Aminata Dieye

Aminata Dièye is giving marginalized young women an economic boost by providing them with skills to enter into traditionally male-dominated trades. She is helping break down gender stereotypes, change community attitudes, and spread workforce empowerment to women throughout Senegal.

In Senegal, employment opportunities for women are financially and socially limiting. Aminata has concluded that the desperate need to improve a woman's economic condition can only be accomplished by transforming the perceptions and attitudes surrounding so-called "feminine" trades and "masculine" trades in the Senegalese society. Current programs established by NGOs and public authorities to promote revenue-generating activities for disadvantaged women focus on occupations that have traditionally been seen as "women-appropriate" tasks. Technical trade jobs that offer higher salaries are dominated by men and require qualifications that for most Senegalese women are impossible to obtain. Aminata's unique approach gives women professional skills to work in these more profitable, traditionally masculine trades.
Aminata has created La Case des Jeunes Femmes to organize both theoretical and practical training sessions for women looking to enter male-dominated fields. La Case des Jeunes Femmes works to train and encourage young women to enter these trades and invests time and continued support to those already employed. Aminata has also organized a common area where young girls can gather to discuss problems and work together to develop adequate solutions. Aminata's initiative contributes notably to the increased revenue generation among young women and helps reintegrate single mothers, former prostitutes, and high school dropouts into the working world. Aminata also lobbies public authorities and local and international organizations to consider young girls when creating policies that may facilitate their access to these particular trades.

In the current context of an economic crisis and clear decrease in purchasing power, women are increasingly forced to take care of expenditures that are traditionally the responsibility of men and the extended family. Representing only 8 percent of salaried workers, women are obligated to seek out more entrepreneurial activities. Currently, technical trades are experiencing a rapid expansion due to the decreasing costs of locally produced goods and services as compared with imports. However, these trades are almost exclusively occupied by men. Women are not generally found working in masculine trades like cabinetmaking, masonry, auto mechanics, construction, carpentry, plumbing, electronics, and steelwork. Although no formal or legal rules restrict women's access to the men's professions, women lack the professional qualifications necessary for these trades and have no means or access to obtain them.
Market saturation and difficulties of market access for small commerce and traditional income-generation activities have prevented the professional rehabilitation of marginalized women. Because of this, marginalized women are faced with even more difficulties in trying to regain their financial and social footing. The masculine trades that usually provide better economic opportunities and more prestigious social and professional recognition are essentially off-limits. In addition, in the midst of current economic challenges, women have no place to meet and exchange concerns or develop solutions to these issues.

Aminata's model, which has already significantly advanced cultural thinking about incorporating women into traditionally male trades, offers skills training and a supportive, discussion-friendly environment to dissolve stereotypes and encourage more women to improve their economic condition.
Aminata recognizes that women need to receive both practical skills training and moral support in order to develop their professional capacities and find their economic place in a society that discriminates by gender. Her organization recruits girls to receive "role-reversal" training, by which girls are nominated by community development institutions and women's groups. In order to reach an even wider range of young women, Aminata plans to seek out organizations of young people and neighborhood athletic and cultural associations. Those that have already benefited from these opportunities will also be used to motivate new recruits.
Once recruited, the young women take training courses and participate in discussions. Practical courses are taught in workshops conducted by foremen from various trades and in accompanying discussion sessions with both women and men.
In addition to providing technical and professional training, the young women also have the opportunity of meeting at La Case des Jeunes Femmes to engage in more detailed discussions about their rights and professional capacities. This bimonthly forum allows the young women to voice their opinions concerning obstacles they face at the family level and the effects those obstacles have on their work. It also gives them a space in which to devise effective solutions. This support element allows many of the young women who have completed their training to group together to launch their own manufacturing units. By collecting monthly contributions from each group member, women have saved enough money in a bank account to serve as capital for the launch of future activities, thus creating a sustainable enterprise.
To insure the effectiveness of her program, Aminata provides periodic evaluation reports to the community of stakeholders–including the young women, directors, shop foremen, parents, trainers, and general public–and encourages them to take part in decision-making. This has proven to be a successful method to effect change in the attitudes of the general population. In fact, a survey organized by La Case des Jeunes Femmes demonstrates an increase in the number of people who believe that young women can perform traditionally male trades.
To continue changing attitudes and help more women become financially independent, Aminata plans to increase the pool of participants, further spreading her initiative. She is working with youth associations and high-school groups to organize regular film showings and discussions portraying the success of the La Case des Jeunes Femmes young women. Aminata also hopes to engage the help of the media through radio reports disseminating the young women's experiences. Information will be available through a regular bulletin and the La Case des Jeunes Femmes Web site. Plans are underway for the expansion of the organization to the cities of Vélingara, Kaolack, Saint-Louis and Thiès, and La Case des Jeunes Femmes has contacted a number of retired women and others involved in the amelioration of women's conditions to serve as directors and facilitators of communication between the young women and the shop foremen.
Aminata and La Case des Jeunes Femmes plan to expand their work to other countries of West Africa (Mali, Burkina Faso, and Côte d'Ivoire), collaborating with other associations to spread their expertise in the integration of young women in masculine trades.

Aminata has had strong convictions about human rights and gender equity all her life that stem from the influence of her father, a doctor who volunteered for the Red Cross for over 20 years. She pursued this interest through her university research on the dropout rate among young girls, her participation in numerous conferences and trainings, and her publications on gender and human rights both in Senegal and internationally. At RADDHO, a Senegalese human rights organization, Aminata directed the department dealing with the rights of women and children for six years and later moved on to direct the secretariat charged with the surveillance of human rights and emergency alerts.
Aminata's initiative began because of a pilot study conducted in 1998 by Mr. Cheik Niang, an anthropologist from Cheik Anta Diop University, in the region of Kolda. Aminata was involved in that study as an expert on the promotion of the rights of women. Through the study, Aminata recognized the feasibility integrating women into masculine trades and began to develop her initiative.