The Rights of Women

Should a Catholic girl refuse to be sold in marriage, even if the price is right? This question, which is significant in bride-buying Africa, was one of many debated last week by 300 Roman Catholic women from ten African countries who met under UNESCO sponsorship in Lome, steamy capital of the French West African autonomous Republic of Togoland. Balancing the imperatives of religion against the demands of custom, they found bride buying acceptable--if rising prices do not shut out Christian suitors.

The African woman's position in society may be hard to equate with Catholicism, the delegates felt, but for one thing she can be thankful. "She is regarded by her society not only as fertile in producing children," summed up one delegate, "but as being bestowed with supernatural powers that make seeds and all work that passes through her hands germinate and prosper." Nevertheless, the delegates were gravely concerned about the African family system. "It is beautiful," said one woman. ''But no Christian life is possible without equality in the home."

Main African inequalities:

P: Polygamy. Though diminishing, it still too often makes a wife "no more than the mother of her husband's children." But while polygamy is unChristian, one delegate warned, "Catholic women should not leave husbands who take another wife. Under the sacrament of marriage, there can be no second wife. She must be considered a concubine."

P: Relatives. In Africa, they expect even greater care from a wife than she must give to her husband. Of all relatives who stick their noses in a wife's affairs, sisters-in-law are the worst. "In my country," reported a Togoland woman, "sisters-in-law are more dangerous than mothers-in-law."

P: Child engagements. In one French Guinea tribe, if expectant parents are betting on a girl, the engagement takes place before the bride-to-be is even born. The baby girl gets her engagement ring in her first bath. Disturbed enough by prepuberty engagements, the delegates were shocked at the Guinea custom. "Alas, we cannot change," said one, "until the African man realizes that a woman is not just the daughter of her father, to be disposed of as he likes, or the property of her husband, to be treated as he pleases."

Concluded the delegates, in a final resolution that some observers called a new Magna Carta for African women: "We regret that in Africa marriage is considered a contract between two family groups rather than two people." Main calls to action: a complete end to prepuberty engagements, a change in the bride-buying custom to make the money only symbolic, suppression of polygamy, "which gravely prejudices the dignity and the rights of woman."

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