestingly several several sojourns in the united states as a fulbright scholar at the university of maryland in 1980 and at the university of california los angeles in 1984 as visiting professor of the great lake college association in 86 87 boston university in 94 96 from 1994 to 1906 and in canada at the university lavar quebec in 1996 these were important in shaping fatusou's identity as an african feminist and i say interestingly because this formation was happening outside the continent and you will realize why as i go forward she realized that the conditions of african women were not contemporaneous with a fight for women's rights in the global north as much as european and north american feminists try to absorb international including african feminist thoughts and movements in their own agendas as far too so emphasized in the early debates about african feminism in the 1970s and 1980s most african women denounced the colonization of research and demanded decolonization and so for our younger members of the audience who think that decolonization is a recent agenda item african feminists have been doing this from the onset and fatuso was one of these they acquired that is african feminists including uh keynote speakers tonight they acquired considered the access to education as something that was extremely important economic access to economic resources political participation and equal rights were as important as many of the theorizing discourses that were going on if not even considered as more important and we're looking at issues like patriarchy and so on which were very much on the table at the time reproductive health mattered more to our senior feminist scholars at the time than so-called sexual liberation fatuso has made momentous contributions to these oftentimes contentious debates both as a scholar in her writings and as a public intellectual and activist her interventions have been instrumental in establishing african feminism as a distinct movement and in connecting it with the struggles of women all around the globe while debating western feminism and contributing to theory at the same time her most important publications in this phase of her career include lear la vie african contemporary which was published in senegal by ifan muslim families in contemporary black africa femme african employee at division international du travail and a host of others fatuso's interventions had a perceptible impact on national and international organizations and venues for instance in the late 1970s she conducted surveys on the economic role of women in rural senegal for the newly created ministry of women's affairs and in 1993 she directed with mama dudioff the study of femme senegalese horizon in 2015 for the senegalese government she was a delegate at the world conference on women in nairobi in 1985 in beijing in 1995 and as an early member of pedestria the council for the development of social science research in africa that's based in dakar she joined its scientific committee as far back as 1987 and was instrumental in organizing high profile academic events on gender at a time when as progressive as pedestrian may have been gender was not necessarily on the front burner and so she worked together with feminist colleagues such as aisha imam and amina mama eventually culminating in the collective volume engendering african social sciences which has been highly influential and i for example continue to use it in teaching my gender courses even though her efforts to institutionalize gender studies at sheikhanta diop university conducted with the support of other senegalese women scholars in the early 2000's was not successful before her own retirement her hard work was to bear fruit in the form of the establishment of women and gender studies programs in the late 2000s and we all have much to thank her for for the way that this has crossed across the the region other influential publications include her article la appropriation on africa haryan um which was published by the institute national national detour demographic in her editor edited volume feminist francophone long identity on you on you forgive me as well as in the volume le sex de la mandela um class race and novel division co-edited with you faker published in 2010 these were influential texts that taking us into the new millennium committed as ever to the fight for the fundamental rights and equality of african women fatiso has remained active in coordinating and leading various influential organizations and networks after her official retirement and of course we all know that she's not really retired particular mention needs to be made of the network development alternatives for women and new in a new era dawn for short where she served as the coordinator for francophone afro africa from 1994 to 2007 and subsequently as a board member for the francophone africa region of which she was president 94-96 the african feminist forum since 2006 the london-based network for women living under muslim law where she was in charge of the international coordination office from 2008 to 2018 and the group grefls for short the west african office of women living under muslim law these affiliations are indicative of fatuso's major concerns in the later part of her career when she began to tackle questions of reproductive health violence against women women's mobilization and political participation and women's rights in africa and in muslim contexts after writing several articles on female mutilations in the late 1990s she co-edited with kudo bop the ari sar collective volume notre corp notre rosante our bodies our health her public numerous other publications have set the stage for frequent public appearances in senegal and around the world where she criticized the continuous justification of violence against women in the name of islam while her commentaries have sparked debate and often even controversy in the senegalese public sphere and beyond it is remarkable that at the same time her voice had an echo even in religious circles where more and more protagonists have begun to speak out in support of women's rights in islam her latest edited volume genre fundamentalism gender and fundamentalism published by pedestrian 2018 illustrates how feminist struggles in africa africa are confronted with fundamentalisms of different origins and peculiarities which are in turn closely connected to global entanglements thus demonstrating the challenges that still lie ahead in the fight for the rights of women in africa fattusso has not only produced enduring scholarship in her discipline but she has also weathered quite a few storms in her unrelenting dedication to african women's studies and african feminism and she has remained undeterred she has made outstanding contributions with tremendous impact in the academy as well as in the public sphere testifying to head deep-seated commitment to the critical values of the contemporary humanistic endeavor in our con culture we would call her onipa a human being not every person who walks and breathes is a human being and i am very proud to know her as my grandson and to present her to you this evening as your keynote speaker thank you very much thank you very much that was fantastic um also all those wonderful pictures in the beginning i had i mean i haven't seen those pictures so i'm really also very moved i am pretty sure that fatouzou is um it's also very very moved [Music] english as i know that fatou also understands english um so i i i said before we we launched the video with with the conference talk i thought it might be really nice to see that you can see each other and exchange a couple of words before we start the video otherwise it makes it i mean zoom 200 um yeah so maybe you want to to exchange some some some ideas before we start in the video uh merci for professor handler the president of the university of the bible dresser [Music] reunion the scissors i didn't think that she would show me the photos of accra which i really enjoyed which is very nice celebration with my colleagues professor colleagues and we've really had very very nice moments so thank you so much for that i was very happy to have recorded this i can't even find my words now due to the emotion however i'm extremely happy to be here and to discuss these studies about africa and so with all these changes so which we share as a center and uh study object and actors and reactors that we share with the colleagues in the rest of the world thank you so much when i was invited to do this conference to hold this conference on these studies of the women i was very happy i accepted immediately we have many questions because it is a political question and a religious question too because uh the woman herself also plays a very important role in this so when you asked me to come here to talk of the studies of the women i accepted this voluntarily to see how women think in africa how women talk in africa to think in an african context in a very moving context and a context which um puts everybody into the same level with different contacts with different ideas but with the same problems that we one and the other are linked to destiny which is a destiny that is global and worldwide system it's also about the way that we think in africa and have a critical view of these answers so thank you so much it's us who thank you thank you for being here today with us um i think this is a perfect start for a conference on african relations we will start now the video if you allow so um [Music] i think there will also be the link for the video in the chat so if ever you have problems to to watch it here on the shared screen you might also watch it on your individual screens you might then because then you might have better better quality so we'll watch the conference which is i think i remember well something like 25 minutes 30 minutes and after that then we come back to to join for questions and answers and discussions thank you very much [Music] cheryl the women's studies debris down this university's american donaldson minnesota studies of france alabama academy institutionalization market existence general concept exclusion education academic the production reconnaissance farm in importance they also showed the sex transfers to the sources of ideologically these institutions african dancing more superior movement democratization allah african feminists the sexual tradition le panna volcanism etc university [Music] his first academics politics [Music] [Music] representation the feminism estimate the rover indication kid on two some source is a piece of equals or concept analysis social dancing perspective kitchen cone the situation of the farm promover patricia mcfadden international with swaziland address attention feminists also no competence analytic excessive no capacity is decolonization and afrofeminism silvia tamane advance la for feminism de colonial que du atten corpore lagas african [Music] restaurant [Music] [Music] mercy so thank you so much for this very nice conference that brings us to a historical perspective with a very complex histories in all these decades however you have finished on a hope note so sometimes we do ask ourselves whether we still can have hope in such a world but i wrote down a few questions but i saw that there already are some questions in the function right at the bottom of our screen so in the questions of answers i'm going to read them and um and i don't want to take too much of the microphone but i will read them anyway so i'm going to read them um there is an adams amongst uh um and she writes the first comment hello my sister fatu your usual radical and sober analysis and then follows the question my question is does the increasing presence of women in african governments at various levels make a difference in the possibilities of general studies in african universities please activate your microphones so i'm going to answer bit by bit right so it's one or two questions but uh i think we can give two answers first of all it's extremely important that there are more and more women in all these power decision making powers the more we are it'll be um we can be as many dumb women as dumb men and at this point we will be the same and we will maybe be able to answer a few questions so this is um it's just a joke but i think it is extremely important that women are conscious that they can take part at decision-making um effects state effects upon the nation as well i think you have to activate your microphone dear miss cells could you please activate your microphone at the bottom by pressing on the microphone oh i think it is activates itself um right so the second question is does the increasing presence of women in african governments at various levels make a difference in the possibilities of gender studies in african universities so the study of women so yes and no i think uh the today the women will notice the role that they may then they may play to transform the society that means to make women's rights argument and that men realize and the different men in different situations that women know which rights they have and how they can discuss and how they can advance advance certain situations on how to take decisions environmental decisions economic decisions or all sorts of decisions social decisions and so we just don't don't just have the point of view so the more point of views we get the better it is so of course we have the masculine point of view which is the dominant point of view because they always uh dominate but they've never thought about the problems that might happen or that may happen to women and men and younger generations to come i think this is a constant battle that we're facing we have to make women progress so transform the reports transform how we go about it so these questions are questions that we don't ask ourselves questions that can come back again and again and we have to find solutions that have to convey and have to um be okay for the rest of the population so thank you very much i can see that there are quite a few questions in the chat so the people who would like to ask questions please uh go into the question and answer and ask your questions but i can also see the questions in the chat so there's also another question from patricia go do me promise who in um there are two three questions even okay let's see first question what role do african languages play longer second question how do you see the relations between africa and latin america in particular brazil in terms of the production of knowledge in the field of gender and feminist studies how do you see these dialogues in terms of emancipation and third or maybe i'll read this later as a gender and feminist scholar how do you see gender and feminist studies in african schools and universities as a whole there are three big questions so to answer the first question i think that um the role of the african languages is extremely important to keep keep carrying messages to carry them until now at the feminism has a concept that was born in the occident world so um mainly they are in english they've been taken up they've been reconsidered into different languages which are in european languages french german etc and for many africans due to their history due to the mathematics we have used language european languages to transmit messages though nowadays we do realize not just nowadays but we do realize that it is absolutely essential to take up these uh concepts these feminist concepts in our languages in pearl in exile in swahili in all our languages and these are concepts that have not been translated but have been rethought on the level of the situations so i'm going to be very fast so i think it's a very patriotic issue so it very patriotic yesterday it's always a european who reminds me that patriarchal is a concept of greek a greek concept and latin or origin which reminds us of the men in the times even if nowadays we have decided that the patriarchal is the power of the male on the entire societies and on to the structures that we have inherited in the colonial occident and in religions as well as many um religions in relief the patriarchal issue has a very um clear significance so if we translate the patriarchal wall off we have to measure it to the matriarchal and to um and uh to our societies i don't think we don't have a matriarchal association we've got a matrilineal which goes from the uh the circulation of goods to circulation of political power but we can what we can do is uh we we make a differentiation between the role of the male and the female which explains that this is what we understand by patriarchal when in the measure of this knowing that patriarchal is a dominant and largely dominant in our societies we've inherited it but of course we do have the uh genes very closely in you know in in globe into our system so the question here is africa africa and latin america well i work in various organizations where we have a very very strong presence a massive presence of our latin american presence so our sisters in latin america our feminist movement there uh they're bored i have worked for more than 20 years representing brazil shooting colombia um so these are questions that are very close to our question so what we do is we exchange our experience and we try and see how we can understand the hopes of others so it's clear that with the um user phone so the feminists in mozambique or in them have a very closer relationship with their language with their intercultural exchanges with latin america than rather than with uh africa like western africa the anglophone or the francophone uh west africa what we do have in common is our way of seeing the coloniality and to deconstruct it um due to different contexts since nowadays we in africa in west africa we are independent whereas in latin america we are still in a colonial process so if we consider latin america it's all about freedom to the africans who live in latin america so there are some questions about coloniality which are questions that we can discuss together where there are some links so um what happens in african societies okay this is not part of our conference we're going to discuss it anyway so the africans have taken up the control of this concept of gender so we do have a concept of appreciating the gender and giving our solutions and also we share we confront ourselves to various attitudes and confrontations that are either parallel or opposed to each other however the genre can the gender can exist does exist in the african civil societies so the gender the accidental gender has to exist we know that in our social sciences in africa talk about markers talk about alder sir talk about riveraro but simon de beauvoir et cetera and that becomes a delirium postcolonial delirium and there i think that there's a different way of appropriating this concept which we have used in various situations thank you very much so there is a question what do you think of the cleavage between the feminist and universalist interconception is there not a possibility to be both at the same time so here we are used to be putting ourselves into various categories where in categories where we are permitted to confront problems together but it permits us to separate also um beyond the definitions because we've got the radicals we've got uh different epithets so what i think is extremely important and what makes the link between different feminisms is in the end to have the intersexuality which is extremely important um in the societies that are here uh so um the uh um it's one of the questions it has a more um crucial importance than in a mass of white people than if we have a mass of black people who are in a continent black women and black men the race is going to have a different way of approach it will be a different approach so um there are you know if i'm going to answer your question i don't answer your question however we need to be able in the theories that we dispose of take elements take concepts that permit to understand us and to work together so the universalists they founded the racist so um these intersection analysis put the accent onto the race but on the black women who have placed accent onto the race the these these colored women who are in france actually at the moment in latin america or in northern america there is a dimension of race which is fundamental and here we have also you know people in maghreb in central africa in all sorts of areas there's this question of questions that are important and we have to consider them and to deny these questions in my opinion is uh wrong it would be just a pure imagination to deny them there are many questions i don't know if we're going to be able to answer all these questions but i'm going to continue i'm going to try let's see if we can so i as i see we need to have we need to go more into depth in a very close future i think that would be the best solution so there is our colleague from madrid a large um good day madame fatou thank you for this con deep confidence on the question of african women my question is the following so um beyond the reflection of intellectual women universal women and feminists and which are the strategies in the real life of women which are non-intellectual on a daily basis for an emancipation on the plans cultural educate educational socio-economical what do they propose themselves as a object of the subject of study to emancipate of what they live what is their way of seeing how do they nourish the feminist african um thought so i'm going to answer answer very briefly it's not a provocation dear colleagues i'm going to provoke you now the men the african men ask us african women that we are we are in the dilemma of being uh um of being intellectuals so our feet are not in on the ground are deeply based in the ground we think without uh thinking about the rest no african money who's talking about african history of the politics in africa the african questions whether they're medial political or environmental they think they talk about for for everybody women you always ask them why um do they let men theorize theoreticalize these uh on these uh poor african women who in the end are um i wouldn't say that they suffer but people do say that they suffer so you know intellectuals luxury intellectuals so i think what we do have in common with these women with the defense of what that is that we are women what we have in common is that we have the same constraints which are the constraints of being female the constraints of being a mother constraints of being a wife constraints of living in a system where the women although central lies in the reproduction biological and social reproduction cultural reproduction we have roles specific roles everybody is the center of our role i said that i am a woman in everything that's happening and everything that's happening in our country so what we do have is this centralization that of what we are and who we are but uh we do share this and i'm just going to give you an example it's a parity when the parity was placed in uh senegal there were not many intellectual women who believed that this was true however it was a debate that came back very often with the idea that we do want to have an equality and on the platform of beijing this started being a centralized question in this platform however when we didn't have this parody we had this uh dream of intellectualism then they're going to start dreaming they start streaming that they can also see in this group that they could see in the councils in the department councils and that we give them the soil that although this was only from men and young people were part of these institutions so they really fought what i want to say that we are together and we are fighting together and to oppose intellectuals from rural women say vulnerable women poor women that's an insult to a feminism to the femininity i would say that's a very nice provocation very beautiful thank you so much i can see that rhodiola has lifted his hand but first of all i would like to read the question of christine ford william who is the director of the office for the genre diversity of cluster i'm going to read it in english and we can listen to the transformative insights please share your thoughts on the role of democracy as a citizenship right as regards african women scholars as knowledge producers democracy is very important on a global aspect so what the intellectuals have is they've got the problem of democracy which is the liberty of thought the freedom of writing the freedom of teaching and also the freedom of thinking and to say what what we think so here what has happened is a whole uh decade of liberty of the academies so the first uh democratic failure in our system is the failure of the academic uh freedom not to be allowed to think not to be allowed to criticize this a political system not to be allowed to exchange ideas that is extremely important and i think that the intellectuals and everybody in the end and actually if you go to senegal or if you go into a lot of countries i'm thinking of africa the west africa you know and you can talk about the giles jean in france or the people who are fighting in cuba for uh to get the level uh the economic life upwards and all these fights in revolution and the number of deaths that we have due to um due to fighting protesting against poverty deep poverty i think these are democratic questions and it's extremely important to um to underline these and everybody um the syndicates the intellectuals the students the intellectuals it's a category i mean many people are intellectuals i mean intellectuals it's a it's from the moment where we think where we say we're not intellectuals because we just speak english we're not intellectual because we're capable of using sophisticated words uh from whoso can't or marx no you can be intellectual because we use certain words certain ways of thinking because we think of shabamba if we uh take away what's being said in the discussions uh philosophical discussions we are all and we all need democracy africa doesn't need to be anti-democracy to develop itself it cannot develop itself if democracy doesn't work so this is what we have in our countries thank you so much i'm going to pass the um microphone to rudiger season thank you very much we are far too uh thank you so much for this excellent lecture and the insights you shared with us and i think the discussion we are having now shows how important uh this topic uh nowadays is in african studies and um you were instrumental in bringing it sort of on the agenda over the past few decades together with others and this is why we invited you to the lecture today and seeing all the other questions pouring in i'm not sure how many wood of handler is going to take but i just wanted to let everyone know that we will have a round table on saturday in our program organized by christine fox william the director of the office of gender and diversity in the cluster together with her colleagues from the four african cluster centers and uh far too will also be a discussion there so i just want to draw everyone's attention to that event uh to which you are very welcome and which will i think also um offer opportunities to go into more depth uh with regard to all these important questions so yeah thanks uh very much indeed okay i thank you i think this was also at the same time a reminder that our time is over actually maybe but let me take a last question at least because there's still uh is quite a still a long list but let me take a last question then by nana i hope i pronounce this correctly [Music] she asks you made allusions to africa's material origins in the course of your presentation do you think that contemporary african feminism could someday steer africa to its roots to some sort of neo-matriarchal system that would drive social development policy in africa um [Music] it is in the interpretation we have an interpreter who's translating it so she said that you made some illusion to the uh rich and origins matriarchal systems the societies and she's asking whether the feminism the african feminism contemporary feminism could that could that eventually permit to link africa and to create maybe a kind of neo-montreal system that would help to develop further the social development on the political level on a political level in africa i understand thank you right i didn't invent this so this so doctors and other scientists say that the social structures in africa are matriarchally based and they've been dev they've developed this and it's not my protection to say this so if today we have a look at these structures we have some residues which means that the maternal line exists and the paternal line exists too and these two lines are the lines that permit to transmit the political power the goods and the resources and now we come back to these elements for example in the transmission of the power where partners have a family a defined family who also work there and they also part of a maternal family defined maternal family where they can access and we find them as well in in more rural areas in forestry areas on the women side of the women on the side of the men however the question that we have is what was the real assimilation to this matriarchal society so if the matriarchal transmits political power then if i take up the titles that press uh titles domination titles in our systems etc it's always the men it said no it's always the men it's it's always the man you know it's uh these are titles that are in the masculine it's not the the mother that comes to this title so at this level uh in this matriarchal linearity or matriarchal linearity of course uh cheryl group and the adepts that they have a matriarchal is not a sin and it's not a cyst and parallel system to the identity of identity identical to the patriarchal system and we do ask several questions that we can evaluate however many of our uh african researchers who felt in uncomfortable with african feminism with european feminism they called this the occidental feminism and i think that there are two icons icons of the matriarchal importance in our system which smooths down european who's who said we cannot have binary relations and men female relations where sex the sex is not or the gender gender is not something of intersectionality but there is an intersection between the genders and there is um the ethni there there are different many african women um went into this matriarchal system as an ideology to mark themselves against an occidental patriarchal system which was put into place in nicole from nicole machine nicole call me who defended the patriarchal system as an instrument of as an ideology which oppresses and uh suffocates women in contrary feminism uh around this maternity issue around this um the magical is actually an element of how can i say it of a group of regroupment of this image of the mother you know for what is most sacred of the mother so this is the pre-historical africa it's the pre-colonial history of africa nowadays we say three five seven uh interactional systems so what has stayed here we only talked about near matriarchalism so around this uh the body of the woman there is this ideology which has been constructed an ideology which pretends to give liberty freedom to women and to give them the power as a creator but in the end they um it's not the procreation that by co-creation we control women's sexuality we control the female and this system of control of the female body predominates the women and what they decide to do and how they decide of what they want etc so here i don't think that neo-feminism african neo-feminism can found can be found onto on maternity however we have to fight so that women can control that power of maternity or their power of maternity in a society and which is not in their own hands we are just there to reproduce for reproduction there we go i'm sorry but i i you know i know whenever you have to like summarize something you you have a tendency to talk and we all have the tendency to talk a lot of course there are some elements that we can continue the debate so um first of all a big thank you and uh please don't leave the room because there are still quite a little announcement that should be made now to make the transition maybe we'll give two minutes to the music before i pass the word directly to martino drescher because if we had been together there would be a lot of music but in a zoom call it would be nice to just have two minutes of music that would be very nice and then please listen to the n-word so please stay with us matum from maputo who will also be part of the conference um on friday aft evening for uh for discussions but today now he will be here to play mubira for 2-3 minutes as a transition and then martina russia will pick up thank you uh [Music] [Music] [Music] [Music] you [Music] [Music] can i pass the microphone over to you yes thank you very much good evening my name is martina drescher and i am the historian early career equal opportunity and for the end of this evening we have a surprise that is maybe not such a great surprise however you can maybe guess it so the international doctoral buyer grade of international studies success have unanimously decided to give the phd the doctorate and honoris causa to our deen estimated colleague dr fato she's our second phd doctorate researcher in honoris causa that and hunin young we've seen on the picture who's also received his academic title in 2014 it's a very great honor for the members of the dixons and also for me as her dean to discern this phd to a lady who is not only a brilliant researcher a sociologist an international a recognized sociologist for her great work but also a teacher an activist which has been leading for half a century in intellectual and political combat for the women's rights event has a brilliant um is a brilliant writer of feminist histories of africa with a great parkour her influence is not limited to french franco french africa but uh also has a great career in various continents this we have also seen she has brought great contributions in scientific fields in public fields too with a profound impact in the feminist literature but also inside africa fatuso has always underlined the importance of the role and the contribution of ladies in post-colonial africa we have seen it now in the discussion and to quote the link between francois garcia is an important figure and in a contourable figure not just in the global suit but also in the feminist theory she is also an african feminist and an africa and a feminist of the world the author of the second report professor sonia daya asabran is also in the same direction characterizing laureate com as a militant passionate for the uh female rights in africa and the female rights in the entire world an incredible personality in the first row and i cannot even pronounce the word because she said she does not like the word but she has the first row in the intellectual africans if i may say so we also have a great honor to give um homage to an incredible woman to give the doctorate the phd honoris causa and i will quote what has been written to her in um thanks to her exceptional exploits in african feminism and her incredible engagement for the cause of the women in africa the only regret that i have nowadays is that we cannot uh celebrate fatou saw as we would like which means with a presidential ceremony which would be uh dignified for this event to which would permit us to reunite physically to be able to celebrate this wonderful event but this will only just be a postponed i am so happy to find all of you here in bairoot uh once the corona virus and the restrictions that have been imposed will be in part of the past and i am sure that this uh celebration will take place in 2022 at the latest and now i invite you to all give a great applause to fat to us and to be amongst us this evening thank you very much also prepared a bit of music to finish the nice evening but maybe you would like to just uh end it in a few words before we give the place to the music otherwise we just put the music on and we dream of this event which will be in the future i am so emotional of emotions right now i i have difficulties finding my words right now i would like to give a great thank you with a very very um a lot of humbleness our uh my phd and honoris causa that you've just offered me i am very very um um happy and that you have discerned this and thank you so much thank you so so much i thank you um in name of africa and in the name of african women who are fighting that their voices can be heard that their thoughts can be heard and shared as a debate on the same level to equality that we can share together thank you so much thank you thank you for this uh phd thank you doctor brescia thank you to everybody just thank you and thank you aguaswa thank you so much and i would like to give a great thank you to all my friends that i told this morning between 23 p.m and at night and two in the morning i was sending like uh translations links etc cause i wanted that my friends and my family which this uh honor with me i can see several names that are here i see some names that have just um shown up so thank you so much for being here today uh my family and this phd i'm dedicating it to my grandchildren to manileek to see mel to michael to i love you thank you so much thank you it's an honor for us that you have accepted this phd in honor scouser and um we are totally emotional as well and we are touched by the fact that you have accepted it and that we can count you part of the uh phd i'm part of the doctors that are here who have their doctorates so i have nothing more to say for the moment i'm going to pass a place to the music and it'll be the moment of uh coming out of this big room so now that we were going to occupy together next time in live thank you so much again for this very nice evening for the communication excellent communication there is so much applauses and bravos in the chats and uh we're going to see each other again in the next two days so thank you so much again thank you thank you a bit of music to finish please yes it's louder [Music] so [Music] so [Laughter] [Music] [Laughter] so [Music] so [Music] [Music] [Laughter] foreign [Laughter] thank you again i hope we can see each other again in the various sections tomorrow morning thank you thank you goodbye it is open and congratulations fatou i'm really delighted i'm really uh moved and glad it has worked out congratulations thank you thank you so much thank you okay so goodbye and see you tomorrow merci thank you have a nice evening bye [Music] so [Music] so [Laughter] [Music] so [Laughter] you