Cameroon and the Gender Issue

Abstract

As African states have entered the global trend for women’s emancipation, many have then set up a “national gender policy”. However, that process seems to vary by country and by degree of cultural integration. The purpose of this article is to point out the obstacles blocking the implementation of the gender policy and negatively affect its social appropriation. It raises out the essential innovative mechanisms and argues that the process would need to be driven from the bottom up with direct involvement of target groups. From an anthropological perspective this article regarded at the Cameroon’s situation. So, an ethnographic study carried on during the recent years in Cameroon allowed questioning the relationships between central and decentralised State services, associative groups and political parties. As a matter of result it concludes that there is a need of reshaping those deontic links so as to guarantee that the gender policy document will not end up being just a theoretical text kept in closets. Concerning political parties they should relayed the promotion of the national gender policy. Furthermore strategic partnerships between State services and associative groups should be more coherent as well.