Women's leaderships: Will the battle for development in Mauritania go down this path?

By: Babacar Baye Ndiaye*

March 22, 2009

From 13 to 16 March 2009, the Association of Women Heads of Families (AFCF) organized a training workshop for trainers in female leadership in collaboration with the Democratic Association of Moroccan Women (ADFM) and with support from Women’s Learning Partnership for Rights Development and Peace (WLP).

“In Mauritania, we suffer from lack of female leadership. Compared to countries in the Arab Maghreb region, we are lagging behind considerably. Instead of facing up to the challenge or fight to gain equality, Mauritanian women attach more importance to money, their everyday life” says Aminetou Mint El Moctar, president of AFCF.

Mauritania has a lot to accomplish in the area of female leadership. The delay is partly explained by lack of training and exchanges with some countries that have experience in this field. The choice of ADFM as a collaborator in this workshop is not accidental. “This Moroccan association has extensive experience in the field. In addition, there are many ties that bind us with Morocco, where women have led many fights in order to reform their laws” says Aminetou Mint El Moctar.

The purpose of this training workshop is to define the dynamics of advocacy to improve laws in Mauritania and lift reservations on the United Nations’ Convention on the Elimination of All Forms of Discrimination against Women (CEDAW).

In terms of female leadership, Mauritania is still dragging its feet, according to Mohamed Abdallahi Bellil, a communication consultant, political analyst, and civil activist. “Despite all our efforts towards the advancement and emancipation of women, we do not always take into account the leadership dimension” he says. Indeed, the stifling of freedoms, the lack of an evolutionary trend for women’s rights and the lack of political stability in Mauritania work against the promotion and emergence of female leadership.

“We cannot make progress when each day brings new political changes. We cannot move forward when the political climate itself is not stable. We cannot progress because whatever we (women) manage to obtain through our struggle, is shattered and taken away whenever a coup occurs,” says outraged Aminetou Mint El Moctar. She criticized women’s various associations and the Mauritanian women’s elite for not making female leadership one of their priorities.

Nevertheless, according to Ms. El Moctar, president of AFCF, female leadership is feasible in Mauritania. “We cannot wait for a favorable situation. One cannot expect that people give us the opportunity to evolve as leaders. It is up to us, women, to win and create this dynamic of leadership, whatever the political, environmental, economical, and social situation,” she says.

According to Mohamed Abdallahi Bellil, it is when Mauritanian women participate in the decision making-process that we will speak of true emancipation. “It is only when she is a leading figure that she will be able to be part the decision-making. If she does not lead, she will remain confined to her submissive state,” he says.

Nowadays, slogans calling for the emancipation of women, their social promotion, their participation in the government, and the increase in their percentage on electoral posts are not enough. “For them, the battle lays beyond this point. They want new perspectives, such as those of leaders,” says Mohamed Abdallahi Bellil.

However, perspective is not enough. To be a leader you need training, better skills and resources, and you need to learn from the experiences of other countries, such as Morocco, where women have made significant progress in terms of female leadership. “Great achievements are not handed over. They are ripped from the hands of others. You have to struggle, you have to fight. We must pay the price. We must make the sacrifice. We must bring down the walls of silence and apathy. We must think outside the box. We must dare. We must feel entitled. We must aspire. In this struggle, we must make new allies, adopt a certain approach, develop a vision, and use various techniques to help women in their fight,” Mohamed Abdallahi Bellil points out.

It is up to the Mauritanian women now to demonstrate that their battle for equality is mutually beneficial. “This is not a role reversal, but simply the sanctification of equity is now needed to win the fight for development,” he says.

Becoming a leader, many of our women caress this ideal without ever achieving it. “It’s not that easy,” warns Mohamed Abdallahi Bellil. “The political struggle is as important as associative fight. We must not content ourselves with the ability to run NGOs, to practice a trade, or to hold positions in the administration. We must be leaders,” he says.

In Mauritania, leadership has become an ideal that mobilizes more and more women’s organizations. According to Saida Drissi Amrani, a member of ADFM and an educator, all women including Mauritanians must adopt this ideal to defend their cause.

Within this framework, ADFM and AFCF have set up a mentoring and exchange program for organizational capacity building based on the Moroccan experience, in order to help Mauritanian women acquire socio-economic and political rights.

Leadership should be participatory and inclusive. This requires learning and a collective mobilization. “We are in a dynamic of change and action. The application of leadership qualities and skills developed within groups and by individuals enable them to carry out their actions,” Drissi Amrani explains.

Leadership is the influence made by actions and mobilizations to change attitudes in order to achieve democracy, which is built collectively with the participation of both men and women.

According to Maria Ezzaouini, also a member of ADFM and an educator, Mauritanian women do not lack the abilities and traits to become leaders. What they lack are the practical skills. “I have visited many Arab countries,” she confides, “Mauritanian women are dynamic volunteers. They are the future of their country, and men better support them.”

Spanning four days, the Training of Trainers workshop on women’s leadership has enabled the participants to strengthen their skills so they can lead the struggle to promote equality and democracy in Mauritania.

The shortest route to achieve this is to become women leaders, and serve as relays on the ground. For Khadijetou mint Mouhamdi, a participant in the workshop and a member of AFCF, it is vital to have female leadership in Mauritania. “There are so many things to say, we need women leaders to be involved in the decision-making,” she says.

To achieve this, we must also separate religion from socio-political problems. Discriminations endured by women result from stereotypes that have always confined them to productive, reproductive, and social roles.

Link to article on AFCF's website.

*Translated from French by Catherine Shakdam