War, Women and Post-conflict Empowerment

Lessons from Sierra Leone

Josephine Beoku-Betts, Fredline A. M'Cormack-Hale, Josephine Beoku-Betts, Fredline A. M'Cormack-Hale

• Publisher: Zed Books
• Year: 2022
• ISBN:
  9781786996954
• Edition: 1
• Topic: Economics
• Subtopic: Sustainable Development
• Index: Economics

Since the 1991-2002 civil conflict ended in Sierra Leone, the country has failed to translate the accomplishments of women's involvement in bringing the war to an end into meaningful political empowerment. This is in marked contrast to other post-conflict countries, which have increased the political participation of women in elected and appointed office, increased the representation of women in leadership positions, and enacted constitutional reforms promoting women's rights. Written by Sierra Leonean and Africanist scholars and experts from a broad range of disciplines, this unique volume analyses the historical and contextual factors influencing women's political, economic and social development in the country. In drawing on a diverse array of case studies – from health to education, refugees to international donors – the contradictions, successes and challenges of women's lives in a post-conflict environment are revealed, making this an essential book for anyone involved in women and development.

Part One

Conceptual Frameworks

1

Understanding the Politics of Women and Gender Equality in Sierra Leone: Opportunities and Possibilities

Josephine A. Beoku-Betts and Fredline A.O. M’Cormack-Hale

Gender relations are disrupted in times of conflict and war. Despite the pain that war brings, a number of feminist scholars who study Africa have noted that the period immediately following conflict can provide a window of opportunity for women’s socio-political and economic empowerment (e.g., Bauer, 2016; Tripp, 2015; Tripp, Casimoro, Kwesiga & Mungwa, 2009; Waylen, 2007; Meintjes & Turshen, 2002). Studies suggest that these economic, political, and social policy reforms to advance gender equality and women’s rights can be largely attributed to autonomous women’s movements mobilizing to demand these reforms (Gbowee, 2013; Tripp, Casimoro, Kwesiga, & Mungwa, 2009; Fallon, 2008).

Several works have examined how African countries emerging from conflict have reconfigured the political landscape in ways that have benefited women, including constitutional revisions leading to increases in women’s political representation as well as the passage of new laws geared towards improving conditions for women. In Uganda, for example, Pankhurst (2002) showed how conflict paved the way for increased political participation of women.

However, the emphasis on this opportunity for gender progress and associated gains for women has increasingly been critiqued for oversimplifying the potential of the post-conflict period (see for example, Scanlon 2019). Fuest (2008) has illustrated women’s gains as well as losses after the Liberian Civil War. Moreover, attention has often been on those stories where women’s legislative gains are viewed as the biggest marker of success; less studied in these discourses are the cases that do not fit this narrative and have either not experienced similar legislative successes following conflict or have not seen subsequent positive impact on the lives of those who are most marginalized or victimized under the laws designed to protect them. In addition, while there is a substantial body of work on different aspects of post-conflict reconstruction, democracy building, and the role of international communities in promoting women’s empowerment in post-conflict African countries, most of these works look at the immediate aftermath of the conflict period. There is need for work examining the longer-term ways in which these interventions impact women, the consequences of such interventions in areas such as health, education, refugees, and legislation, and the varied ways in which women have collectively and individually challenged, negotiated, and shaped these initiatives to advance their particular interests.

The purpose of this edited volume is to fill in this gap through an examination of Sierra Leone, a country that, despite its post-conflict status and record of some positive advancements in women’s rights and gender equality reforms, has largely failed to translate the post-conflict reconstruction process into tangible legislative gains for women. The book reinforces existing critiques of works that romanticize the opportunities of the post-conflict period, by asking us to think more critically about what we mean by success. While on the surface, it might appear that Sierra Leone has failed, if one uses the largely externally driven metric of more women in parliament as a marker of success (as over time the country has recorded decreasing rather than increasing numbers of women in parliament), Sierra Leone nevertheless, has been able to record other examples of positive developments for women. Using Sierra Leone as a case study, and employing a variety of theoretical frameworks, contributors to this volume problematize the concept of success, as well as “women’s empowerment.” Through diverse contributions, examining the complexities involved in translating Sierra Leone women’s activism and successes in ending civil conflict into positive post-war changes, the works in this volume, taken together, suggest broadening conventional notions of understanding and measuring success when it comes to women’s empowerment, notwithstanding the challenges that women face.

We locate challenges at three levels. First is the problematic dominance of Western neoliberal conceptual frameworks as a foundation for development and change, evidenced in the depoliticization of terms such as “women’s empowerment.” We employ critical feminist discourses on the politics of knowledge production to examine the limitations of Western-centric neoliberal models that have shaped understandings of how women’s lives should be approached through development initiatives. This has compromised the political struggle to transform the structure of gender relations and has contributed in many respects to flawed solutions in the arenas of health, education, and politics. For example, in discussing reconstruction and peace consolidation policies and program initiatives by the Sierra Leone government and UN agencies after the civil war, Abdullah (2014) shows how their interpretations and applications of the term “women’s empowerment” lacked “political mobilization and consciousness raising for structural change that feminists have demanded as the bottom line in the empowerment process” (p. 77).

Second, entrenched in Sierra Leone society historically and in the contemporary period is a dominant patriarchal culture that has blocked and stalled reform efforts, limiting both the passing of new legislation and the transformative capacity of existing legal reforms. This has in various contexts contributed to persistent violence against women institutionally, collectively, and individually. For example, women political aspirants are typically perceived as transgressing traditional “male spaces” by male counterparts during elections. Traditional male institutions such as the Poro Masquerade, which women are by custom not permitted to witness, are used to intimidate women candidates, coming out on display on the dates of their campaign rallies or meetings, thus preventing them from having equal opportunity to campaign in their communities (Fofana Ibrahim, 2015). Institutional factors like the first past the post electoral system have been difficult to shift, further constraining women’s electoral chances. We draw on feminist political economy to examine the impact of external geopolitical processes such as colonialism and globalization on pre-existing structures of gender relations. This approach helps explain the contextual specificities of how these processes reinforce male hegemony and patriarchal institutions in a masculinist social order as well as the ways in which women individually and collectively respond to these processes by demand, negotiation, manipulation, or compliance.

Third, the women’s movement, both historically and in the present, has struggled to mobilize on a sustained basis as one unified body. Except under crisis situations, such as the Civil War from 1991–2002 and the Ebola outbreak in 2013–2014 when women mobilized across social divisions to face these challenges, the women’s movement has been largely fragmented, competing within its own constituency along lines of ethnicity, class, religion, and particularly political party affiliation. The movement has also lacked clear leadership. Moreover, relations between women politicians and the women’s movement as well as relations among women politicians themselves have similarly been strained (Fofana Ibrahim, 2015). Within political parties, a system of patronage exists which rewards loyalists with favors such as project support and funding for consultancies (Beoku-Betts & Day, 2015). Among the reasons why the 30 percent quota bill to increase the representation of women in parliament was not tabled or debated before the close of parliament in 2012 was infighting among members of the female parliamentary caucus and the All Political Party Women’s Association (APPWA) (Fofana Ibrahim, 2015). In our discussion of this third challenge, we examine what Pratt (2017) describes as the “ebb and flow in the momentum” of Sierra Leone women’s organizations, employing an “African centered gender analysis” which is a variant of the intersectionality approach and long established in African feminist scholarship. (p. 46). In Imam, Mama, and Sow’s (1997) seminal edited work on Engendering Social Sciences in Africa this approach is described as a means to identify how class, gender, race, heterosexuality, and neocolonial relations are principal axes of African societies interwoven to “produce quite distinct histories, traditions, and cultures” (p. 25). As an analytical tool, “the African gender analysis approach must pay attention to all forms of patterned inequality and how they relate to each other … In the process of analyzing subordinate discourses, hegemonizing discourses are deconstructed and denaturalized” (Imam, Mama & Sow, 1997, p. 27). This is an appropriate lens to explain the complexity of the interacting forces impacting women’s organizations in Sierra Leone that cause various stakeholders to compete within and among themselves, thereby hindering their ability to maintain a cohesive and sustainable structure that can be effectively mobilized to advance women’s rights and gender equality.

In light of the constraints discussed above, a recurring theme among the contributors is the need for a more gender-transformative approach that challenges Eurocentric and neoliberal models. This approach keeps the term women’s empowerment but tries to frame it differently: it should be grounded in more localized understandings of empowerment and development, on indigenous frames of knowledge, understanding and wellbeing, and it should provide more nuanced insights on ways in which women exercise agency to confront, negotiate, disrupt, and transform the gendered status quo. At the same time, the various chapters of this volume also question what activism grounded in local knowledge and understanding looks like. What exactly does it mean to adopt a gender-transformative approach that challenges Eurocentric and neoliberal models? As others have pointed out, it is not simply a question of Southern versus Western voices. In Sierra Leone, as elsewhere, women are not a monolithic group; socio-economic status, class, culture, religion, political party affiliation, and other differentiators all suggest that there is no one way to “do” activism.

The remainder of this chapter proceeds as follows. In the next section, we provide a history of Sierra Leone situating women’s involvement and contributions. While this book focuses on the contemporary period following the war in Sierra Leone, it also provides a historical context to understand the long-standing indigenous roots of women’s political leadership and activism, such as the role of women chiefs and the evolution of state violence to impede women’s participation in party politics since independence from Britain in 1961. Advancements and limitations in the present are critically examined, with reference to the past, including the need for women activists to clearly understand and articulate the various complexities and contradictions of how women experience and navigate their particular social, political, and economic conditions in a dominant patriarchal culture. This requires a transformative analysis. Following the historical background, we expand on the three challenges discussed above that Sierra Leone women have faced in translating women’s activism during the war into greater gains for women. Finally, we conclude with a reflection on how the different works have engaged with these challenges, and introduce the chapters that speak to these points. The various contributions offer some insights into the ways in which women’s activism has enabled women to transcend these challenges and improve women’s lives in some areas. In various ways, our contributors have drawn upon Western neoliberal frameworks—taking what works from them and discarding the rest—and favored Global South, African, and Sierra Leonean approaches, variously understood.

Sierra Leone Background History

Sierra Leone has a long history of women’s involvement in the country’s political, socio-economic, and cultural development. Women’s contributions have been important in agriculture, market trading, education, traditional and modern political leadership, religion sociocultural organizations, healthcare, and government service. From the founding of interior chiefdoms and the Freetown settlement, Sierra Leonean women participated in collective action to promote equality, development, and peace in times of political unrest, conflict, and transition (Pratt, 2017; Steady, 2006, 2011; Pybus, 2008).

A brief overview of Sierra Leone’s geography, ethnography, economy, history, and cultural organization will contextualize women’s experiences in advancing gender justice and women’s rights in post-conflict society.

Sierra Leone is located on the west coast of Africa bordering the North Atlantic Ocean between the Republic of Guinea to the north and the Republic of Liberia to the southeast. It covers an area of 71, 740 sq. km. and has a population of 6,807,277 (Statistics Sierra Leone, 2015). The ethnic groups are: the Temne (35.5%), Mende (33.2%), Limba (6.4%), Kono (4.4%) Fula (3.4%), Loko (2.9%), Koranko (2.8%), Sherbro (2.6%), Mandingo (2.4%), Krios (1.2%) and Vai, Susu, Yalunka, and Kissi. Krios are the descendants of liberated Africans who were settled by the British in what is now known as Freetown which was established as a colony for freed enslaved Africans. Other minority populations are Lebanese, Indians, Pakistanis, and refugees from the civil war in Liberia (The World Factbook: Sierra Leone, 2021). Due to migration and intermarriage, ethnic groups are not closely bounded and most speak more than one local language, including Krio, which is the lingua franca, as well as English, which is the official language. The climate is tropical with the rainy season from May to December and the dry season from December to April.

Sierra Leone is a predominantly agricultural country with 56.2 percent of the population engaged in farming, and has significant mineral resources such as diamonds, titanium, ore, bauxite, iron ore, gold, and chromite (The World Factbook: Sierra Leone, 2021). Religion is very important to Sierra Leoneans, and religious affiliation is not a contentious matter. Although it is a predominantly Muslim country (78.6 percent) with a significant Christian minority (20.8 percent), and a small percentage who follow indigenous and other beliefs (0.5 percent), Sierra Leone is considered one of the few countries in the world practicing religious coexistence (The World Factbook: Sierra Leone, 2021; Coulter, 2009).

Sierra Leone ranks among the poorest countries in the world. The UNDP’s Development Index h...