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Women who change into men: a gendered history of precarity in ‘useful’ Chad

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  16 July 2019

Lori Leonard
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Abstract

This article is about two generations of women in south-western Chad – the baou déné and the mosso. It addresses the puzzle of how these groups of women are present in the everyday life of the region known as ‘useful’ Chad, while women as economic agents are absent from stories about the region and about successive schemes to make it profitable. The baou déné are wealthy farmers, but the last generation of these ‘women who have a lot of things’ is disappearing. Younger women are referred to as mosso, meaning ‘to fall down’. They are more likely to make a living from small trade than from farming and their lives are defined by precarity. Drawing on a range of historical and contemporary sources, I show how the erasure of women happened in different ways over time. In the colonial era, administrators and travel writers were unable to imagine that women transformed forests into cotton fields. In this century, the idea that women farm just like men was disseminated by oil companies, facilitating land expropriation while drowning out stories of women's marginalization. The baou déné and the mosso are the products of specific historical processes and profit-making schemes, and the silences about women's places in them helped make profits, empire and ‘useful’ Chad possible.

Résumé

Cet article traite de deux générations de femmes dans le Sud-Ouest du Tchad : baou déné et mosso. Il se penche sur l’énigme suivante : comment se fait-il que ces groupes de femmes soient présents dans la vie quotidienne de la région appelée le Tchad « utile », alors que les femmes en tant qu'acteurs économiques sont absentes des récits sur la région et sur les projets successifs destinés à la rendre rentable. Les baou déné sont de riches agriculteurs, mais la dernière génération de ces « femmes qui ont plein de choses » est en train de disparaître. Les femmes jeunes sont appelées les mosso, qui signifie « tomber ». Elles vivent plus souvent du petit commerce que de l'agriculture et leur vie est définie par la précarité. S'appuyant sur diverses sources historiques et contemporaines, l'auteur montre comment l'effacement des femmes est survenu au fil du temps. Pendant la période coloniale, les administrateurs et les écrivains voyageurs ne pouvaient pas imaginer les femmes transformer les forêts en champs de coton. Au cours de ce siècle, l'idée que les femmes travaillent la terre comme les hommes fut disséminée par les compagnies pétrolières, facilitant ainsi l'expropriation foncière tout en étouffant les récits de marginalisation des femmes. Les baou déné et les mosso sont les produits de processus historiques spécifiques et de projets lucratifs, et le silence sur la place que les femmes y occupent a rendu possible le profit, l'empire et le Tchad « utile ».

Type
Precarity in Ghana and Chad
Information
Africa , Volume 89 , Issue 3 , August 2019 , pp. 521 - 540
Copyright
Copyright © International African Institute 2019 

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