Women in Ethiopia: The Struggle for Liberation and Development Part II

BY JENNY HAMMOND

It is a paradox that war can be a catalyst for changes that are positive. At the end of the civil war in 1991 many women in areas of the north which had been administered by the liberation fronts during the late seventies and eighties felt themselves to be beneficiaries of such changes, especially in access to land, in marriage laws, and in women’s increased participation in areas of public life and decision-making previously denied them.

Of course there was no room for complacency. The challenges were still formidable. Implementation of real change for women needed commitment by government to equality of women and commitment of resources to carry it out. The southern two thirds of Ethiopia had not been affected by the social and political processes set in motion in the north. Women and children still formed the majority of Ethiopian people living in absolute poverty. 75% of women were illiterate; domestic chores interfered with education for girls; child marriage and related cultural attitudes were an obstacle to elementary education for many girls; early marriage before 17 reduced access to secondary and higher education for the majority of girls; drop-out rates from school were higher for girls than for boys. The gender-based division of labour, level of work and lack of access and control over resources often prevented women and girls from taking advantage of such opportunities as existed.

By 1991 a start had been made in the north. What was important was to extend that process to the rest of the country in culture-sensitive ways. Cynics have often pointed to government encouragement of women’s employment and participation in time of war (the First and Second World Wars were an example), only to send them ‘back to the kitchen’ in times of peace. The liberation fronts who had shown themselves to be committed to working towards the equality of women before 1991 were a powerful force in the Transitional Government (TGE) and in the first elected central government of 1995, but did they show themselves to be serious after 1991 in their commitment to improving conditions for Ethiopian women?

In 1992 the TGE set up a Women’s Affairs Office within the Prime Minister’s Office to oversee and co-ordinate the National Policy on Women, promulgated the following year. This policy expressed the Government’s commitment to gender-sensitive and gender-inclusive policy making and government departments. There are Women’s Affairs Bureaux established in ten regional governments and two special administrative regions. A Women’s Affairs Committee was set up in the Council of People’s Representatives to check and monitor for gender sensitivity in proclamations and laws before their promulgation. In 1995 Ethiopian women attended the Fourth World Conference on Women in Beijing and took part in the drawing up of the document which summarised the proposals and aims which came out of that meeting.

The right of women to equality was laid down in the Constitution in two articles. Article 25 included women in the proclamation. 'All persons are equal before the law' without discrimination on any grounds whatever. Article 35 granted women equal rights with men across the board, including rights to land and property, and also a right to ‘special attention to women to compete and participate on the basis of equality with men in political, social and economic life as well as in public institutions’.

Without the underpinning of constitutional, legislative and administrative support, it is unlikely that processes can be set in motion which will raise the economic standard, improve the public and political participation and alleviate the burden of work of the majority of women. Yet we all know that women’s equality cannot be promulgated by law or guaranteed by edict. It is whether and how Government declarations and laws are implemented that counts. Also peace time brings its own problems and advantages in facilitating change. The Government peacetime focus on development has brought increased resources for education, health and agricultural development, all of which are relevant to women’s struggles for equality. On the other hand the absence of the catalyst of war and a common enemy tends to slow down the sense of urgency for change.

In the women’s associations in Tigray, for example, there has been a tendency to relax and revert to old ways. When I was living successively in two villages in 1996 and 1997 I found attendance at WA meetings had plummeted. Some husbands who publicly favoured women’s participation, were reportedly discouraging their wives from going to meetings. With the restoration of the rule of law to the whole of Ethiopia it was no longer possible to retain the respected, but frequently illiterate, women judges operating at village level in the Tigray rural area. I was disturbed to find that some families were abandoning the minimum age of marriage of fifteen and marrying off their daughters at twelve or thirteen. The custom of dowry seemed to be reviving. The Constitution, on the other hand, while granting women equal rights with men in marriage, including the right to full consent to marriage, freedom from ‘harmful practices’ and equal division of property on divorce, stopped short of stipulating a minimum age of marriage. My information is that such a stipulation would at this time be unworkable in the context of great cultural diversity and in the absence of an effective birth registration system.

However, serious investigation of the present and potential outcomes for women in post-war rural Tigray, showed many problems, but also grounds for optimism. Although there has undoubtedly been some regression in the villages, marriage below fifteen was confined to a small minority. I found no evidence of a return to the earlier practice of child marriage below ten and as young as six or seven. There was increased access to health care for women and children. Every ‘kushet’ (sub-division of a village) had a woman health worker, elected from the community and trained to advise and assist on childbirth, family planning and hygiene.

Women whom I interviewed were very certain that they had more rights and better conditions than before the TPLF revolution. Their primary criteria were economic, pointing to their own fields and citing equal rights to property. In response, current priorities for the Women’s Association headquarters in Mekele is to encourage small-scale economic projects such as chicken and egg production and spinning. Domestic work has been somewhat alleviated by the increased provision of wells and grinding mills. Finding wood for fuel is still a problem. Women I spoke to were proud to have the right to elect and be elected, although in fact their visible participation in village assemblies seemed to have decreased in 1997. However women were very visible in local development projects such as carrying stones for dam building and terracing. In November 1998 when I visited the camps for the war displaced near the Badme area, women were very prominent in meetings and active in making and implementing decisions in the emergency situation.

The new factors which in my view give grounds for optimism are all connected with development, particularly education. Many villages now have elementary schools for the first time. I cannot say they are well equipped. Many do not have desks and the children sit on large stones and work on their knees. Classes are large and often burst the bounds of the buildings to be held in ‘green classrooms’ under tree branches. Nevertheless both children and teachers were enthusiastic in the two villages I lived in. Nearly half the students were girls and when interviewed declared their intention of finishing at least elementary education up to seventh grade before marrying. The 15+ ages of many of the girl students confirmed this. Some of the older students were already married and one or two brought their babies to school, but, according to one head teacher, only a tiny minority of students either marry or become mothers at school and, of those, most new mothers drop out at least for a while.

An examination of the new curriculum, especially in English, Tigrinya and Social Studies, revealed many exercises, stories and other items which directly or indirectly supported changed attitudes to women and women’s work. Little dialogues discuss women working outside the home, stories illustrate decision-making by women in the home, other items offer powerful women as role models or show them in ways that break traditional stereotypes.

It would not be accurate or helpful to underestimate the cultural obstacles to women’s equality in Ethiopia. Reversing the discriminatory culture for women has to be a long-term project. It is not only a project; it is a process and that process has already started. The north of the country made a start as early as 1976 when the first elected village councils under TPLF approved women’s equal rights to land from the minimum age of marriage (15) in the first land redistribution in Sobeya in Agame (now occupied by Eritrean forces). In the southern half of the country the struggle for women’s rights has begun only recently.

I was present at a Constitutional Conference for women in Addis Ababa in April 1994 to which women representatives came from all over Ethiopia to give their views on constitutional change. The event itself was consciousness-raising in its impact on the delegates. They convinced me that women in every corner of the country are ready to be mobilised to claim their rights. There is a long way to go, but the Government has demonstrated its commitment and women are becoming more articulate in communicating their predicament and demanding a better life.

(This paper is part of a lecture given by Jenny Hammond at Middlesex University, March 99'.)