Madagascar: The lost status of women

What has happened to the traditional status of Malagasy women? By ‘traditional’, I mean not just pre-colonial, because it seems that the loss of women’s high position in society began long before the colonial invasion by French troops, which resulted in Madagascar becoming a French colony in 1896. It began when local chiefs started organizing their chieftaincies into a State, in the late 18th century, and was gradually aggravated under Western influence, first through the Christian missionaries throughout the 19th century, then through colonial laws, education and practices, and through the policies, attitudes and practices of the Western-educated elite, after Independence in 1960 till nowadays.

The traditional status of women
I contend that traditionally, the status of individuals and groups in Madagascar was defined by their birth rather than by their sex. Among all the ethnic groups of the different regions in the country, there used to be three castes – and though the caste system has long been officially abolished, it is still very much present in people’s everyday life. At the top were the nobility, below them were the common people, and at the bottom of the societies were the slaves.

Obviously a noble woman was socially considered above a common man or a man slave, and a common woman above a man slave. But was there equality between men and women within the same caste? To me, the answer is yes. One proof is that there were many women chieftains in the history of the different regions, though no percentage has ever been established.

Among all three castes, though for different reasons, the status of women was at least equal to that of men, mainly due to their essential function as mothers. People showed respect for all women who had proved capable of bearing children. Men were therefore eager to marry a pregnant woman, whether the child to be born was their own or another man’s biological child. This was presumably due to high child mortality – the birth of a baby, whatever the circumstances of his/her conception, was welcomed as a contribution to the perpetuation of the social group. The importance of children was such that men acquired a final identity only after the birth of their first child. At that point, men gave up their original name, and took on the name of ‘Father-of-’ – after the name of the child, whether a girl or a boy – a name that would be their official name for the rest of their lives. Women, as mothers, clearly played a central part in the process, and consequently received all the respect that was due to such vital agents in the life of the social group.

Another example of traditional equality between men and women is the existence of a traditional organization of women in Southeast Madagascar. In every village, the male part of society is known as analahy amin-dray (the brothers and fathers), and the female part as anakavy amin-dreny (the sisters and mothers). While the adult men held meetings in which decisions were taken concerning the community, adult women too could meet and discuss their own topics of interest, or the action proposed by the men. Though men and women never held common meetings, the chief of a village had to communicate the results of the men’s discussions to the chief of the women, who in her turn informed the ‘sisters and mothers’. The women could question the proposals made by the men, and make suggestions of their own through their chief woman. This was an ideally democratic organization, which helped correct the imbalance due to a traditional injustice – unlike in other regions of Madagascar, women in the Southeast could not inherit land from their fathers.

However, people were aware that this could cause women to be disadvantaged, not only economically and socially but also within the married couple. So, besides taking decisions concerning the community, the organization of ‘sisters and mothers’ also interfered to defend the rights and dignity of individual women. For example, if a husband beat his wife, or a brother refused to give land to his divorced or widowed sister, such men could be fined, or even severely punished in various ways by the ‘sisters and mothers’. They put collective pressure on the chief of the village and the ‘brothers and fathers’ until the latter had forced the wrongdoer into paying the fine or repairing damage, as decided by the ‘sisters and mothers’. Such systems had clearly been designed to maintain justice and the balance of power between men and women.

Gender injustice in modern Madagascar
The first known unfair measure against women was taken by King Andrianampoinimerina in the late 18th century. Because he wanted to expand his territory and needed soldiers for that, and as he could not pay them any regular salary, he changed the traditional law concerning marriage – “because men risk their lives while serving the State, while women sit peacefully at home” (these were the words he used). From then on men were allowed to repudiate their wife, and to have several wives. On the contrary, women who were unfaithful while their husband was away at war would be severely punished, whereas in traditional law, women were allowed to take temporary husband(s) if their official husband was away for a long time (this was probably because it was unacceptable that a woman should stop having children just because her husband was away).

It would take too long to explain here why, though the four sovereigns who reigned all through the 19th century were women, the officers in their administration were all men. One major reason was that, though the London Missionary Society was careful to educate girls as well as boys (only the missionaries provided modern, formal education in those days), from a certain level, only young men were trained to become province governors, secretaries, military leaders, doctors, pastors, etc. Curiously, none of the four queens had ever set foot outside the country, while many young men of the nobility were sent abroad to England to train… the better to serve the queen!

The defeat of the queen’s army and colonization meant, among other things, that power was no longer dependent on birth. Colonial government was at first a military government, but even after it was handed over to civilians, it remained all male. The idea of government in the early 20th century completely excluded women in Europe, let alone in the colonies that had been conquered by all-men armies. And it was only in the 1950s that French ‘women auxiliaries’ were admitted into the colonial administration; they were paid less than their male counterparts, while doing exactly the same work.

One major change introduced by the colonial administration is that the tax system now concerned only the male citizens. Under pre-colonial monarchy, taxpayers were villages as a whole, not individuals. For example, a village had to give to the queen an amount of rice, which had been produced by both men and women, or measures of silk cloth, which had been woven by the women. Because they were equal as taxpayers, men and women were also equal in other areas of life. Paying taxes in the colonial system, while the women did not, gave justification to the men for claiming – or imposing – privileges for themselves over the women of their own family or social group.
This was continued into the First Republic after Independence (1960–1972): only men paid taxes (significantly, the main tax was named hetra isan-dahy, or ‘tax per man’), and no wonder – all the educated persons who were trained to take over from colonial administrators were men.

To this day, it is in the modern political sphere that women’s position is weakest – in the present government only the Minister of Justice is a woman, and the percentage of women in Parliament has been under 10 percent since In-dependence.

Meanwhile in the social sphere, women have lost much of their status. Childbearing is no longer valued as it used to be, among other reasons because in a much more materialistic world, children are considered as burdens rather than as blessings. There are now many women heads of household (about 20 percent at national level) and single mothers, whereas in the past men would have been eager to marry unmarried or widowed mothers.

As far as the ethnic groups in the Southeast are concerned, the organizations of ‘sisters and mothers’ still exist, but are now powerless. Husbands are no longer ashamed to beat their wives and repudiate them, brothers to refuse to give any plot of land to their divorced sisters, and the solidarity between them and the ‘sisters and mothers’ no longer seems to work. One reason already reported at the end of the colonial period, in the 1950s, was that modern education was perceived as ‘liberation’ from the constraints of traditional rules, and as more and more people became educated, the majority eventually became individualistic.

One major problem for women nowadays is that their rights are no longer protected by traditional rules, while on the other hand the majority of Malagasy women are not educated enough to have recourse to modern courts of justice to redress the wrongs done to them.

Modern formal education has done much to destroy the traditional balance between men and women. The main challenge now is for non-formal education to bridge the gaps, particularly in the form of legal literacy. Institutions, governmental and non-governmental, must find ways of helping ordinary women dare to claim their rights, even when the perpetrators are their closest male kin.

Selected reading
Astuti, Rita, “Food for pregnancy: procreation, marriage and images of gender among the Vezo of western Madagascar”. In Social Anthropology 1(3), 1993.

CABRAM (Cabinet Ramaholimihaso), Femmes malgaches et développement: Pour une société plus viable. Antananarivo: Mission de Coopération et d’Action Culturelle à Madagascar, 1992.

Huntington, Richard, Gender and Social Structure in Madagascar. Bloomington and Indianapolis: Indiana University Press, 1988.

Middleton, Karen, “How Karembola men become mothers”. In J. Carsten (Ed.), Cultures of Relatedness: New Approaches to the Study of Kinship. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, in press.

Rabenoro, Mireille, “Rôles masculins et féminins dans l’éducation des jeunes à la vie familiale à Antananarivo (1945–1960): le cas d’Isotry”. Département d’Histoire, Faculté des Lettres et Sciences Humaines, Université d’Antananarivo, 1999.

Ravololomanga, Bodo, Etre femme et mère à Madagascar (Tanala d’Ifanadiana). Paris: L’Harmattan, 1992.

Ravololomanga, Bodo, “La femme, source des lignées”. In L’Etranger Intime, mélanges offerts à Paul Ottino, Madagascar-Tahiti, Insulinde-Monde Swahili-Comores-Réunion, Université de la Réunion: Océan Editions, 1995.

Skjortnes, Marianne, “Gender and social change in Merina rural society”. In Rethinking ‘la femme malgache’: new views on gender in Madagascar. Antananarivo: Institut de Civilisations, University of Antananarivo, Taloha collection no. 13, special edition, 2000.

Vig, Lars, Sur la femme malgache, Teza Boky: CEROI, 1994 (first edition 1907).