By Saliou Samb
CONAKRY, Sep 22 2003 (IPS)

Idiatou Balde, in her late 30s, exhibits and sells indigo-tinted fabrics in an up market in Conakry, the capital of Guinea.

Balde, a chemical engineer, who runs a local organisation called ”Walinderin” (let’s help each other, in a local language), is a divorcee whose trajectory in life is similar to that of hundreds of other Guinean women who have refused to pay heed to the dictates of men.

Although in the forefront of the struggle for gender equality in Guinea, where Aug. 27 has been set aside as a day of remembrance of the revolt by a group of women against the late dictator Sekou Toure, women are still the targets of domestic violence.

Toure ruled Guinea with an iron fist from 1958 to 1984.

After passing her secondary school examinations, Balde married a man who refused to allow her to continue her education.

”At that time I was pregnant, and I used to walk more than two kilometres to get to school. I had to wake up very early in the morning to pound the millet, fetch water and collect firewood. The entire village went to fetch water from the same source, which was about one kilometre away. It was under these conditions that I got my school certificate in 1982,” she recalls.

When Balde decided in 1982 to resume her studies at the University of Conakry, her husband cut off all support. ”It was then that I decided to devote myself to my studies,” she says. ”My husband did not physically stop me, but he did everything he could to make me quit. He wanted me to go back to the village and work in the fields.”

”After obtaining my diploma at the University of Conakry in 1989, I went back to see him and he refused to take me back as his wife. I finally surrendered to my fate and took custody of our child. The divorce took place in 1994. I have not remarried since,” Balde says.

She got a job with a private company before establishing Walinderin.

”I found that I wasn’t getting anywhere with the salary they were offering me. After I participated in a seminar on ‘the entrepreneurial spirit’ I decided to form this organisation. Today, I have a much higher income and decided to devote myself wholly to Walinderin”.

Ramatoulaye Sow, who married a former presidential pilot, fought with her husband when she was pregnant. In 1996 she told the court that the violent abuse inflicted upon her by her husband, which sometimes included blows to the belly, forced her to get an abortion.

The Minister of Social Affairs, Hadja Mariama Aribot, has acknowledged the phenomenon of domestic violence on national television. ”Every year we receive hundreds of complaints from women who are the victims of domestic violence. These are women who are thrown out of the house as soon as their husbands take a second wife; these are women who are deprived of their allowance for the same reasons; these are women whose inheritances are stolen,” Aribot said recently.

Although the overwhelming majority of Guinean women, who make up 52 percent of the population, are not aware of it, polygamy has been declared illegal since 1968. Guinea’s population is about eight million, and most of the people are illiterate, the majority of them being women.

According to figures from the UN Children’s Fund (UNICEF), only 41 percent of adults in Guinea know how to read. And among these adults, 40 percent are women.

These disparities are obvious in everyday life and contribute to keeping women at home, in a country, which lacks a qualified labour pool.

”Since the law is not enforced, we decided that since it is two consenting adults who are getting married, why not ask them while they’re signing the marriage certificate to choose between polygamy and monogamy,” Aribot suggested.

For Ibrahima Bah, a teacher, ”women who are the victims of domestic violence are unaware of their rights. If they were, things would not be the same for their husbands”.

Mahmoud Doumbouya, a civil administrator in Conakry, says ”it is the women who allow themselves to be relegated to the back burner. If you sample 1,000 Guinean women, you’ll find only one who would fight to contribute to the family’s income”.

Most Guinean women rely on their husbands’ income.

Doumbaouya says that ”women should first break the cultural barriers which keep them backwards”.

To change the situation, Guinea’s major political parties have initiated dialogue with the government without one single woman at the table. ”This is a perfect illustration of what I’m saying,” Doumbouya says, referring to the patronising attitude of the men who run Guinea’s political parties.

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