Born: 18 August 1938, Mauritania
Died: 10 August 2019
Country most active: Mauritania
Also known as: NA
Mauritian political Aïssata Touré Kane served as the country’s first female government minister as part of President Moktar Ould Daddah’s cabinet from 1975 to 1978, when the government was overthrown by a military coup.
With limited educational opportunities at home, she was sent to school in Senegal as a child, possibly one of the first Mauritanian girls to attend a Western school. In her last year of secondary school, she formed the Comité pour la fréquentation scolaire féminine (“Committee for Female School Attendance”) to promote girls’ education. Facing criticism, she defended the group by citing Islamic law justifying women’s education. In 1959, Kane attended the Free University of Belgium on scholarship, but had to leave in 1960 and return to Mauritania due to family issues, setting in the capital of Nouakchott.
In 1961, Kane co-founded the country’s first national women’s organisation, the Union Nationale des Femmes de Mauritanie (“National Union of the Women of Mauritania”). She represented the UNFM at a 1962 meeting of the Pan-African group Conference des Femmes Africaines (“Conference of African Women”), and moved to Algiers to work for that organisation in Algeria for several years. She also attended the 1968 Women’s International Democratic Federation conference in Helsinki.
After the UNFM was integrated into the Mauritanian People’s Party and became the Mouvement National Féminin (“National Women’s Movement”), Kane became a high-ranking MNF official. She was responsible for the publication of the MNF’s magazine, Marienou, and was elected to the PPM’s youth wing’s executive council in 1966.
With a national reputation as a women’s rights activist, talented organiser and powerful speaker, Kane joined Daddah’s cabinet in August 1975 as Minister for the Protection of the Family and Social Affairs. She worked to improve women’s health and education in the country, successfully lobbying for marital rights when the country adopted a new legal code. She also succeeded in introducing a quota for female representation in Parliament, originally 10% (it has since increased). She also worked to reduce polygamy and female genital multination, with less success.
When Daddah’s government was overthrown by a military coup in July 1978, Kane was not welcomed into the new government, and another woman would not hold a cabinet position until 1987.
However, Daddah’s government was overthrown by a military coup in July 1978, and Kane was excluded from the new ministry. Another woman was not appointed to cabinet until 1987, when President Maaouya Ould Sid’Ahmed Taya appointed N’Deye Tabar Fall as General Secretary of the Ministry of Health and Social Affairs; Khadijatou Bint Ahmed as minister of mines and industry, and Lalla Mariam Bint Moulaye as associate director of the cabinet.