A Quiet Revolution: More women seek divorces in conservative West Africa

NEW YORK, 07 Jan. - (ANA) - Frustrated by their husbands’ inability to earn a living, and in a society where basic views on relationships have changed, women in West Africa are asserting more control over their marriages, reports Monday the New York Times.

For centuries, women have been expected to endure bad marriages in many conservative pockets of West Africa. Divorce happened, but most often the husbands were the ones casting off their partners. Tradition has bound women so tightly that spouses are sometimes chosen for babies in the womb.

The Islamic judge who presides over the street-side religious court in Maradi, Niger’s third-largest city, said that divorces initiated by women had doubled in the past three years, with nearly 50 women a month coming to end their marriages.

“These young women don’t want to suffer any more,” said the judge, Alkali Laouali Ismaël. “There is a solution to their problems, and they know they can find it here.”

Lawyers, women’s associations, local officials and academics who study the region say the increase is happening across West Africa — in urban and rural, as well as Muslim and Christian, areas — as women assert more control over their relationships.

The total divorce rate is relatively stable or even declining slightly in some parts of West Africa, they note, but underneath that are huge changes in divorce patterns and society at large.

Women are more educated now and in some areas marry later in life, factors that academics say lead to more stable marriages. At the same time, more women are moving into cities and joining the work force, empowering more of them to discard bad marriages.

Dakar’s Association of Female Lawyers said it now helped three times as many female clients seeking divorce as it did even just four years ago.

In Ghana, 73 percent of divorce cases handled by the Legal Aid Scheme of Greater Accra were filed by women in 2016-2017, a big shift from the past. Divorce, once considered taboo for conservative Christians, is being presented in some church sermons as a better option than ending up with domestic violence or adultery.

Across West Africa, people are pouring into cities from the countryside, leaving behind parents and local traditions. The push for women’s rights has expanded, with more nations signing on to international commitments to gender equality. Governments have passed laws against domestic abuse and discrimination against women, and many nations now have ministries of women’s affairs.

Access to the media has skyrocketed. In rural areas, women discuss marriage troubles on call-in radio shows. In major cities, women vent their relationship frustrations on social media.

In Nigeria, a Nollywood movie called “Wives on Strike,” about a group of women who band together against a bad husband and father, was so popular it spawned a sequel and a television series.

“Younger women realize that their lives do not have to end when their marriages end,” said Olajumoke Yacob-Haliso, a senior lecturer at Babcock University in Nigeria.  - (ANA) -

AB/ANA/07 January 2019 - - -