The Rise of a Female Professional Elite: The Case of Senegal

Extract

Increasingly in the literature on underdevelopment, there is growing recognition of colonialism's pernicious effects on women's status in Africa, as elsewhere. Colonialism, it is argued, destroyed the traditional sex role balance both through underestimating and undermining women's economic role, as well as through the havoc colonialists raised in the social sphere by such varied means as forced labor and cash cropping (cf. Seidman, 1975; Diarra, 1971; Tinker, 1975). And yet there is a highly visible elite of African women—women well-traveled, usually professionally trained and/or university educated. If indeed colonialism did have such negative effects on women's status as are now being claimed, how then do we account for the rise of this female elite?

On the basis of data gathered through interviews in Senegal during the autumn and winter of 1974, we will argue that these women are indeed exceptions, that elite women sampled came from highly privileged family backgrounds in which the father was already involved in the colonial order. We will also examine their motivations for acquiring higher education and professional training and their opinions on topics related to colonialism, development, and women's status. From this data we can then better evaluate both their evolution as an elite and their relationship to other women within the particular developing society.

Dakar was chosen as a research site both for the availability of archival records from the colonial era and for its significant population of highly educated women. Dakar, as the former capital of French West Africa, was a center for education, with the Section des Sage Femmes of the Medical School (opened in 1922) and the Ecole Normole des Jeunes Filles at Rifisque (opened in 1938), both located within the greater urban area. These two schools served as the major secondary training schools for girls from all over French West Africa during the colonial era: their graduates were among the first women professionals, and many have since obtained high positions in many sectors of their societies.