ROUTE TALKS I: Women of Senegal
19:00h TALK - Claudia Espart, Interaction Design student at LCC, and 4th edition router.
19:15h TALK - Bombo Ndir, president of the Subsaharian Inmigrant Women (ADIS) and vice president of the Senegalese Associations Coordinator in Cataluña.
19:30h TALK - Ndeye Fatou Mbaye y Marie Faye, president, and associate of the Diomcoop cooperative.
19:45h Dialogue
I sat with two monumental organizers and advocates for Senegalese migrant women in Cataluña and we conversed about the work being done to distribute opportunities and resources to the women who have sacrificed so much to strive for a better future for themselves and their families. We spoke about discrimination, the role of women in uplifting their communities, female entrepreneurship as well as identity, and the fluctuations that occur in that imaginary through displacement.
As a reaction to my previous interview with Madame Madeleine in St. Louis, Senegal, I was left thinking about the imaginary of womanhood and its construction of it from within and from the outside. I wrote this piece to share with Bombo Ndir and Marie Faye.
What’s a woman?
What does it mean to be a woman? Is it defined by the sex we are born with or is it constructed by the social lens of our community? Is it an individual experience, or is it composed by experiencing it collectively? Is our identity, our worth, measured by our capacity to identify with prescribed and predefined roles?
I don’t have an answer for any of these questions as a woman. As a person, however, I propose that every aspect of our existence and worth is measured up in part by other people looking at us. But the apparent and projected worth, as pervasive as it becomes when it forces their gaze onto our sense of self and attempts to define and model what we think, should be, and aspire to be can be dismantled. Madelaine Niang knows what it is to be looked at, to not be seen but imagined via the melanin or lack thereof her skin, her class, nationality, education and ultimately trumping all, her gender.
A seasoned entrepreneur and advocate in stimulating the local economy and cultural scene of St. Louis, Madame is an empowered individual and a liberated female. Through an interview where I look, but primordially simply listen, she recalls her history with perception, and how it has changed her but never stopped her from moving forward and becoming who she desires to be.
