Nowadays, to talk about the situation in which Guinean women find themselves, it is essential to take a look at history and sociologically delve into their concrete reality before the colonialist invasion, and up to the present. The Guinean woman resists in a macho society, due to the construction of the tribal society in its verticality, within a hierarchical capitalist world focused on obtaining profits, she is not the exception of a violent combination: oppression and exploitation.
Guinean society is dominated by a patriarchal system, despite being a multi-ethnic country in which women occupy different roles in each ethnic group to which they belong, the social organization of the majorities is based on the vertical base, in which women it occupies a reproductive role and is confined at home for domestic work. In addition, in the colonial period, Guinean women suffered double violence, such as: violence in their communities by Guinean men and, at the same time, also colonial violence installed in general.
Even being the most oppressed, they decided to stand by men to resist colonial domination while fighting for their liberation as an inferior human being. For this reason, in 1961, before the beginning of the armed struggle for independence, the Democratic Union of Women UDEMU was created, with the aim of opening a space to think about ideas and political actions for the struggle for national liberation and consequently for the emancipation of women.
In this liberation struggle, -women- had a historical role on an equal footing with men in all aspects of the struggle, which culminated in independence in 1973. This contribution was denied and forgotten by the different macho governments that were running the country. The woman managed to free herself from colonial violence, but not from all violence, which is still present due to lack of employment, education, security and one of the weakest health systems in the world.
Meanwhile, with the new era of the dictatorship in Guinea, by a presidential Bonapartist government, the situation of Guinean women became more alarming, especially with regard to economic violence, by the Government, with inflationary policies that leaves him without purchasing power, nor opening small businesses for the survival of his family.
Political power is still seen as a “male issue” and most of the time, women and girls are not only denied their rights, but are also used by parties as a political tool to gain power, many sometimes keeping them as simple figures -ornaments- in places of power (pretending to comply with the parity law or quota law).
Today we can see that there are some laws created to criminalize certain acts of violence against women, but these laws are not enforced. For example, a study carried out in Guinea by the FEC shows that 67% of women have suffered violence from men.
Among the 48% of illiterates in Guinea, the majority corresponds to women, due to forced marriage, the lack or precariousness of schools and, above all, the macho society, which instilled in the minds of women an inferiority complex and dependence on Men’s.
The reality of the Guinean woman, like that of many women in various parts of the world, is very harsh, and when it comes to a woman, a continent in which the international division of labor serves only to sustain capitalism and receive crumbs from the imperialists, becomes even more complicated than in other continents. That is why women need to fight this system, at the international level, which sustains machismo, but based on a combined struggle, that is, the class, race and gender struggle, for a revolutionary socialist alternative and a government of the working class.