Hamjatta:
This is a truly brilliant article.  It is clearly articulated and
provides a legitimate and an important perspective in the discussion
over Women's rights and "Affirmative Action."  In the USA and perhaps
the UK, such views are often associated with Reagan and Thacher,
respectively. Many a conservative politician/pundit, as Pat Buchanan
and/or Ward Connaly in the USA also subscribe to this position. It is
also the held view of President Bush and many in his Administration and
certainly those on the religious "right." This is not to suggest,
however, that you necessarily belong to this camp or the other, but it
is important to provide this context.  Additionally, my response to your
article is not intended to join the debate between Kebba Jobe and you,
in fact, I have not followed it.  The issues you raised in your article
interest me, nonetheless.

Let me raise some concerns I have, not so much over what you so well
argued, but the school of thought on which your arguments are premised.
Secondarily, I did also like to note in passing, that while you claim to
be a "liberal," and I take it in the best sense of the term, your
central arguments are not, even if your overall conclusions are more in
line with those of a liberal persuasion.  Thus, a slight disjuncture
between the thrust of your argument and the derived conclusion.  Yet, I
should hasten to defend your right to be eclectic, it is a respected
tradition.

To return to my central concern to your article, allow me to do the
elementary, albeit, important definitional distinctions.  Conservatives
in the USA and UK, in general, have tended to pay little or no attention
to the adverse and sometimes intersecting effects of race, class and
gender on the life chances/opportunities of women and so-called "ethnic
minorities." Similarly, analyses of these issues by Conservatives also
tend to be ahistorical and consequently, pay scant attention to
institutionalized, gendered, often racist, social, economic and
patriarchal structures which in large measure account for social and
opportunity, not biological, disparities between men and women.  Also,
Conservatives generally assume that women and "ethnic minorities" have
as good a chance to "make it" in a racially and/or gendered/stratified
society and that their demand(s) for inclusion, equal opportunity, and
Affirmative Action, indeed constitute "reverse discrimination" based on
"quotas."  Thus, the terms "reverse discrimination" and "quotas" have
become synonymous with equal opportunity and Affirmative Action in the
view of many Conservatives.  These deeply ideological buzz-words, at
least in the USA, have become potent weapons in the arsenal of the
Conservative Movement.  They are used to discredit and likewise, roll
back through public policy, some of the gains made by women and ethnic
minorities through the Feminist Movement and Affirmative Action since
the 1960s.  Your arguments, therefore, appear suspiciously close, not
withstanding your claims to be a liberal.

Liberals by contrast, generally recognize existing social inequalities
as historically determined, (without being necessarily deterministic)
along race, class and gender and their multiple intersections.
Accordingly, the state has an obligation to provide "equal opportunity"
through affirming public policy in order to reduce and ultimately end,
through legal protection, the lingering vestiges of race, class and
gender discrimination.  Admittedly, some of these policies have had
their limitations and sometimes favor those for whom the policies were
not intended.  Yet, to dismiss their impact, (at least in the US, as far
as women and ethnic minorities are concerned), is to ignore the gains
made by women and ethnic minorities, despite the obstacles that remain.
These gains are largely attributable to Feminism and Affirmative Action.
Roe vs. Wade, opportunities for Minority Contractors, hiring and
promotion of ethnic minorities in fire and police departments,
universities etc., are cases in point. Yet ironically, it is these very
gains that the Conservative Movement, Reagan and the two Bush
Administrations, with the aid of a conservative Supreme Court, seek to
reverse to a time when women and ethic minorities knew their "place."

To create a legal environment where women and ethnic minorities can
potentially compete for jobs against privileged white men, has little to
do with biology or the "assumed" weaknesses of women, but attempts to
overcome years of institutionalized racism and sexism.  To ignore
centuries and continuing cases of race, class and gender discrimination,
is to fall prey to the Conservative political propaganda.

Thus, your attempt to judge, and dismiss the Feminist Movement based on
the works of Andrea Dworkins, is worrisome.  With all its unifying
factors, the Movement as you alluded, is not a monolith.  It is
populated by Liberals, Socialists, Neo-Marxists/ Radical
Feminist/ecologists, Black Feminists, Womanists etc. They are
distinguished by their respective alternative vision(s).  Many Liberal
feminists advocate working through the system and believe that with
reform and not the overthrow of Capitalism, as argued by the Radicals,
incremental changes and improvements in the lives of women and ethnic
minorities are possible.

It is also important to take note and make the conceptual distiction(s)
made in the general literature on women, that is, the literature on
"Women and Development,"(WID).  The latter is represented by the likes
of Sen, who argue, as you correctly noted, for the social and economic
improvement of women through education/social policy.  This, in contrast
and against the more academic, theoretical, advocacy and often anti-male
literature on many US and perhaps UK based campuses.

Because you did not flesh out further the distinctions between feminists
and the conceptual variation in the general literature, you used a set
of unrepresentative and often contested conclusions made by some fringe
radical feminist to critique a different tradition within the general
literature on women and Affirmative Action.  In so doing, you coupled
and unwittingly dismissed social policy intended to ameliorate the
sufferings of women in the Third World and women and ethnic minorities
in the West.  Granted, while one may argue that these distinctions are
for analytical purposes and convenience, they nonetheless, have
important and often different implications.

I believe that equal opportunity programs for girls and women, be it in
The Gambia or other countries in the Third World, if carefully crafted,
could have long-term social and economic benefits.  This is not reverse
discrimination, however, but positive and affirming policies that have
at their core the recognition that women in Africa, generally, and in
The Gambia, specifically, have not enjoyed equal opportunity or a level
playing field.

To the contrary, equal opportunity and Affirmative Action, do not
"malign liberty and equality" but in fact make their attainment
possible.

I struggle toward and look forward to the day when race, class and
gender considerations are irrelevant, to a time when discrimination is
deemed counter to the goals of a society where and as you suggest, "laws
will be introduced that make equal opportunities a fact of national
life."

But until then we Must continue our struggle for equal opportunity,
Affirmative Action and gender equality.

Thank you for a thoughtful and thought provoking article.  Keep up the
good work.

Abdoulaye


Hamjatta Kanteh wrote:
>
>  Ever since i read J S Mill's 'The Subjection of Women', i went through a
> significant tranformation from a mere sympathesizer to the fight for women to
> be break loose from the shackles of ignorance, male prejudice  and dominance
> and those societal norms that are down right discriminatory towards women
> that had and continues to impede their progress since time immemorial to a
> position which included a private championing of women's liberation,
> especially to insensitive male friends who remain impervious to demonstration
> about the need to be on equal terms with the sisters. After Mill, there were
> of course other texts that came along but what made me to realise that
> women's liberation and the developing world's efforts to make decent strides
> their development efforts go hand in hand, was largely a reading of the
> Indian Economist, Armatya Sen's pioneering work on women and development and
> its almost determinist insistence that they are inextricably hooked that
> propelled me to  enthusiastically champion the cause of women. Seven long
> years after reading this magnificently informed, illuminating and pioneering
> book by Mill, i have to say that i have gone through another significant
> transformation. I no longer enthusiastically endorse the women movements,
> especially those as demented, twisted and perverted as that of the Andrea
> Dworkins of this world. This is not say that i no longer support moves that
> will genuinely help free society from all those norms, supersitutions and
> prejudices that continue to impede the progress of women in society. Far from
> it. What i mean to say here is that i view women's liberation in a very
> different light and the late discovery that the logical conclusion of what
> today's women's liberation movements seek to attain for women, far from
> giving them or society at large any semblance of  equality, would be a
> perversion of that noble creed. Unfortunate as it is to say, but today's
> feminism or "gender activism" - as the term generally applies to Africa and
> the developing world - is  not only a perversion of the notion of equality or
> equal worth with women but will go as far as to imperil individual liberty
> and societal cohesion. I strongly believe that all that propelled Mill to
> valiantly call for an end to the subjection of women and the recognition for
> the equal worth of all sexes has been perverted. And were he to be with us
> today, he would be appalled by what is being said and carried out in the name
> of equality.
>
> My gradual cooling and current hostility towards women's liberation in its
> current form is based on two different but related things. First the absurd
> reasoning that the biological "handicaps" that nature has predisposed women
> to be at a comparative disadvantage to their male counterpart ought to be
> righted through political and social finessing and must ultimately be
> neutered for society to claim any semblance of the equality creed. The second
> is the insistence that in order to end discrimination against women and
> integrate them into society proper, the State has got to discriminate against
> others through preferential treatments in public office appointments or
> elections, i.e., affirmative action that will compensate for the subjugation
> of women and in the process help in their integration. The problem with these
> shifts from the Millian liberalism - that has guided feminism in the early
> part of the last century - is that instead of promulgating a more equal
> society and freeing more women from the shackles that continue to impede
> them, has only helped enhanced the social status of a handful few of
> metropolitan feminist professional elites and their immediate families and in
> the process turned upside the very notion of equal worth.
>
> The ridiculous notion that such biological "handicaps" like bearing children
> - that can impede women in their public pursuits or careers and thus placing
> them at a disadvantage - can be fine tuned by political and social
> engineering to the point where women can claim to be on a par with men in
> terms of mobility, space and flexibility, can never help equate what is at
> best a biological "hinderance" and in the event will turn out to be
> regressive. Since this is susceptible misinterpretation, i will make myself
> clearer. The point is not to say that women can't have careers whilst raising
> or helping to raise families. Indeed, experience has shown that this is very
> possible and admirable even if is very Herculean. The point is that the way
> men and women are biologically endowed, has predisposed men to find it
> virtually hitch-free to be part of raising families whilst having a
> hassle-free public life or a demanding career. In short, the ease with which
> men can be part of two demanding and oft conflicting spheres cannot be the
> same with women. This is not because of male prejudices, societal
> discrimination or the shackles of ignorance but the impediments imposed upon
> women by biological disposition. And no amount of political finessing, social
> engineering and radical agitation can level this playing field to the point
> where women can be on a par with men in this regard. Yet, modern feminism -
> at least its most radical proseltizers - believes that the goal of true
> liberation and equal worth cannot be ascribed to any society that lets
> biological dispositions let men have a greater degree of ease with which to
> juggle both the private and public spheres moderately more successfully i.e.,
> be part of raising families and leading extremely demanding public roles or
> careers and leave women to pathetically trail along. So now, apart from
> dismantling artificial laws that have impeded women's progress, modern
> feminists insist that natural impediments have to be dismantled - not
> ironically through, perhaps, genetical manipulation; which it might sense to
> appeal to given its predisposition towards ameliorating biological conditions
> that impede progress. Rather, through radical agitation, and with the help of
> their radical male allies, society must go through a complete revolution -
> with all its implications - only then can such state of affairs alter. It is
> true most moderate feminists do not subscribe to this; yet their own version
> of how this can be corrected is to appeal to the long haul of political and
> social engineering to correct this. Even then  such political and social
> engineering - which invariably comes through preferential treatment for women
> and reverse discrimination - is logically and practically bound to stifle
> liberty and pervert equality.
>
> Not only does preferential treatment and reverse discrimination - or
> affirmative action as it is popularly referred to - malign liberty and
> equality, but experience has shown that wherever it has been implemented to
> integrate those who have been at the brunt of past societal ills or
> discrimination, the vast majority of those classified under such groups have
> little or nothing to show for it. This is simply because preferential
> treatment does not only place quotas on such groups, but it tends to pick the
> creme de la creme of such groups and only within their circles for those to
> benefit from such preferential treatments. What do we mean by this? When
> preferential treatment is meted out to a group on the basis of past
> discrimination, it invariably has conditions set up that before any member of
> such groupings can claim elibility to it, has got to meet. Now, eligibility
> invariably almost always from the emerging middle classes and their
> offsprings. And because they already know their way around the system by
> virtue of being there before, having done it and having strengthened their
> positions in the social strata, almost always it is their children who will
> succeed them in eligibility and end up sharing the pie amongst themselves. In
> this scheme of things, those at the lower end of the social strata will
> invariably fail to get their share of the preferential treatment cake because
> they are most likely going to lose out to middle class kids when they compete
> for limited space available in the quota set for them. This is why the gulf
> between the have-nots and haves of those groups that have been extended this
> largesse is not declining albeit the maintenance of preferential treatments.
> What is meant for a group to help themselves integrate into the mainstream is
> largely confined within the reaches of another elite group within that
> marginalised group simply because of the futility and absurdity of such means
> to equate situations that invariably require recognising that within even
> disadvantaged groups their are handicaps that leave others hapless no matter
> the largesse extended to them.
>
> Nowhere is this more truer than between the African rural woman metropolitan
> professional elite. The latter gets all the largesse the State feels obliged
> to extend to women in order to integrate them whilst the former largely
> represents the former self of women. There is a dissembling argument here
> that feminists invoke to aid this malignant situation. They never fail to
> point out that those rustic women folk fail to integrate because amongst
> others the tyranny of men still prevail and women are still unlettered. All
> true to a degree. Yet, what cannot be denied is the fact that whatever
> preferential treatment the State doles out to women in the hope that they can
> be integrated will make circles around these very metropolitan middle class
> women and those immediately around them who were calling for it in the urban
> areas before it trickles down to their rustic compatriots in the provinces.
>
> Which takes me to the question of whether preferential treatment for
> marginalised women in a polity can ameliorate their situation? Experience
> heavily indicts the idea that preferential treatment extended to marginalised
> women in a polity can liberate them. Preferential treatment for women in a
> polity where the vast majority of women are still shackled by ignorance
> cannot by itself enhance their situation. The experience of the PPP years are
> revealing. Through its preferential treatment of the early 80s women like
> Nyimasata Sanneh Bojang, who subsequently became the country's first elected
> woman MP, outfits like the Women's Bureau and state bureaucracies like the
> women's ministery, the PPP managed to fool itself that it has done a great
> deal for women. Yet , what appears to be the case is that all these
> "advancements" have virtually produced nothing for the ordinary woman in the
> rural areas. True, more women are going to school and some highly educated
> now. But it is a trickle when one estimates what was involved and the
> duration. There and then one goes back to my point earlier stated which is:
> such preferential treatments benefit the metropolitan feminist elites and
> their immediate families more before it eventually trickles down to the
> unlettered rural woman. Preferential treatment in the same breath of reverse
> discrimination for women candidates in elections will invariably produce
> similar results. Whilst a few metropolitan women elites would pretend that
> their status has been enhanced, the rural woman remain detached from such a
> state.
>
> The new spin from the APRC machinery via Kebba Joke is that the UDP by
> allegedly refusing to adopt affirmative action and fielding women candidates
> in safe seats, is a very "callous" party indeed. If all that Joke attributes
> to Juwara as having allegedly said turns out to be true, then i must say that
> despite the ideological chasm that exists between me and Juwara, we are in
> agreement on this one. If the UDP wishes to genuinely end the plight of
> women, then they will have to courageously go after the root causes of what
> impede the progress of women i.e, statutory and customary laws that exist in
> society and abolishing them. If the UDP musters the courage and ban female
> circumcision, they would have given Gambian women more than a million Isatou
> Njie-Saidys! If a UDP gov't that is courageous enough to muster the effort to
> end all those discriminatory customary laws and norms like inheritance laws
> that impede women, they would have given Gambian women another million Isatou
> Njie-Saidys! It is not such token window-dressings like appointing
> metropolitan feminist elites to the higher echelons of the State machinery
> that sets women free. Nor is it such affirmative actions like reverse
> discrimination for women so they can enter parliament. This is nothing but
> romantic hogwash. History is littered with women who through the odds have
> defied common belief and led difficult socities without affirmative action.
> For such women of history like Golda Meir, Indira Gandhi, Margaret Thatcher,
> Sheikh Hasina, etc, etc, fought for their positions in extraordinary
> circumstances without holding their hands up for preferential treatment.
> Besides, what has all these Jammeh appointments of women to high positions in
> gov't done for women folk in the Gambia generally? Has it humanised him to
> the point where he will desist from sending animals after their children and
> butchering them in April 2000? Has it ended female circumcision? Has not the
> discourse of female circumcision not been banned in the public media in order
> to pander to the bigotry of the very forces that are keeping women down? Has
> all those customary and statutory laws that still discriminate against women
> been abolished? Has not Isatou Njie-Saidy - herself an icon of the feminist
> movement and a mother to children - not helped carry out an order that ended
> the lives of 15 innocent souls and remained with the same unrepentant and
> vile gov't  still whoring her intellect for it?
>
> Reading all these critiques, the reader might be tempted in jumping to the
> rash conclusion that i'm a misogynist and or a reactionary fogey. Far from
> it. Despite my cooling towards women's liberationist movements and hostility
> towards radical feminism, at heart i remain a liberal progressive who wishes
> to see an end to any form of discrimination that keeps groups or individuals
> down. How then will a liberal deal with the plight of women and those
> disadvantaged by adverse discrimination - past and present? Within a genuine
> liberal order, such irrelevant charcteristics like race, gender, ethnicity,
> religion, etc, etc, will be classified non issues in the public sphere as a
> law shall be promulgated to end any form of general discrimination against
> any group and or individual. Any statute or customary law found to be
> inconsistent with the above and or a shackle around the legs of such groups
> like women shall hencefcorth be abolished. Laws will then be introduced that
> makes equal opportunities a fact of national life. Women and any other  group
> that does not feature heavily in national life for that matter will be
> **encouraged** through sensitisation - not by "gender activists" but by the
> State through its department responsible for information and or education -
> to be active participants in both civic and state insitutions and or life.
> Here i hasten to emphasize that such **encouragement** has no no truck with
> affirmative action, preferential treatment and reverse discrimination. In a
> truly liberal order, discrimination will cease to be a divisive because it
> would invariably be defeated by progress and if it is lucky to be left with
> any remants, be consigned to the fringes of obscurity. In truly liberal
> order, women and men would be partners and not antagonists. For these
> reasons, a truly liberal State really has no use for such divisive outfits
> and measures like the Women's Bureau, a State ministry reponsible solely for
> women, affirmative action and the polarising politics of feminism.
>
> Hamjatta Kanteh
>
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