Women’s rights are very limited in Mali, where tradition dominates daily life. Nearly all Malian women have been subjected to female genital mutilation, violence against women is universally accepted and many girls marry at a very young age.
Malian women have a very low level of protection within the family. The legal minimum age for women to marry is 15 years, but they can be married at a younger age with a judge’s permission. The law is often disregarded and the incidence of early marriage is extremely high. A 2004 United Nations report estimated that 50 per cent of girls between 15 and 19 years of age were married, divorced or widowed; some were even married at the very young ages of 9 or 10 years. A legislative bill that proposed increasing the legal age for marriage to 18 years was rejected. Despite efforts to raise awareness that early marriage entails serious risks for women’s health, there seems to be no impetus within public opinion, NGOs or the government to take serious action to combat the practice. The percentage of marriages before the age of 19 is decreasing very slowly in some areas, but customs persist in others, such as arranging a girl’s marriage when she is born or giving a daughter in marriage to a witch doctor for religious reasons.
Polygamy is legal according to Mali’s Marriage Code and under the teachings of Islam, the religion practised by nearly all of the population. Just under half of Malian women live in polygamous households; the percentage is higher in rural areas than in urban society, and illiterate woman are twice as likely to be affected than women who have received secondary education.
In Mali, husbands are the heads of families and the Civil Code grants them sole family and parental authority. They decide where the family will live and their wives are obliged to obey. Legally, either spouse may petition for divorce, but in rural areas women rarely initiate proceedings because of strong social pressure.
Inheritance is governed primarily by Islamic Sharia law, which discriminates against women. Daughters, for example, are entitled to receive only half the share received by sons. A further discrimination is that women can inherit only poor quality land that is not very fertile. Certain ethnic groups view the wife as part of the inheritance, and oblige her to marry a brother of her deceased husband, who then receives all of the estate.
The physical integrity of Malian women is not respected. There is no specific law to address violence against women or, more specfifically, domestic violence. There is a high level of tolerance for violence against women in Malian society; public opinion generally accepts that men have a “right” to beat their wives.
Most women in Mali have been subjected to female genital mutilation (FGM). The practice persists in both rural and urban areas, but is less prevalent amongst two ethnic groups living in the regions of Timbuktu and Gao. There is a small difference related to education: illiterate women are somewhat more likely to have been subjected to FGM than those who have secondary education. To date, the government has not put forward any legislation to prohibit FGM. Its actions have been limited to information programmes, seminars and lectures that provide a forum for discussion of proposals to end the practice. Legislative action is envisaged for the future. To date, there has been no decline in the prevalence of FGM; nearly all women who have undergone the procedure indicate they intend to subject their daughters to the practice.
Mali does not appear to be a country of concern in relation to missing women.
Malian women have legal rights to property ownership, but these rights are often restricted in practice. Legally, women and men have the same access to land and the government has launched several publicly funded agricultural development projects that, theoretically, allow women to access land on the same basis as men. In reality, many obstacles prevent women from exercising their rights. According to tradition, women are entitled only to the less fertile land and often obtain a life interest in its “use” (not its ownership).
Women have the right to access to property other than land. However, their independent actions – purchasing a house, for example – can lead to family conflict if the husband has not agreed to the action.
Over the past 20 years, women’s access to bank loans has improved. Previous limitations associated with their very low incomes and inability to provide security have eased thanks to a micro-credit development programme. In 1994, the government set out a legal framework and passed a law to strengthen this programme; as a result, women now have better access to loans for agricultural equipment and trade. Malian women now have access to hundreds of associations that offer mutual credit, independently managed village savings schemes and short-term loans; women comprise nearly half of the beneficiaries of these credit instituions.
Malian women are restricted in the exercise of their civil liberties. Their freedom of movement is limited as they are obliged to follow their husbands, meaning they are not free to move in order to work. The Malian Civil Code stipulates that a woman cannot embark on a commercial business without her husband’s agreement. Freedom of dress exists to some degree, but there is an increasing obligation on women to wear the veil because of pressure from Muslim fundamentalists.
Afrol News (n.d.), Gender Profile: Mali, www.afrol.com/Categories/Women/profiles/mali_women.htm.
CEDAW (Committee on the Elimination of Discrimination against Women) (2004), Consideration of Reports Submitted by States Parties Under Article 18 of the Convention on the Elimination of All Forms of Discrimination against Women: Mali, Combined Second, Third, Fourth and Fifth Periodic Reports of States Parties, CEDAW/C/MLI/2-5, CEDAW, New York, NY.
Cellule de Planification et de Statistique du Ministère de la Santé (CPS/MS), Direction Nationale de la Statistique et de l’Informatique (DNSI) et ORC Macro (2002), Enquête Démographique et de Santé au Mali 2001, ORC Macro, Calverton, MD.
IRIN (Integrated Regional Information Network) (2007), Mali: Child Marriage a Neglected Problem, United Nations Office for the Coordination of Humanitarian Affairs, New York, NY.
UN (United Nations) (2004), World Fertility Report 2003, UN Department of Economic and Social Affairs, Population Division, New York, NY.
WiLDAF (FeDDAF) (Women in Law and Development in Africa), West Africa, (2004), Situation des droits des femmes au Mali, WiLDAF, Lomé.
