example, to encourage families to educate girls
(Gordon and Gordon 2001, 282) and in the 1990s
the government appointed a minister for African
women’s emancipation, Ms. Awa Guéye Kébé. In
rural areas women who have taken part in the
Tostan (“breaking out of the egg” in the Wolof lan-
guage) education program have initiated move-
ments to stop the practice of female circumcision
(Easton 1998). So despite the still poor literacy lev-
els of women, the Senegalese flag might perhaps be
perceived by women as a symbol of the modern
face of the nation that allows for their empower-
ment. Despite the evidence that nations are gendered
so as to disadvantage women, the nation-state
remains the chief means for economic development
and modernization. National symbols are more
likely to be associated with bettering the lives of
women than grounding them in tradition.
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