France and Senegal
A male-dominated agenda?
The female workforce in the canning industry in Brittany, France, and in Dakar, Senegal : A review of the Master’s dissertation of Babacar Diouf
By Alain Le Sann of the Collectif Pêche et Developpement, France and a member of ICSF
In 1989 and 1990, a young Senegalese student conducted a comparative study of the canneries of Southern Brittany, France and Dakar, Senegal. The processing plants were located in fishing harbours, in areas with few other industries. He noted that in both places women had to take up the low-grade jobs. Their work at the plant was seen as a continuation of the domestic work of preparing the fish.
The development of the canning industry in Dakar is an aspect of the délocalisation’ or relocation process pursued by Breton industrialists, in the early twentieth century in Europe, and after the Second World War in Senegal. At first women workers were from fishing families. Their workload varied seasonally as they had to cope with the volumes landed by their fathers or husbands. The activities, and the way they were organized, were similar in Brittany and in Dakar.
However, the status and the career of women workers were seen to be very different in Dakar and Brittany because of the contrasting cultural, social and economic contexts. In Dakar, a number of first generation women workers used their savings to take up some trade, for instance, selling the fish caught by their husbands. Only the second generation got involved in union activities to obtain better working conditions, in terms of salaries, job security, etc. In Brittany, on the other hand, women workers had joined the fight in large numbers as early as in the 1920s.
Nowadays the gap between conditions in Dakar and in Brittany has somewhat narrowed, but the respective social and economic context still differs widely. Women workers in Breton are in charge of most of the domestic chores, apart from their normal work at the plant. Their Senegalese counterparts, in contrast, can rely on the extended family system. A large part of the household work is carried out by daughters or other female members of the family, sometimes by a servant. By entering a salaried occupation, women workers in Dakar improve their status, all the more so when the husband is polygamous.
Their position is seen to be further strengthened during times of economic crisis, that leave their husbands with uncertain means of subsistence or outright joblessness. Salaried employment becomes, therefore, very attractive and women stick to their job using every available means, in particular by spacing childbirth. They invest their savings to help their daughters get into some commercial activity. In Brittany, women workers tend to leave their job at childbirth and try to get back to work at the plant only after the children have grown up.
Babacar Diouf noted some common aspects of trade union activities in Dakar and Brittany. The aim, in all cases, was to get salary increases and improved working conditions, not for a greater recognition of qualification’. Yet the recognition of women as qualified’ workers is an essential prerequisite if gender biases and the sexual division of labour has to be challenged. While men undertaking relatively simple, low-grade jobs may be considered qualified, women carrying out fairly complex tasks, requiring great skill, are not considered qualified. Could it be due to the fact that union leaders, both in Dakar and in Brittany, are, most of the time, men?
It is now ten years since the Senegalese student completed his research. It is worth revisiting the themes he studied, in particular to find out to what extent the deepening crisis and changing gender relations are impacting on the life and livelihoods of women workers in the processing sector.
Alain le Sann can be contacted at pecheetdeveloppement@free.fr.
