Wolof women, economic liberalization, and the crisis of masculinity in rural senegal

Abstract

Among Wolof farmers in Senegal's Peanut Basin, patriarchal control of household dependents has diminished in conjunction with economic liberalization, state disengagement, and the formation of rural weekly markets. This article builds on twenty-six months of ethnographic fieldwork to explore a crisis of masculinity expressed by men in their oral testimonies and everyday discourse. In domestic struggles over labor and income, male control over women has decreased in the postcolonial epoch. Male household heads, in wrathful fashion, condemn women for their individualism, selfishness, and open sexuality. Men's discourse of social decay contrasts with the more neutral narratives produced by women, who stress household solidarity and the pragmatics of household survival in response to economic insecurity. Wolof husbands and wives confront economic change through different discourses and practices, all the while renegotiating domestic authority. (Wolof women, economic liberalization, masculinity crisis, Senegal) One day, while conducting fieldwork with Wolofpeanut farmers in Senegal, my moped broke down. Waiting under a shade tree for the mechanic to repair the carburetor, I worried about the interview that I was missing, and noticed that I was not the only woman there anxious about her work. The mechanic's young wife stood quietly nearby as she kept a donkey-cart in rein, surveying the landscape impatiently. She wanted to go to the water tower, a kilometer away, and fill two barrels with water for cooking and washing. She was obliged, however, to wait for her husband's navetane, a hired farm hand who had mentioned earlier that he needed the woman's assistance to weed her husband's peanut field. It appeared that the woman was no longer needed but, having no word, she sent a child to the fields to confirm this. The wait was frustrating and the woman revealed, through her body language and comments, her annoyance at having to sit about idly when she had water to fetch and other tasks to complete. Then a male customer of the mechanic chided her for her impatience. "Women don't own the world," he announced, and told her she had no right to complain. The woman immediately retorted, "Men don't own the world either, only Allah owns the world!" Ten minutes later, she wordlessly rolled the heavy barrels from her cart and gave up with a sigh. She had waited too long and the pump would soon shut down until evening. Her morning's work was lost.