ABSTRACT
MALIAN WOMEN HAVE ALWAYS BEEN ACTIVE POLITICALLY. WOMEN’S ASSOCIATIONS (musotonw) in Bamana villages regularly sent representatives to village meetings (Jorio 1997, 42).1 After the electoral code reforms of 1951, rural women throughout the French Soudan voted in greater numbers than did men as a result of electoral laws that favored women. Throughout the 1950s, women were active in local and international women’s organizations. Following independence in 1960, women’s organizations were officially linked to the ruling party, Union SoudanaiseReassemblement Démocratique Africain (US-RDA) and later Union Démocratique du Peuple Malien (UDPM), although Rosa de Jorio (1997), in her comprehensive study of women’s formal associations in Mali, argues that they were only partially subordinated to the parties in power and retained a certain amount of autonomy.
