Like the other member countries of the United Nations, our country, Mali, celebrates March 08 of this year 2022 in a particular context of political crisis and isolation by its neighbors and many of its partners.

This year’s global theme « equality today for a sustainable future » is more than ever in line with the concerns of the brave women of Mali who suffer martyrdom on a daily basis and must also suffer the direct consequences of the political choices of leadership, which often does not sufficiently take into account their expectations, their needs!

Last year, at the same time, I insisted on the leading role that women must play in defending their cause and more broadly in public life.

Equality can only be achieved through an unwavering commitment by women for women. This commitment will be the locomotive for the other actors who, even often aware of the need for a world of equality and fairness, fail to act as such. The growth of our society has always been based on the central role played by women. We must accompany them and accept them.

This is not an easy thing, because we have to shake up some of our social and cultural codes which are often bottlenecks to women’s rights, ultimately to the respect of certain human rights.

In a context as complex as ours, how can equity and equality be achieved, which undoubtedly constitute a major factor for a bright and sustainable future?

We can already start by respecting our legal commitments. In this sense, the law on gender mainstreaming must be respected. From its promulgation to date, the successive authorities have struggled to implement Law 052, which, in a quota logic, makes it possible to grant more places to women in public administration and for elective positions by allocating to them a quota of 30% of the seats. This law has proven itself by making it possible to have 42 women elected deputies out of 147, or 28.57% during the legislative elections of 2020. Unfortunately, for lack of its general application, the government only had 22.22% of women ministers. It should be noted that, in the second phase of transition in Mali, the rate of representation of women in the National Council of the Transition is 29,

A general analysis of the public administration as a whole is difficult due to the lack of reliable and up-to-date data. Such an analysis would have enabled us to show the share of women in decision-making positions in central and decentralized public services.

The private sector should further enhance the role of women instead of reducing them to an advertising role, “objectifying” them at the same time! The challenge of reliable and up-to-date data also arises in the formal and informal private sector! In the latter case, we can assume that the informal economy is strongly dominated by women, mobilized in petty trade, domestic work, family farming and increasingly gold panning.

The gender law should be reviewed to extend it to the private sector and ensure that it also takes into account this data challenge. Obviously, it is necessary to recognize the efforts already made for statistics on women and children, in particular through the National Center for Documentation and Information on Women and Children – CNDIFE – which tries to regularly produce a statistical yearbook strongly dependent on external funding and published very late. In my opinion, the CNDIFE should be organized and better endowed in technical and financial terms so that it can carry out its mission. There needs to be better coordination with the Planning and Statistics Units of the various ministerial departments, the National Institute of Statistics and the private sector.

It is high time for us to abandon our prejudices and value cultural and religious narratives in favor of women. To this end, a better involvement of our guardians of culture, history and religious guides should be ensured to recall the central role of women in Mali and in the pan-African fight against injustice.

At this level, an exceptional woman among many others comes to mind. The midwife Aoua Keita, brilliant political activist, 1st female deputy in Mali and trade unionist at the time of decolonization who played a central role for Mali today. She fought against colonial injustice and vigorously defended women at a time when few men dared to defend their rights. She created a union of working women in Bamako in 1956, embodying the leadership of women. She participated in the creation of the Union of Women of Sudan (UFS), whose goal is to defend women’s rights. The UFS then served as the foundation for the creation in July 1959 in Bamako of the Union of West African Women (UFOA), a pan-African organization.

Similarly, contemporary Mali is full of extraordinary female figures. Professor Assa Sidibé TRAORE is a pioneer in diabetes in Mali, the first endocrinologist and the first woman agrégé in Malian medicine, she trains hundreds of young doctors, men and women, and saves thousands of lives during her career.

Her colleague, Professor Rokia SANOGO, Doctor of Pharmacy, PhD Pharmacognosy?, the first woman Associate Lecturer and Full Professor of CAMES in Pharmacy in Mali, values ​​the pharmacopoeia and thus forms the link between conventional medicine and medicine. traditional, thus promoting in a scientific approach ancestral knowledge in the field of health.

My very dear and tender wife, Late TOGOLA Hawa SEMEGA, Journalist, specialist in educational sciences and defender of women’s rights, is a true pioneer in the field of online press in Mali and the development of innovative content adapted to the youth.

We could quote endlessly! Yesterday and today, these female figures show that we must change the narrative, and listen to women, accept them as leaders in order to move forward.

The religious narrative should also be reviewed. Indeed, the woman is often presented as being inferior to the man, worse, as the one who is at the base of the original sin! But many stories show both the sacredness of women and their place in the construction of Man and society.

According to an authentic tradition reported by Al-Bukhârî el Muslim, a man asked the Prophet Muhammad PSL four times “Who among the people has, in priority, the right that I be a good companion for him? Your mother, the Prophet answered three times, and only once, Your father” .

On this subject, Al-Qurtubî affirms that a child must have three times more love and compassion for his mother than for his father. Pregnancy is a painful time and mothers risk their lives every moment. This benevolent pain persists in women in several forms throughout childhood and the life of this beautiful child who has become an adult.

The Catholic Church recognizes the equal dignity of men and women. The apostle Paul of Tarsus in the Epistle to the Galatians recalls the fundamental equality of all the baptized in these terms: “There is neither Jew nor Greek; there is neither slave nor free man; there is neither masculine nor feminine; for you are all one in Christ Jesus. « .

In our society, the foundation and deep nature of a child’s personality is given by the mother. In fact, mothers have more influence on children than fathers until adolescence. I agree that physical and connected society and school could interfere with this process in one way or another.

This central role of women in the life of man and his society must lead us to make a point of honor on the education of girls. The transformative energy of the educated and properly educated woman directly benefits society. The education of girls and their retention in school must be compulsory. The state should play a leading role and be uncompromising in this regard. It would be very useful to put in place a policy leading girls to adopt scientific and technical courses that meet the needs of the labor market.

The policy of positive discrimination towards women has an intrinsic disadvantage for them. Indeed, it gives the feeling that they (women) can have an advantage without deserving it. This is why it is preferable to avoid such a policy and to define an approach based on merit and a preference for women within a minimum quota of valid representativeness (explain further).

Our country would benefit from supporting and facilitating the emergence of female political leaders.

In general, women are more likely to include their families and communities in a decision-making process, which is essential for developing policies and solutions of general interest.

From experience, the management of communities by women mayors poses fewer problems during administrative and financial audits than that of men who often end up in arrest. Would a woman have better management ethics than a man? One might be tempted to answer that we have had an almost negligible number of women mayors compared to men. This argument, in addition to being embarrassing, because highlighting this social injustice by its exclusive nature of women, is not justified. There was a fairly illustrative case in Mali where a mayor was prosecuted for embezzlement and replaced by a woman. The latter during the time she spent at the head of the town hall increased the income of the municipality and restored the confidence of the partners in her town hall.

It could be interesting to awaken this political leadership in women from an early age at the level of basic education, then set up a system of civic and political education for children. In this approach, girls must be trusted and must alternate leadership with boys. This, in addition to anchoring a democratic culture, will make children adopt an uninhibited and gender-sensitive political culture.

Political parties must invest more in bringing women into decision-making positions within national offices and, if possible, present an equal number of female and male candidates. This egalitarian approach should only be done on the basis of merit. Indeed, it is not acceptable to sacrifice merit for numbers. This is why it is necessary to provide training in political leadership and to entrust formative public responsibilities to women.

For nearly 17 months we have been in a political transition that is tumultuous to say the least. This phase of the life of the Malian nation is placed under the sign of refoundation. So the opportunity to start again on good bases. In this sense, women must be involved in decision-making in a sincere way. In any case, they must speak out for themselves and ensure that their concerns are taken into consideration.

We are at the right time to pass the Gender-Based Violations Act, and rightly so. Indeed, women are daily victims of physical and moral violence at home, at work and in the street. They have no respite! In addition to being martyred on a daily basis, when defenders of women’s rights stand alongside them to demand such a law, religious and customary actors obstruct their access to this basic right. How many women will have to lose their lives, dignity and honor to allow them to understand the merits of such a law? When will the state finally assume responsibility? In any case, women will only obtain their rights by standing up and fighting without embarrassment or prevarication. The first pillar of a society is based on women,

The economic empowerment of women is essential if we are to achieve equality. Indeed, addiction could create relationships of domination and increase gender-based violence.

So we need to trust and invest in women’s businesses of all sizes. In the Malian context, emphasis should already be placed on supporting small and medium-sized farmers involved in the agri-food value chain (production, processing, marketing).

We must increase the participation of women in the management of natural resources. This will lead to fairer and more inclusive resource governance.

According to a report by OHCHR, 55% of the progress made in food security in developing countries over the past decades can be attributed to programs that promote the empowerment of women. According to the Food and Agriculture Organization of the United Nations (FAO), women farmers could increase their agricultural yields by 20-30% if they had equal access to productive resources. This would provide enough food to keep 100-150 million people from going hungry and reduce world hunger by 12-17%.

We must also support women in their process of transition to digital. Indeed, this process is essential for any company. It involves building skills and providing digital resources – equipment, software, etc.

Success in business depends on seasoned technical business know-how, investor confidence, motivation and unfailing morale. This is why it is necessary to set up a technical and financial assistance framework for women’s entrepreneurship which will define and implement a strategy to technically and financially support women to express their entrepreneurial potential in all economic sectors – primary, secondary and tertiary.

From a perspective of sustainable development, we must move from an economic model based on exhaustion to a regenerative and circular model. Women can play a leading role in this transition.

Reproductive and sexual health, and the health of mother and child must be at the heart of our concerns.

Every woman should have good sexual and reproductive health. She should be able to plan her pregnancies, live this moment in complete safety and give birth in peace. To do this, it is necessary to make available to women, in a language that is accessible to them according to their backgrounds, precise information on sexually transmitted diseases, methods of contraception and reproduction. They must be able to choose suitable, safe, effective and affordable contraceptive methods.

It is crucial that women have access to services that can help them have an optimal pregnancy, a safe delivery and a healthy baby.

It is terrible to see that women lose their lives during pregnancy or in childbirth in Mali.

The state should establish a system for auditing cases of maternal and infant death to ensure that the doctor and the system in which he operates do not commit the irreparable. Indeed, life is sacred, no medical error should be acceptable and must be punished according to the fault according to the law in force.

It goes without saying that the State must meet all the conditions to guarantee that health establishments are properly provided with human and material resources, ensuring a high quality technical platform. Medical practitioners must regularly undergo continuing education. A system of annual certification of health establishments should be put in place to authorize the practice of obstetric care by a health establishment.

 

We have dreamed of the egalitarian and equitable world enough, men and women, we must wake up to achieve it collectively.