A hundredyears from now?

In 1989, the National Council of Mu- seums nominated the Women’s Mu- seum for recognition as a national, spe- cialized museum of women’s cultural history. While this does stabilize the fi- nancing of the museum and increase curatorial staff, we do not plan to de- crease the unemployment projects and their central function in the museum’s profile. Equally important is the recog- nition that the National Council of Museums gives to our unusual man- agement and governing structures. Rather than the usual single director, we have a joint directorate made up of eight to ten professionals whose power is balanced by an elected board repre- senting both the staff and the general assembly of the Women’s Museum As- sociation, which is our owner. Within this balance of power the tradition of dialogue and consensus, stemming from the museum’s non-hierarchical formative years, has continued.

There is no doubt that the Women’s hhseum, in its five years of existence, has heightened the visibility of wom- en’s past and present history and cul- ture in both the power structures and the general public, and has reached an audience that does not normally visit or donate to museums. Within the nar- rower world of museums themselves, we know that our easily accessible ex- hibitions and our focus on private and everyday life have been sources of in- spiration to others. Whether a hundred years from now there will be a need for an independent women’s museum does not concern us much today. The important thing is that previously ig- nored documentation is being collect- ed.

Finally, the Women’s Museum is not a place to which women’s history and issues can be ‘safeIy delegated’ - that is to say, relegated. Rather, its spe- cialized and competing function clar- ifies the gaps in other collections, and legitimizes the commitment of other museum professionals to focus on the history of women and gender.

Botswana: an agenda _ _ _ ~

for the future

To ì??@rove the ways museums portray womefz, whaf obects should be dìplayed

and how? How should women’s ìnteractìom wìth chatging techiaologìes be

treated? What shz$s ìn developzent planning are needed? Answers are

ofered here ly the former director o f Bofswana’s National Museum and A r t

Galle y. She has also beea under- secretay o f that country’s Mìnìstty o f

Labour and Home Afaìrs reponsìble for co- ordinatìng cultz~ralprogra??z~es

and women’s afaìrs natìonalb and ìnternatìonally. She ìs now an

independent development consdtant. Her address is: P.O. Box 114, Gaborone

(Botswana).

In my own Tswana (Botswana) cul- ture, women traditionally looked after domestic affairs: they tilled the land, weeded the fields, harvested and pre- pared food, collected firewood and ma- terials for house-building, and fetched water. Women also looked after the family: their health, education and general welfare. Men on the other hand, saw to the external affairs, at- tending village council meetings and trading outside the home. The division of labour was quite marked, but there was an understood partnership and consultation process. This relationship has often been misunderstood by for- eigners, some claiming that men had absolute power over women. Re- searchers have often stated that al- though the woman produced the food, the man could claim it all and sell ev- erything so that she starved; she had no say whatsoever in the use of her pro- duce. This was not the case. It was de- cided in the home how much would be given to poor relations, how much would be stored and how much sold.

The cash economy has caused prob- lems, bringing with it different values and often the men go away to work in the cities and mines, resulting in a shortage of labour in the home villag- es. While we would expect that condi- tions in the rural areas would improve, and that women’s lives would im- prove, this has not yet been the case. In fact, with so many men away, women’s burdens and responsibilities have in- creased. They have all the responsib- ilities of the home and family to shoul- der by themselves, at the same time still bearing children and performing

9 6 Doreen N. Nieta

community functions. Women in Bot- swana now predominate as young adult heads-of-household.

The role of museums

Museums could have an important role to play here. They could be used to improve the status of women if they dealt with the lives of ordinary people. But history as it is written today is mainly marked by male concerns, ‘he- roic’ periods of wars, revolutions and male achievements. Yet the most im- portant phases of our lives are those connected with everyday life, with the home and family. Were museums to emphasize the makers and users of ob-

socialized to believe that work’ is insignificant. W housework which is unpaid and has low status. Also, most of the profes- sional jobs that women do (clerical, health, community development) are poorly paid. Curiously, once men start doing any of these jobs, they change the name, the emphasis and . . . the pay! Take for instance the case of a cook. If a woman is a cook, she cooks, washes pots and dishes, and is paid very little. A man who becomes a cook, or ‘chef , only cooks: he does not clean or scrub, he has an assistant, and is highly paid.

Choosing and ZabeZlìng d i s - lays

A major problem is the choice of ob- jects for exhibitions. Crafts are general- ly regarded as women’s domain, but do not feature very prominently in most museums despite their beauty and their potential power for explaining the life- cycles of ordinary people. Craft objects that are bought by museums come very cheaply because women artists are anonymous and museums and collec- tors are very reluctant to invest much in the future of unknown creators. In many instances, too, female artists are not taken seriously; it is assumed they are creating for pleasure or for ‘pin money’, especially if they happen to be married.

These attitudes need to change. Mu- seums could make a first step if they not only showed women’s craft prod-

measures to a s h f g t h e improvement of design and in marketing thus elevat- ing the crafts to a higher standard of art, simultaneously enhancing the women’s income, and thus contribut- ing to economic and social as well as cultural development. The National Museum of Botswana holds two craft exhibitions every year and is planning a series of workshops specifically to promote female artists. This kind of new awareness, however, has yet to reach most museums.

Another real problem is the way women’s lives should be interpreted by museums. It can be very difficult to portray family life correctly and attrac- tively. Yet I do believe that by centring some exhibits on aspects of the envi- ronment related to women’s daily toil such as water, wood, soil, farming and food-gathering, we can show things differently than we do now. It is through our education programmes that we can bring about most change. But we must be very attentive to how we inform, educate and interpret.

Walking through my own museum in my home town, where I worked for most of my life, I was horrified when I noted the information contained on some of the labels. For instance the la- bel for a display of a hunt where the animals were driven by men, women and children into a camouflaged pit

Botswatia: ati agenda far the frttire 177

and then killed, says: ‘A large group in- cluding women and children would spend a month or more digging a vast pit which was covered over with brush supporting earth and grass’, implying that unless females are explicitly men- tioned such exhibitions are about men, and that - contrary to reality - hunting was not a communal food-providing activity in which everybody took part.

New education, dzxerent status

When Botswana became a British Pro- tectorate, many changes occurred in the social life of the people, as hap- pened in many colonized nations to varying degrees. For instance, there came the introduction of a new and different type of education. Children were expected to go to school, as op- posed to the traditional form of educa- tion, which took place at home and was continuous, and if away from home, was held at periods convenient for the community, for example after harvest time. The introduction of schooling posed serious problems for the traditional African family. For girls, there were fields to be tended, food to be prepared, children to be looked after, and for boys there was livestock to be cared for, fields to be prepared for planting, and so on.

Families found themselves having to choose which of their children would go to school and for how long. Many chose to send boys to school longer than girls, thus causing the sit- uation we face now, where men pre- dominate in most decision-making po- sitions and in scientific professions.

When girls managed to go to school they were usually made to take ‘female’ courses such as teaching and nursing. The females were placed in a quan- dary: traditional education was weak- ened, but the new system of schooling was discriminatory in terms of the sta- tus differences it created.

What can museums do in this sit- uation? They can help dispel myths about equality of access to education and technology and emphasize more realistically the roles of women in tra- ditional and modern education, and their contributions to those profes- sions where they predominate, for ex- ample: education, health, community work and handicrafts.

Technology’s interactions with

women would be a good museum theme. Museums deal with technology and show how technologies have changed. In Africa, women predom- inate particularly in the field of agri- culture. Usually, the position is that men clear the fields and prepare the soil, and women sow, weed, scare birds, harvest, prepare food, store the produce and generally - in consulta- tion with the men - decide how the family is going to use the produce. Y et museums hardly ever mention these things; nor do they indicate how new technology has enhanced or worsened the women’s status. Also, new tech- nology has brought with it new roles for women, which must be depicted in museums to show how our view of women must change. Museums ought not only to ‘reflect’ reality; they should also be agents of change, and some of those changes should yield an amelio- ration of the status of women, putting women back in the centre of history where they belong.

CuZture and development pZanning

Culture has always had a low status in development planning, along with women’s voluntary non-governmental organizations, and religion, where women are also involved. The intro- duction of culture in development planning would give recognition to a vital aspect of development and should include provision for museum action to improve women’s status. Our mu- seums should, for example, look at the roles played by women in community, social and voluntary organizations, which have a great deal to tell about how women have contributed and continue to contribute to develop- ment.

Such a new dimension of develop- ment planning should thus include training programmes for museum do- cents and permanent staff, teaching the skills of interpretation, and of present- ing women in a realistic light, not as symbols of beauty, motherhood, good- ness, wantonness, etc., but as vital and important people who contribute in various ways to society. Temporary displays and mobile exhibitions can convey very sharp and direct messages in this area. But what is really needed - and what should be central to any shift in development planning to give mu-

seums a higher priority - is a revamp- ing of all permanent exhibitions so as to rewrite history from a gender per- spective.

To conclude, I would like to quote Gerda Lerner, who summarizes the global problem very ably when she says: With the lessening importance of their re- productive role, with altered conditions for their social functioning, women need to have oppressive institutional restraints lift- ed from them. There is no longer justifica- tion for their existence. This means, practi- cally speaking, the kind of change in role expectations and psychological orientation women’s liberationists have been talking about. It does not mean only women’s rights. It means the emanicipation of both men and women from the sex-dominated archaic division of labour and from the val- ues that sustain.’

Museums have the means to influence at least some of the changes, the same means that have influenced, for better or worse, the conditions of society in general and of women in particular.

1. Gerda Lerner, The Majority Fitids ifs Past - l’la& Womea in H&O~, pp. 61-2, New York, Oxford University Press, 1979.