Awa Thiam

Awa Thiam (born 1950) is a Senegalese politician, academic, writer, and activist. She serves as Senegal's Director of the National Center for Assistance and Training of Women under the Ministry of Women and Children.

Career After completing early education in her home country of Senegal, Awa Thiam moved to France for higher education. While there, she earned not only a Ph.D. in Cultural Anthropology from the University of Paris VIII, but also a Ph.D. in philosophy from Pantheon-Sorbonne Paris I. During her time in Europe, Thiam co-founded with Maria Kala Lobé, a Cameroonian feminist, the Coordination des Femmes Noires, which is known to be one of the first groups of black feminists in France.

Having gained multiple degrees overseas, Thiam returned to Senegal, and became assistant professor of Research at the Fundamental Institute of Black Africa at Cheikh Anta Diop University of Dakar. In 1987, Thiam petitioned the institution to build a Department of Anthropology of the Sexes, but her idea was ultimately rejected by the administration. She speaks extensively on the topic of female genital mutilation (FGM), claiming that the practice is merely a thinly veiled form of patriarchal control. In her article for International Social Science Journal, Thiam states: "the purpose of these practices, whether it is admitted or not, is to control female sexuality. Some indeed do not hesitate to say that the aim is to reduce women’s hyper-sensuality. In any case the result remains the same: to make the young girl essentially a future reproductive and productive element. Hence, her life is taken over and mapped out for her from birth to death by a patriarchal society, which ensures that she is kept in her place at all stages of her development." In addition, she is the Director of the National Center for Assistance and Training of Women under the Ministry of Women and Children. She is also a co-founder of the Alliance for a New Citizenship in Dakar. ), which was originally published in French as La Parole aux négresses in 1978, addresses this topic in depth. The book, one of the first of its kind, holds interviews of survivors and calls for change.

While much of her work is in regard to fighting female genital mutilation in Africa, Thiam is also an activist against polygamy, forced motherhood, veiling, forced sterilization, and illiteracy.

While Thiam's work seeks to unite African women against FGM, her work has not always been well received by her African female audience. Even as her western audience have embraced Thiam's work, the audience she seeks to empower and activate has often not had the same response. Members of her African audience have asserted that Thiam does not understand why women may support FGM, and that she is not taking into account the culture as a whole when she writes about the need to abolish FGM. However, it is reported that while this is a political victory, it may have come due to the fact that the largest people group in power at that point, the Wolof, did not practise FGM. There is still a large resistance in the country to the eradication of FGM. Awa Thiam still works to improve public health for the country of Senegal as Minister of Health and Social Action, and Chair of the Committee . Continents Noirs (Collection Femmes et Societes), Tierce, 1987. Essay "Feminism and Revolution", in I Am Because We Are: Readings in Africana Philosophy