Thomas Sankara et la condition féminine: un discours révolutionnaire?

2. 2 THE WOMAN IN THE SOCIO-ECONOMIC SECTOR

The socio-economic situation of the woman burkinabé is particularly difficult. The family structure, the religions and the habits are sources of the misery of the women.

Burkina Faso knows various types of families : nuclear power, extended or surrounded by satellites. But in all these family methods, the patriarch is only and the single Master. Reports/ratios found the primacy of the group on the individual, of elder on the juniors, but especially of the man on the woman. The latter assumes the role of production and reproduction, which reduces it to a lower statute in the company^47(*). As of the early childhood, the young girl is prepared to play this part. She undergoes social pressures which violate the satisfaction of its essential needs and its rights. As of the age of 6 - 7 years, it carries out the tasks of the domestic assistant whom it incarnates : spare, cleaning, guard baby^48(*). Between 12 and 18 years, it is the subject early of gift in forced marriage. « Very often, the recognition caused by hospitality or the existence of an old debt is enough so that a girl is promised^49(*) ». In 1985, more half of the women are married before twenty years. The girls are excluded from the property of the ground and the division of the heritage of the goods of the late parents. The woman must thus conform to the wish of the company by acquiring qualities such as the tender, obedience and fidelity. In other words, it must passively accept the domination and the exploitation of the man.

This attitude gives a direction to the marriage, « major expression of the social relations »^50(*), which constitutes a market where the woman represents the goods. What explains the existence of polygamy, an institution which makes it possible elder to acquire important incomes by the sale of the girls (the dowry or the price of the woman).

In addition, by her work, the woman plays an economic part determining in the company. The women within the division of the labor, carry out until the three quarters of the agricultural work. The man builds the house, but « it is the woman who makes the hearth »^51(*) affirm Moose. The analysis of the socio-economic conditions of the woman birifor and bwa by Claudette Savonnet- Guyot illustrates this report well. She deals with the housework : cook, water, wood. With the sexual division of the agricultural work, the sowing, the harvests, the hoeings and the transport of harvests concern the women. These typically female said activities are not remunerated. Slave of the man, the rural woman carries out a miserable life. « The man behaves with the fields like a foreman and it looks at making its worker »^52(*), note Thomas Sankara. Years 1983-1984 are remembered in Burkina Faso by drynesses répétées.Les men, in the campaigns, to fight against the famine, often have recourse to the emigration. They thus give up their wives, constraints to fight to nourish the children.

In such a historical and sociological situation unfavourable with the woman, Thomas Sankara who reaches the capacity in August 1983 seeks to transform the company burkinabé, with an aim of releasing the women and of recognizing rights to them and not only duties.

* ⁴⁷ UNICEF, COp cit., p. 35.

* ⁴⁸ UNICEF, COp cit., p. 39.

* ⁴⁹ UNICEF, COp cit., p. 41.

* ⁵⁰ TARRAB (G), COp cit., p. 113.

* ⁵¹ UNICEF, COp cit., p. 36.

* ⁵² BENABDESSADOK (C), COp cit., p. 57.