Africa-Press – Senegal. Senegalese artists working in the music industry sector on Thursday pleaded for fairness in the workplace while highlighting the specific problems they face, APS found.
« There are specific problems that we encounter in the industry, for example annual or sick leave and more particularly maternity leave and it happens that the latter even are a source of breach of contract for certain women », lamented the rapper and slammer Fatim Sy, director of « Cultur’Elle », a music festival dedicated to women.
She indicates that in some cases, pregnancy is considered a disease and women artists, because they are pregnant, are not invited or programmed in concerts and other professional meetings.
Fatim Sy, initiator of a panel focusing on the theme « The safety and protection of women in the music industry » welcomed the fact that the status of the artist takes charge of these issues.
For her, the meeting aims to inform women artists who are not aware of what is happening.
The president of the Association of Music Professions Daniel Gomes as well as the lawyer Marina Kabo of the Association of Senegalese Jurists (AJS) have all pleaded for equity in the work of women artists.
“The work of women in music is not far from that of housewives. They are badly paid. We have to fight to achieve equity”, indicated the president of the AMS.
Giving as an example the singers and dancers evolving on the Petite Côte, he indicated that the first receive stamps of 5000 CFA francs per performance while the last have 2500 FCFA.
“They have miserable salaries and we make people even more miserable while the musicians earn more by forgetting that they are doing the same work as these male musicians. These are forms of violence, of exploitation that we don’t often talk about, ”laughed Daniel Gomes.
He was delighted with the organization of this panel for the improvement of women’s working conditions before pleading for « a decent scale, an unemployment benefit as is done elsewhere, a presumption of salary ». « We must correct the law, » he said, inviting women to be more present in the spheres of decision-making and discussion.
The jurist Marina Kabo, who finds it abnormal that women artists cannot make a living from their art, advocates prevention and calls for the banning of abusive behavior and the physical and moral violence they suffer.
“We must denounce these blackmails and sexual harassment, these indecent proposals and prejudices noted in the middle of the artists of the music, not to denounce, it is to be complicit”, said the jurist Kabo.
Rappers have testified about the verbal abuse and harassment of which they are victims on social networks because of their stage outfits.
The meeting organized by « Racine prod », a cultural company founded by rapper and slammer Fatim Sy is part of a series of panels initiated as a prelude to the third edition of the « Cultur’Elle » music festival scheduled for December in Dakar. .
The first panel took place on April 17 on the theme “Recognition and valorization of the work of women in music”.
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