Cornélia Glèlè is a member of the Network of Young Feminists in West Africa, the West African Network of Young Women Leaders, and the EcranBenin association.
Can you tell us about the West African Young Feminists Network?
The West African Young Feminists Network is a melting pot of young people committed to women's rights in various West African countries. We met for the first time in November 2018 in Ouagadougou, thanks to Equipop. We decided to work together to improve the living conditions of women in our West African community, but also to make our voices heard at the 2019 G7 summit, chaired by France. To achieve this, we set up four projects: a vlogging campaign, a happening, a tweetathon, and a video featuring influencers.
How can this subregional forum for exchange be linked to your commitments at the national level?
This subregional commitment allows us to assess where other countries stand in terms of women's rights and to carry out activities in our respective countries. Take, for example, the happening project: it will be implemented in several countries, including Benin (my country). The aim of this project is to denounce the various forms of violence suffered by women through slam performances. It is therefore a subregional project, but one that has a direct impact on each member country of the Creuset.
What are your main struggles?
Within the Network of Young West African Feminists, we have five major causes. We want every woman to have the right to control her own body, including the right to decide when and how many children to have. We want girls, regardless of where they live, to have access to quality education in a safe environment. We want the principle of "equal pay for equal work" to be a reality and for the work done by women to be remunerated at its fair value. We want the share of our states' budgets reserved for women to be reviewed. Finally, we want women to have access to decision-making positions. Women know women's issues better than anyone else. We cannot continue to let men decide whether or not we have the right to have children or to work. We want to decide for ourselves and give a little rest to the men who have always done the job but have failed to change much.
What does being a feminist in West Africa mean to you?
Unfortunately, people here don't understand that a feminist is someone who wants the world to be a fairer place. Accepting your status as a feminist means accepting that you will alienate an entire population that is still misogynistic. And I'm not ashamed of that, I accept it. Just as much as men, women need to be fulfilled and not live for others or in cultural realities that prevent them from moving forward (female genital mutilation or forced marriages, for example). It is precisely because there are still so many inequalities to be corrected that we, as West African feminists, have a legitimate reason to exist.
