SHADOWS OF TIME
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01.10.2024
“As I approach 40, I find myself overlooked by both young and older activists.”
—Mariama Faye
“After a certain age, it feels like you're no longer considered a part of the feminist movement, especially if you're over 60. Security is multidimensional, global. It’s physical and spiritual, yes, but financial too. What is the future of our movement? What support does the philanthropic sector have for a feminist activist who has dedicated her entire life to social justice, but now is no longer considered ‘productive’ by the standards of capitalism?”
—Awa Fall Diop
It is often said that time is not a womxn’s friend. This is a reality we all face, regardless of background or social status, because time means age.
And being a womxn means carrying the full weight of age. We can even say that the status of womxn is a question of age, because patriarchy has always infantilized womxn as one way, amongst others, to keep us under its guardianship.
Age, for womxn, therefore, is a vector of violence: the violence we inflict on ourselves to stay young and remain, we hope, forever beautiful through dieting or (under certain skies) by spending huge amounts of money on surgeries or so-called anti-aging creams and supplements. Patriarchy uses the same fear of aging to justify polygamy where this is permitted, and capitalism uses it as one of many layers of glass ceilings to restrict women’s careers worldwide.
The status of older women, in particular, is burdened by injustices, among them the devaluation of their image, the many socio-emotional deprivations and economic disadvantages, all this despite demographic forecasts of a continuing increase in the proportion of elderly people, the majority of whom will be women. For us, for womxn, growing older only adds to the multiple sources of brutality to which we are subject, directly or indirectly.
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The world of philanthropy pays a lot of attention to young activists, a wonderful thing, to be sure, but in the shadow of this gaze, there are dire consequences for older activists. Where are the foundations and NGOs that have as much enthusiasm for the activism of older feminists?
Time and age are also political issues.
Around thirty activists from Central and West Africa are on a mat for a discussion on feminism organized by the Foundation for a Just Society (FJS) and co-hosted by the authors of this post, Awa Fall Diop and Mariam Sako Armisen. We are in Dakar on the last day of the first West African Feminist Summer University organized by J-GEN, a feminist organisation. During this conversation about the state of young feminist movements in the two regions, the question of age both is, and is not, on the agenda.
Age was invited to the West African Feminist Summer University, and has been very present, yet invisible too. Throughout the three-day gathering, we have celebrated feminist ancestors as well as elders still active within our movements. Discussions have taken place on intergenerational dialogue, the co-construction of movements, family law, and the transmission of knowledge to the new generation. In effect, age has been the star of the gathering without ever having been explicitly named.
We were invited to a celebration of rising youth – of youthful activists and youthful movements, but our predecessors have also been in the spotlight. Even those no longer with us are present; the photos of many ancestors are at the entrance to the conference room. They both welcome and watch over us.
“I would like, in relation to existing feminist networks, to remove the age criterion. It’s the gray matter, it’s the commitment, it’s the convictions that must take precedence.”
It’s a statement slipped into the end of a fruitful sharing, as Mariama Faye from Senegal, in naming the guest of honor in our discussion, addresses an almost taboo subject in women’s and feminist activism: the impact of time on the female activist.
Where are our places in our movements after we enter our forties and onwards?
Where are the support structures for feminists aged 60 and over who have devoted themselves to the cause for decades but now find themselves in situations of inconceivable precariousness and isolation?
By the same token, what guidance and support will the emerging activists of today be able to rely on when they become the seniors of tomorrow?
Through this post, we want to challenge African feminist movements to think about the issue of age in relation to the politics, ethics, and sustainability of our struggle. We call on the philanthropic sector not to lose sight of senior activists. As we say in Africa, “praise the one who lights the fire, but don’t forget the one who fetched the wood.”
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The institutionalization of activism and the dependence on external financial aid that has taken our notions of activism and engagement hostage are not without their shadows. The proliferation of organizations in our countries is one example. Being an activist today is synonymous with belonging to an organization – or better yet – leading it. In itself, this need not be a problem, but when activists get entangled in administrative burdens that chip away at the essential resource—time—we must question our models of struggle.
“Time is money,” as Americans say. Yes, time is costly; African and black feminist activists are well aware of this. We are running out of time chasing increasingly scarce funding. And meanwhile, time is racing past us, distorting our perceptions of one another.
Young activists struggling to get their organizations off the ground think their elders are better off. The elders, struggling to survive financially, look at the new generation—and the enthusiasm of funders for anything new—with envy and resentment. The generations end up regarding each other with some degree of mistrust.
Time plays tricks on us all.
In this atmosphere of distrust, fueled by competitiveness, by an insistence on “productivity”, by a tyranny of innovation and a skewed notion of scarcity of time and resources, we thrive “together” in our movements. Take, for example, one fashionable subject: intergenerational dialogue. How this is addressed says a lot about our cultures of activism and, in particular, exposes its extractive side.
Intergenerational dialogue, which has so much potential and could enable us to address the unspoken and shadowy areas in our movements, is very often conceived and conducted in an extractive, competitive dynamic. For young activists, it's the logic of “what do older women bring to young people?” For older women fighting invisibilization, the question is how to remain "relevant" in our movements. We meet, each with our own agenda, each trying to “extract” the most from the other while sharing as little as possible.
And so time runs its course.
For generations, we have continued to miss something fundamental — the need to think collectively and purposefully about the principles of our activism.
Ethics.
This only comes up when an activist’s questionable behavior becomes an issue and then is used as ammunition to discredit the person. It is always associated with abuse of power or misappropriation of funds. A tool of judgment—and of politics. Without wanting to justify corruption, if some activists are drawn into mismanaging resources, it is too often because, for the most part, taking their human needs into account figures very little in the calculations of funders.
Ethics is noble, but its nobility is rarely seen in our movements.
By ethics, we mean caring for the relationship between values, behavior, and modes of struggle. Applying that ethics requires us to pay attention to the human needs of activists throughout their lives and to the conditions that are needed to support and nourish individual-collective engagement and commitment. As vitally important as it is to promote and finance our movements’ work, it is just as important to pay attention to how movements are formed. Who forms them? What are the profiles of the people (including their backgrounds) who are behind the formation of a movement? Under what material conditions do these movements emerge? What emotional bonds do activists forge? What, if any, affective care ensures that these relationships are positive and constructive?
Time itself is an ethical issue.
The urgency with which movements emerge and evolve blinds us to the need to think about our struggles in a human way. This blindness hurts activists more than anything else. Is it the reason we have no infrastructure of support for the 60-something feminist who has given their life to the movement but is now falling into extraordinary impoverishment and isolation? We need to go back in time and look at their career as a young activist, the material conditions under which they started, and the structural, political, emotional, and financial support they needed and did (or not) receive.
History has a tendency to repeat itself. Today, young activists and feminist movements are emerging almost everywhere in the world. In so-called francophone West Africa, the movements are gaining momentum without a doubt. But under what conditions? This is seldom asked. The repetitions of history invite us to learn from them and to change. We strongly believe that this new generation of feminists has a real potential for bringing about transformation, provided that they make these ethical questions a collective imperative.
In a forthcoming FJS-commissioned report mapping young feminist groups, collectives and movements in six West African countries, the question of who the activists are and where they have come from is revealed to be as important as their goals and strategies for change.
The activism of a young, cisgender woman who is urban, educated, and well connected to the structural support of the heteronormative world is not the same as that of a young lesbian, trans, or queer activist, or a young differently abled activist, or a young activist who is also a sex worker or domestic worker (to name only a few), or any combination of these. And what about poor or rural activists, perhaps self-educated or with little education?
A common thread that links the various groups surveyed in the report is that most are (or were) self-funded. Self-funding favors urban, educated, and well-connected activists. Among womxn, who has access to decent employment in our increasingly conservative African societies? The answer is obvious. Well-off cisgender and heterosexual womxn. They have the opportunity to have a professional career while building an organization that they can afford to self-fund, at least in the initial stages. Some may consider themselves financially secure enough to resign from their position and devote themselves to activism full-time. Their professional experience and networks give them more value in the eyes of donors, thus facilitating their access to financing. Moreover, donors are much more likely to support an initiative that already has a presence on the ground, so being able to get something going using one’s own funds greatly increases the chances of attracting sustaining funding later. Furthermore, educated womxn are much more likely to have the communication, research and networking skills needed to attract funding. Their professional experience and networks also give them more value in the eyes of donors, which further enhances their access to financing. There is no comparison between the amount and quality of funding these elite womxn can enjoy and the struggle for funding experienced by an activist whose identity is marginalized and discriminated against (even within feminist movements) and whose very existence may be criminalized.
This activist who has to live and organize from a place of fear, shame, and isolation, who knows precariousness intimately but has learned to normalize their living conditions and their activism, may “get by” (and is expected to) with very little support (emotional, financial, or protective). And if these marginalized feminists live and work precariously in their youth, what will become of them when they are 60 and have already sacrificed so much of themselves to the movement? And beyond an older womxn’s activism, do we even see the womxn themself when they are 60, when they are 70?
The ambivalence of the current generations of activists towards our elders is a reflection on the relationship we all have with age. We celebrate some of our predecessors for their tenacity, then blame others for not ceding power, for still being “the president of their association even after 30 years.” Our critique generally stops there. We rarely ask whether they have the material means to retire? We don’t ask what will happen to them after they leave? What role, if any, will there be for them in the association they gave their life to, or in the movement as a whole?
Do we ask if perhaps they hold onto their position out of fear? Yes, fear. And the shame of being afraid. Fear of loneliness, isolation, invisibility, abandonment, uselessness.
This fear, not any thirst for power or desire to hold back younger activists, may be one of the most common reasons an elder clings to their “seat.” This fear is even more cruel for an activist who has always worked in precarious conditions. Who has never had a salary, who has learned to live on per diems. Retirement rhymes with the loss of even these meager resources, and therefore with poverty and all the additional vulnerabilities that come with it when you are no longer young.
Shedding light on the disparities and inequalities within our movements will enable us to co-create support infrastructures that can take these realities into account.
The future is now.
To our movements:
We offer the following topics of reflection in the hope that some of them can be on the table as subjects for discussion in future gatherings soon.
• Our movements urgently need to rethink our models of struggle from a more welfare-centred perspective. What are the conditions that will help us insert a broader, more humane ethics into the cultures of our feminist struggles?
• How do we understand the question of sustainability beyond merely financial concerns? Thinking about our cultures of activism also means articulating how we prepare and support generations of activists as they evolve in our movements.
• It also means thinking about the lives of activists throughout their human journey and integrating into our strategic plans the needs that arise for us as we age.
• What relationship do we have with age? What is the link between age, safety, well-being, and the vitality of our engagement in activism?
• How does age affect sisterhood and solidarity?
• What is our relationship with money and time — and the tensions between them?
• We need, above all, to work together more than we do now, to work together beyond our identities, our particularities, our pluralities, beyond young and old, urban and rural, able and living with a disability, poor and financially secure, straight and queer, trans and cis. Let's co-create truly intergenerational, diverse spaces and platforms to pursue fully intersectional goals.
• Let us recognize as a movement — and personally as activists — the imperative to invest in progressively reducing our dependence on the traditional philanthropic sector. This will require creating more and more feminist funds at the fringes of capitalist structures. There are many different political liberation movements around the world that we can draw inspiration and lessons from in pursuit of this goal.
To the donors:
Many of you support feminist youth organizations and movements, and your support is absolutely necessary to advance the womxn’s rights agenda. However, as our movements mature, it is equally necessary to fund programs that address the specific needs of older activists. Advancing the womxn's rights agenda is about the whole of our lives. Indeed, the denial of womxn’s rights does not diminish with age; it persists and worsens. We urge you to
• Commission studies on the issues and needs of activists over 50.
• Accompany movements and activists as we define holistic care policies that address the needs of activists and organizations at the different stages in their lives and take these needs into account in your funding policies.
• Support movements to articulate their leadership transition needs beyond the question of transfer of power to include the human needs of outgoing leaders.
• Make sure activists are financially secure by allocating grants that support a living wage, social protection, including health insurance, retirement, and other benefits.
We do not pretend to have answers to the questions shared in this post, but beyond wanting to challenge individual-collective complacency, we want to offer avenues of reflection to our feminist movements in all their diversity as well as some recommendations to donors who support us and want to support us.
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Words by Awa Fall-Diop and Mariam Sako Armisen
Photos by Mariam Armisen