This day is the annual opportunity to recall the fight for women's right to work and the fight against discrimination in workplace. More than 100 years after the first celebration, this struggle is far from over. All trades are impacted, including journalism, a very high risk profession in several African countries. In March 2023, the media foundation for West Africa reported the increase in violence against women in journalistic environment. Many of them face psychological and sexual assaults, in and outside the locals. They can only rarely have their attackers appear. The regular motif is societal and traditional pressure. The fighting does not stop however.
In 2022, in Somalia, women created assessment , the first media entirely made up of women, fighting to assert human rights in a very difficult political and safe context. Fathi Mohamed Ahmed, editor in Chef, has become an emblematic figure of women's rights at work.
Another figure of female emancipation, Maïmouna Ndour Faye, founding journalist and director of Az Actu and 7 TV, was attacked with a knife on the night of February 28 to 29. An act that arouses strong revolt movements in Senegal. NGOs denounce a new attack on journalists and freedom of expression. Maïmouna Ndour Faye said he was the subject of death threats. Nevertheless, she encourages women to fight for their place in journalism, declaring that "there should not be a woman's difference".
A fight anchored in history
The first celebration of International Women's Day (JIF) took place on March 19, 1911, and continued during the First World War in several countries in protest. It was formalized by the United Nations in 1975. During the history of JIF, several African organizations worked for the restoration of the same rights between men and women. In the 1920s, the Egyptian society of doctors pointed out the devastating effects of female genital mutilation on health. In 1929 in Nigeria, many women demonstrated against the female market tax. Despite severe repressions, they gain their case and force leaders to resign.
Key date, on July 31 marks the celebration of the International Day of African Women following the first congress of the Pan -African Women's Organization in Dakar in 1974 and the foundation of the first Conference of African Women on July 31, 1962. The emblematic figure behind the JFIA is Aoua Keïta, Malian deputy and militant committed for the cause of women. The names of female figures like Zenzi Miriam Makeba, a figure in the fight against apartheid, Osai Ojigho, Leymah Gbowee, and many others, will resonate through Africa, pursuing the fight for equal rights between men and women, inscribed in the Charter of the United Nations since 1945.
