Home > Work > Women's Liberation and the African Freedom Struggle

Women's Liberation and the African Freedom Struggle QUOTES

Women's Liberation and the African Freedom Struggle QUOTES

1 " Comrades, there is no true social revolution without the liberation of women. May my eyes never see and my feet never take me to a society where half the people are held in silence. I hear the roar of women’s silence. I sense the rumble of their storm and feel the fury of their revolt. "

― Thomas Sankara , Women's Liberation and the African Freedom Struggle

2 " The specific character of [women's] oppression cannot be explained away by equating different situations through superficial and childish simplifications[:]

It is true that both the woman and the male worker are condemned to silence by their exploitation. But under the current system, the worker's wife is also condemned to silence by her worker-husband. In other words, in addition to the class exploitation common to both of them, women must confront a particular set of relations that exist between them and men, relations of conflict and violence that use physical differences as their pretext. "

― Thomas Sankara , Women's Liberation and the African Freedom Struggle

3 " Humankind does not submit passively to the power of nature. It takes control over this power. This process is not an internal or subjective one. It takes place objectively in practice, once women cease to be viewed as mere sexual beings, once we look beyond their biological functions and become conscious of their weight as an active social force. What's more, woman's consciousness of herself is not only a product of her sexuality. It reflects her position as determined by the economic structure of society, which in turn expresses the level reached by humankind in technological development and the relations between classes.

The importance of dialectical materialism lies in going beyond the inherent limits of biology, rejecting simplistic theories about our being slaves to the nature of our species, and, instead, placing facts in their social and economic context. "

― Thomas Sankara , Women's Liberation and the African Freedom Struggle

4 " The woman leads a twofold existence indeed, the depth of her social ostracism being equally only by her stoic endurance. To live in harmony with the society of man, to conform with men's demands, she resigns herself to a self-effacement that is demeaning, she sacrifices herself. "

― Thomas Sankara , Women's Liberation and the African Freedom Struggle

5 " The only difference between the woman who sells her body through prostitution and she who sells herself in marriage is the price and duration of the contract. "

― Thomas Sankara , Women's Liberation and the African Freedom Struggle

6 " By changing the social order that oppresses women, the revolution creates the conditions for their genuine emancipation. "

― Thomas Sankara , Women's Liberation and the African Freedom Struggle

7 " The condition of women is therefore at the heart of the question of humanity itself, here, there, and everywhere. "

― Thomas Sankara , Women's Liberation and the African Freedom Struggle

8 " We have no need of a feminized apparatus to bureaucratically manage women's lives or to issue sporadic statements about women's lives by smooth-talking functionaries. What we need are women who will fight because they know that without a fight the old order will not be destroyed and no new order will be built. We are not looking to organize what exists but to definitively destroy and replace it. "

― Thomas Sankara , Women's Liberation and the African Freedom Struggle

9 " The patriarchal family made its appearance, founded on the sole and personal property of the father, who had become head of the family. Within this family the woman was oppressed. "

― Thomas Sankara , Women's Liberation and the African Freedom Struggle

10 " Another problem doubtlessly lies in the feudal, reactionary, and passive attitude of many men who by their behavior continue to hold things back. They have no intention of jeopardizing the total control they have over women, either at home or in society in general. In the battle to build a new society, which is a revolutionary battle, the conduct of these men places them on the side of reaction and counterrevolution. For the revolution cannot triumph without the genuine emancipation of women. "

― Thomas Sankara , Women's Liberation and the African Freedom Struggle

11 " [N]othing whole, nothing definitive or lasting can be accomplished in our country as long as a crucial part of ourselves is kept in this condition of subjugation—a condition imposed over the course of centuries by various systems of exploitation. "

― Thomas Sankara , Women's Liberation and the African Freedom Struggle

12 " Was it understood that the position of women in society means the condition of 52 percent of the Burkinabe population? Was it understood that this condition was the product of social, political, and economic structures, and of prevailing backward conceptions? And that the transformation of this position therefore could not be accomplished by a single ministry, even one led by a woman? "

― Thomas Sankara , Women's Liberation and the African Freedom Struggle