Camp GLOW

I remember looking through my grandmother’s grade school report cards years ago- the things we keep!- and being shocked that it had a list of career options for girls, of which one box was to be checked: secretary, nurse, teacher, or housewife. That was sixty years ago. Today in Benin the picture seems even bleaker.
The role of women in society at large is that of wife, mother, and housekeeper. Anything apart from this is a distant second. Young girls are housekeepers before students; the work they do around the house is more important, more valuable to the family, than anything that can come from the education they can get. Women’s education is viewed as a poor long-term investment because girls will one day marry and end up in another man’s home, supposedly at that point of no further use to her family. Misguided ideas such as the fear that educated girls are disobedient feed into this. Within and outside of the home, there are few educated women to be seen as role models and even fewer female teachers to encourage young girls in their studies.
It is estimated that the ratio of boys to girls here in middle school is 2 to 1 and that it drops to 4 to 1 by the end of high school, but I wouldn’t be surprised if the actual ratio is much more devastating. I was in a high school senior class yesterday in which there was one sole female, and the way classes are set up means that every class period is like this for her. I’m amazed that she is still in school! It is difficult to be different, a minority, in any high school classroom. In a Beninese classroom, where there is a culture of laughing raucously at anyone who volunteers a wrong answer and the general inability to ask for help from teachers and other students if you don’t fully understand a concept, this is amplified. This then becomes a double-edged sword; if parents know that the majority of girls who start high school never finish, there is less incentive to pay for the first year.
Pregnancy and marriage are common reasons girls drop out of high school here. Oftentimes in a situation of pregnancy the male is much older but if he is also a high school student he more than likely stays in school while the young woman is left with no option but to leave. Birth control can be difficult to obtain and can be culturally frowned upon: some men believe it gives their wives license to be promiscuous. If a man believes his wife should not become pregnant because he is sticking to traditional fertility calendars, he believes he can tell if she has been unfaithful or not. In many instances health workers are not authorized to give out birch control unless a woman has consent from her husband. Situations similar to this suggest that no matter how much education can be disseminated among women, it is men who make the final decisions in many women’s lives and therefore men who need to be educated.
One of the most disturbing factors in the gender unbalance in high schools is sexual harassment propagated by male teachers. At my local high school, every teacher is male, which is not uncommon here. The trading of sexual favors for academic ones is said to be endemic in Benin. Some call it “le droit de cuissage” (“right to the thighs”). If a student refuses a teacher’s advances, she may see her grade drop or some other form of reciprocation. Stop and think about that for a second. Endemic. I have been told by high school teachers, after explaining to a class of high school students how it shocked me to see such a low proportion of girls in their class, that there are less girls because they choose not to go to high school. They choose to resign themselves to dressmaking or selling prepared food for the rest of their lives; choose housework over homework; forget cultural and gender barriers, it was a choice. I can see then, that girls might choose to take themselves out of a situation like that. This is not to say that all student-teacher relationships are started by teachers; knowing that good grades and favored treatment in class such as answers to upcoming tests are payment for sexual favors, girls may be the ones making advances. The intention may be genuine-to finish high school and get a job outside of village-and a relationship with a teacher seen as the only lifeline in a system in which she is going against the current in every other respect.
Results of a survey conducted by a women’s rights NGO in 2007-2008 found that
-62% of students have known a professor to threaten a student who has refused their advances
-57% know professors who have changes grades in order to pressure students into sexual relationships
-65% of students know a fellow student who was impregnated by a teacher.
Outside of school settings gender inequality is pervasive in just about every aspect of life and culture here. Women who are disempowered in every other aspect may see no alternative but to concede if a sexual partner refuses to use a condom. A woman cannot refuse sex to a husband even if she suspects him of sleeping with others and possibly prostitutes. This perpetuates the spread of AIDS which is further complicated by the fact that woman are biologically 2-4 times more likely than men to contract HIV during unprotected sex and the horribly misguided belief that sleeping with a virgin will cure AIDS. Women may be forced into sex work as a result of cultural laws, for instance that of land ownership: as a woman she has no claim to the land, thus if she is widowed the land belongs to her sons and if she has been so unfortunate as to not bear her late husband any sons, she may be homeless and without options.
Other shocking practices are carried out here, many of which the true extents remain unknown, notably the trafficking of women and children and female genital mutilation. I don’t intend to mention those travesties just as a sidenote, but cannot comment on just how pervasive these practices are. I do know, however, that trafficking exists in my region and the FGM is estimated to have been practiced on 17% of women in the country, mostly northern ethnic groups. In one recent year, 222 victims of trafficking, likely all girls, were rescued by Beninese police. Imagine then, how many were not so fortunate, how many have been trafficked in previous years.
It is said that with economic independence, women no longer have to fight for their rights, respect, or empowerment; that it then comes naturally. However, in a society in which all housework, which in Africa can mean hours spent carrying water alone, and childrearing fall exclusively to women, there is little time for any income-generating activity.
I wrote months ago about meeting the woman who runs Benin’s Women and Development program: Probably one of the strongest feminists in the country, maybe one of the few who are familiar with the term, and yet she admits that when her husband has company over she does what is expected of her as a Beninese wife: resigns herself to the kitchen to prepare food and drink for the guests, even if it is other family members. In some cases women may spend several hours preparing food only to not be able to eat if their husband chooses not to or finds it unappetizing.
Remember “A Day without a Mexican”? That documentary-type film that came out whose billboards featured a rogue lawn mower plowing down the street sans driver? “A Day without Women” here would be similar. Buckets of water suspended several feet off the ground with no one to carry them, no lines at the well, no prepared food, no one taking care of children or sick, no selling or buying at the usually bustling West African village markets.
I see it in small, everyday but still disturbing things. Women must give the best taxis seats to men, men can take up as much leg room as they like while a woman and her infant are shoved against the door, etc. Then there is the culture of polygamy, which is a whole other more complicated chapter.
In response to the need for gender equality activities, in the hopes that something resembling a movement could be started, Peace Corps and USAID created what is now the Gender and Development program. One of its biggest activities is a summer camp, Camp GLOW (Girls Leading our World). Volunteers are able to bring young girls, just starting high school, to a week-long camp in which they are presented with themes of women’s empowerment that they may have never considered. I plan to participate in Camp GLOW the last week of June and bring a local 7th grade girl.
Now… we need help making this happen. You can donate to the Camp GLOW fund here: https://www.peacecorps.gov/index.cfm?shell=resources.donors.contribute.donatenow
Thanks in advance!