Issue No. 865

Women in Somalia's Gendered Political Economy

Decades of instability and armed conflict in Somalia have left a distinct, gendered imprint on the country's political economy. The Salafist advance, Al-Shabaab's entrenched presence, and the continual upheaval from displacement, conflict, and the climate crisis continue to bear out in the economies of Somalia's deeply gendered society. Although Somalia never achieved some kind of utopian gender parity in the 1960s and 1970s, the days of women performing plays by Bertolt Brecht in the National Theatre or dancing in Mogadishu bars are long gone. Such pastimes have been eradicated, with a far more conservative society in place today, one where Somali women are more often than not expected to be a wife and mother-- and little else. And yet while Somali women are nearly entirely excluded from the country's formal economy, as they are in political life, women nevertheless form the economic backbone of much of Somalia.

With the collapse of state institutions in the 1990s, more religious and conservative clan institutions flooded into the void. The unique and moderate strain of Sufi'ism-- known as the 'veil lightly worn'-- that was once ubiquitous in Somalia has been forced into retreat. In its place, a neo-Salafist vision for the country has steadily advanced, installed and preached in mosques and madrasas across the country, funded by the Gulf and Al-I'tisaam, the shadowy ideological twin and competitor of Al-Shabaab. Meanwhile, a simultaneous accentuation of clan identity has led to a retrenchment of political and economic space for women, who hold far fewer rights under the xeer system of customary law than their male counterparts. Economic compensation within xeer, which defines inter- and intra-clan relations, is denied to women, for instance. These twin cultural and societal shifts have had profoundly damaging consequences for the rights of Somali women. 

But amidst years of sustained conflict, Somalia's economic burden has only continued to fall more and more heavily on women. With many tens of thousands of Somali men casualties of the myriad conflicts that have pockmarked the country or have travelled overseas to return remittances, it is women heading up as much as 70% of the nation's households today, according to some studies. And in the face of chronic insecurity, women have been compelled to assume the primary economic role within their households, often through petty trade and marketplace commerce. That has endured, with Somali women continuing to run most stalls in places like Bakara Market in Mogadishu, for example. Meanwhile, the burden of the overlooked and discounted 'care economy' of rearing children, cooking, and tending to the elderly also falls upon Somali women. 

In the sprawling peri-urban displacement camps on the outskirts of Mogadishu, Baidoa, and Beledweyne, it is not uncommon for women to play nearly every economic role-- as well as fetching water, firewood, and dealing with the bureaucracies of accessing humanitarian aid. With unemployment rife, men, on the other hand, are more often seen chewing khat in the afternoons, an economic drain on the household. Yet the selling of khat, the psychoactive stimulant leaf used daily by most Somali men, is also a female-dominated industry. In the past year, hundreds of female khat sellers have intermittently protested the punitive taxes placed on the stimulant leaf by the government.

Nor has service delivery been a priority of successive federal administrations, which would help alleviate some of the many burdens shouldered by Somali women. Such sustained poor governance is perhaps not motivated by any broader misogyny, but rather by contentment with foreign income flows and the status quo; yet the outcome is the same. Without reliable education, healthcare, and infrastructure for families, it is women, time and again, who must contend with these inadequacies. And it is girls as well who pay the harshest price without government schooling in rural areas, with families investing in their sons instead. More broadly, in Somali pastoralist society, where the quality and number of livestock determine much of one's social worth, it is nearly always men who are the owners, diminishing women in the hierarchy. 

But Somalia's underdeveloped formal economy continues to exclude women across the board. Few women play substantial roles in many of the most significant economic sectors in Somalia, be it banking, telecommunications, or construction-- all industries, coincidentally or not, dominated by individuals affiliated with Al-I'tisaam. And though reliable data is nigh-impossible to come by on Somalia, some studies have estimated that only around 20% of Somali women are formally employed, and fewer than 6% have their own bank accounts. This is due to several factors, but the requirements for formal identification, fixed addresses, financial collateral, and male guarantors often prove an insurmountable barrier for women to access the formal banking sector.

Meanwhile, under Al-Shabaab-controlled territories, their extremist neo-Salafist ideology heavily curtails women's freedoms and economic agency, even while the jihadists employ female informers and turn a blind eye to certain profitable women-run enterprises. Such dynamic friction between Al-Shabaab's pragmatism and dogma is readily apparent in the way in which women are forced to navigate their governance. There are far fewer economic opportunities to speak of within Al-Shabaab's territories for women, with them prohibited from selling khat or tobacco-- two key economic industries for women across the rest of the country. Nor are they allowed to run the ubiquitous female-operated restaurants and tea shops elsewhere in Somalia, with women routinely instructed to remain home and limit interactions with unrelated men.

But while the jihadist group may theoretically assert a near-total ban on working, such decisions are often applied haphazardly, particularly in relation to market women. Zakat (taxation) remains the lifeblood of the militant group, and Al-Shabaab continues to tax and extort female traders-- and women more generally-- as they do men. Not only that, but Al-Shabaab also wields women as part of their multi-tendril economic investments, deploying them to fundraise for the militant group, for example. The degree to which this comes about due to the implicit (or explicit) threat of violence or retribution against ideological considerations naturally differs, but certainly, the economic agency of women is heavily curtailed by Al-Shabaab. 

Still, there are some ingenious ways Somali women navigate their exclusion from the formal economy, including through a system known as hagbad or ayuuto (help). Through hagbad, essentially a rotating savings scheme, women contribute a fixed sum every month, which is pooled and distributed to a single member in turn. Enforced by reputation and tracked through WhatsApp groups and notebooks, hagbad groups offer a zero-interest lifeline and mutual assistance. Many of these habgad groupings are already close-knit, built off small communities that rely on reciprocity, familial and kinship ties. More often than not, when someone falls behind on payments that allow them to save and invest in their own livelihoods, negotiation is preferred over debt collection. It is a translocal moral economy, and often tied to hawala remittance flows as well, with diaspora women supporting their kin in Somalia to build a better life.

The economy of Somalia is often described as a domestic 'free-for-all,' a kind of libertarian paradise where free trade without regulation has flourished in the cracks of an absent state and permanent insecurity. There is some truth in this, perhaps, with indeed a high level of entrepreneurialness in Somalia and flourishing remittance and telecoms sectors. But there are undoubtedly invisible guardrails as well, not least the echoes and relationship between controlling violence-- be it through a militia or the Somali National Army-- and controlling rent-generating avenues such as ports, checkpoints, and the biggest prize of all, government. And much of this economic 'flourishing' has come with a quiet, vested interest in the country's direction, hand in hand with the now pervasive social conservativeness. But perhaps one of the largest- and most-overlooked-- barriers of all relates to gender, and how women in Somalia today are wholly dependent upon to prop up the informal economy but are yet simultaneously denied the most basic rights. 

The Somalia Wire Team