Mothering the Nation: Women’s Empowerment beyond Feminism in Côte d’Ivoire

In the 1960s and 1970s, movements for women’s liberation were sweeping the globe. The newly independent nation of Côte d’Ivoire appeared to respond with enthusiasm, launching a flurry of women-centered initiatives for development and social change. Yet while European and North American women’s movements frequently expressed their politics in terms of feminism, their Ivoirian counterparts studiously avoided the label. Instead, they advanced their visions for women’s empowerment through the language of motherhood.

This paper examines the ways Ivoirian elites drew on maternalist rhetoric to promote women’s participation in community life. As civic organizations like the Association of Ivoirian Women and state agencies like the Ministry of Women’s Affairs urged women to engage in projects for education and public health, they consistently described this work in terms of maternal duty. A woman’s participation in literacy programs, for example, was framed not in terms of personal emancipation, but rather, as a means to better serve as a wife and mother. In contrast with conceptions of gender equality championed by women’s movements in the West, Ivoirian reformers appealed to notions of gender complementarity, wherein women’s civic action was driven by feminine imperatives for care work. While some scholars have positioned such refusals of feminism as reactionary or conservative, this paper interprets Ivoirian maternalist activism through local understandings of African public motherhood. Through a careful analysis of Ivoirian ministerial projects, political speeches, and news media, this paper argues for the need to theorize notions of empowerment beyond Western constructions of women’s liberation.