Of Rumors and Transfers: The Short Life of Western-Educated Women's Associations in French Sudan (1955-1960)

Abstract

This article focuses on the activities of independent organizations of women, their programs, and their regional initiatives during the last period of colonization of French Sudan (now Mali). As colonial territories were increasingly gaining autonomy and self-representation, women's activists and their organizations worked to improve the status of women both within and outside the household. As independence approached, the independence party US-RDA was progressively morphing into a monolithic and autocratic machinery, intolerant vis-à-vis independent organizations (including women's groups). The US-RDA party leadership resorted to a series of tactics and strategies that divided women's groups and belittled their leadership, ultimately managing to dismantle their organizations and quell any resistance to US-RDA's dominance. This article chronicles women's effort to resist and influence US-RDA's gender politics, and some of the reasons behind the demise of those groups. It also reflects on some Malian women's more recent critical engagement with their activist past in an effort to develop a more gender-inclusive narrative of the nation. More broadly, this article elucidates some of the social divisions and political practices that continue to affect the work of Malian women's organizations even today.