Spotlight: Zaire
| Committee on the Elimination of Discrimination Against Women. [Zaire] Historically, women in Zaire were respected, but their status was secondary to that of men, and they were subject to various food and behavior prohibitions. Public life was closed to women in the past, but during the colonial period, girls and women were granted access to schools, although there was no vigorous action to encourage their attendance. |
| Agrarian Women Resistance. [Zaire] Agrarian women in Sub-Sahara were very active in acts of individual resistance and organized movements against the impositions of colonial rule. As individuals and as a collective, they resisted colonial social and economic policies, and rallied against the imposition of taxes and integration into the capitalist system. Women also resisted patriarchy at the domestic and local levels. They engaged in countless acts of sabotage and resistance, for example, refusing to work, using inappropriate tools when forced to do agricultural labor, feigning illness, verbal insults and humiliation, singing, etc. These forms of resistance were based on cultural methods and social institutions that women traditionally used to affect gender relations. For example, when women had complaints against a man they gathered at his compound, sang songs of grievances, banged on his hut's walls, and performed other raucous behavior until the man repented and promised to mend his ways. "Sitting on a man" (or woman), boycotts, and strikes were forms of "women's indigenous political institutions and authority, invisible except in periods of crisis". Resistance to domestic gender relations were elaborated into organized movements to oppose the combination of gender, class and race oppression. Women formed associations based on traditional forms of social interactions, to plan counter-hegemonic discourse and actions. |
| Situation of Human Rights. [Zaire] Concerned at the persistence of violations of human rights in Zaire, in particular at cases of arbitrary arrests and detentions, summary executions, torture and inhuman treatment in detention centers, notably those which are administered by the army and security services, serious shortcomings in the administration of justice, which is unable to function independently, the impunity of human rights violators, the rape of women in detention or during looting, and forced population displacements... |
| Status of Women. [Zaire] Women in Zaire in the 1990s have not attained a position of full equality with men. Although the Mobutu regime has paid lip service to the important role of women in society and although women enjoy some legal rights (e.g., the right to own property and the right to participate in the economic and political sectors), custom and legal constraints still limit their opportunities. The inferiority of women was embedded in the indigenous social system and reemphasized in the colonial era. The colonial-era status of African women in urban areas was low. Adult women were legitimate urban dwellers if they were wives, widows, or elderly. Otherwise they were presumed to be femmes libres (free women) and were taxed as income-earning prostitutes, whether they were or not. From 1939 to 1943, over 30 percent of adult Congolese women in Stanleyville (now Kisangani) were so registered. The taxes they paid constituted the second largest source of tax revenue for Stanleyville. |