Migration is reshaping life for married women in Senegal
A plastic chair, a floor mat, a washbasin. In a sandy courtyard in this rural community in northwestern Senegal, that is all it takes to conjure an imaginary house as part of a women’s program performed for a community radio station.
“Focus … action,” calls out Seydina Alioune Gueye, the program’s director. The few spectators who have gathered at the scene fall silent, and the actresses take their places. One actress mimics exhaustion as she folds invisible laundry. Nearby, another actress prepares a meal. At the center of the courtyard, Mr. Gueye portrays a domineering husband. He looks for a pair of trousers, raises his voice, accuses. Slowly, the plot unfolds: He stirs conflict between the two women to justify taking a third wife – a woman who is already pregnant. The scene feels familiar to the actresses and the audience.
“We act what we see,” actress Khadi Dièye says after the performance. “We talk about forced marriages, violence, irregular migration. These are our realities.”
Why We Wrote This
In Léona, as in much of the surrounding Louga region, migration structures lives, expectations, and imaginations. It also sustains a local economy heavily dependent on remittances – income that supports many rural households, especially women.
Beside her, actress Mame Bintou, nods. “We want to denounce,” she says, “but also make people think.”
The weekly radio program is a space for women to discuss the men who have left and the challenges of living without them. Taking up to four wives is legal in Senegal, though the practice is a common source of tension discussed on the women’s program.
Many men here go abroad to work and send money home. Nearly 60% of those men migrate to Europe; most of the rest go elsewhere in Africa, according to data from the Reception, Orientation, and Monitoring Office (BAOS), a Senegalese government entity supporting migrants and their families. Often, the men marry just before departing and do not return for years. The women are typically sent to live with in-laws.
In Léona, as in much of the surrounding Louga region, migration structures lives, expectations, and imaginations. It also sustains a local economy heavily dependent on remittances – income that supports many rural households, especially women.
Some describe a life close to confinement. There is fear of gossip, fear of judgment.
“You have to be careful about everything,” Mariama Achemya Aïdara whispers, saying she felt constantly watched by her in-laws. Going out, working, moving around. Every gesture can be commented on.
So they gather.
At the center of Léona, a mud house topped by a tall antenna hosts the radio station. “Here, women can talk about what they really live through,” says Matel Ba, the station’s director since 2018.
In a community scattered across more than 100 hamlets, the station connects people and fosters dialogue. On the Saturday morning women’s program, the stories are often the same: absent husbands, unreliable remittances, disagreements with in-laws, and, for some, domestic violence. “Some women live alone for 20 years,” Ms. Ba says. “How do you build a life under those conditions?”
Sometimes, the radio acts as a mediator. Ms. Ba has even gone to meet husbands to hear their side when they return home. But she also promotes employment training programs, economic projects, and paths toward independence for the women.
A few streets away from the radio station, about 30 women gather for a tontine, a rotating savings group common across West Africa. Sitting in a circle, they each place a small amount of cash into a metal box. “It helps us not depend only on men,” explains Ms. Aïdara. The fund finances small businesses and community projects.
Without the men, caring for everything – the fields, the houses, the children – falls to the women. In the Niayes, fertile coastal lowlands between sand dunes and the Atlantic Ocean, two women rake the soil side by side amid a light breeze off the water. Moisture trapped in the ground allows finicky crops such as onions and peanuts to grow. Goats wander past, and children run nearby.
The women live together in a large house built with money sent from Europe. Around them, other buildings rise from the sand, some still unfinished. Salimata Boye occupies one of these homes. Her husband has been in Spain since 2006, and returns only once every two years. In the meantime, she works in the fields, under the watchful eyes of her brother-in-law. Even going out requires permission.
Beside her, her sister-in-law Yama Soul raises her three children alone. Her husband also left by boat years ago. “I would prefer him to be here,” she says quietly.
Despite the difficulties of long-distance marriage, a husband abroad is still widely seen as a marker of success and social mobility. Among the new generation, though, attitudes are gradually changing.
At dusk, 19-year-old Seynabou Tabane prepares chicken yassa with her mother and sister. She says a long-distance marriage is not for her. “I don’t like it,” she says. She wants something different: “Someone who supports me, trusts me, and helps me with my projects.” She adds that she dreams of becoming a veterinarian.
Her mother, Maimouna Sougou, listens quietly. She knows the subject well, having herself endured a long-distance marriage. She discusses these very issues every week on the radio, where she is one of the hosts. The younger women continue those conversations on social media, with friends, at the gym, or by the sea.
In Léona, women are carving out new spaces to talk. And little by little, they are finding their voice and their place.
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