(AFP) – Do you absolutely need money to find love? In Abidjan, the most populous city in Côte d’Ivoire, the idea that the man must take care of the couple’s expenses from the first meeting remains tenacious.
“When you don’t have the money, you don’t look for a woman, you’re looking for money,” sings popular Ivorian artist Roseline Layo in her single “Joli Garçon” released in May.
After the singer’s concert at the Anoumabo (Femua) Urban Music Festival in Abidjan, at the end of April, a young man got annoyed in the crowd.
“I would prefer her to say that you have to marry a man who manages, who tries to do something in life”, exclaims Ali Samassi, 25 years old.
“A man who has no money has the right to love,” he continues.
But despite the many other reactions from disgruntled men on social networks, Roseline Layo persists: “a boy who has money is more handsome than one who is pretty,” she wrote on her Facebook page.
As famous as the singer, the young rapper from the same country, Suspect 95, has made himself the spokesperson for men frustrated by this injunction.
In 2020, he created the Syndicate, a movement of 20,000 members for “the rights of men who are forced to spend money when courting a woman”.
“Money is not the only condition for falling in love. You can have a husband who has money but who will mistreat you”, argues Ali Samassi, and someone who “has nothing” can ” bring you joy”.
For sociologist Rebecca Ezouatchi, money remains “fundamentally” a condition in male-female romantic relationships.
An observation shared by the anthropologist Boris Koenig, who interviewed young precarious Abidjanians for the Canadian scientific journal Feminist Research.
For these young people, “showing a romantic attachment to a young woman” is “+ betting on a girl +”, explains the researcher: inviting her to dinner and giving her gifts, hoping to become her boyfriend or remain so.
In Côte d’Ivoire, poverty affects women more than men.
According to the International Labor Organization (ILO), in 2021, “46% of Ivorian women over the age of 15” have access to the labor market compared to 65% of men.
The gap is even greater (51% against 81%) according to figures from the Organization for Economic Cooperation and Development (OECD), and remains “significantly higher in Côte d’Ivoire than in neighboring countries such as Guinea. , Ghana or Liberia”.
– A trend of a century –
And the idea that man must pay has been anchored for several generations.
“Already during the 1920s, when Abidjan was only a colonial city with a few thousand people, the reports of divorce hearings in court referred to this construction of masculinity associated with the figure of the provider of resources”, analyzes Boris Koenig.
Today, the dowry, a set of gifts and objects from the fiancé’s family to that of his future wife, remains a common practice.
Its value, established by the bride’s family, has sometimes multiplied by ten or fifteen over the past ten years, explains Rebecca Ezouatchi to AFP.
If some women denounce this custom, “we tax them with all the names” affirms the sociologist.
Today, however, some young girls are trying to use this trend to their advantage.
According to Boris Koenig, these trick with the one they call the “gaou” (the naive) or the “pointer”, by asking him for money during each appointment. They benefit from it alone, or participate in the expenses of their household and sometimes pay the schooling of their little brothers and sisters.
“You make an appointment with the guy, you make excuses to go home. You see him several times, making him believe that you are going +mougou+ with him one day” (to have sex in nouchi, Ivorian slang), but “it never happens”, assumes in a deep and confident voice Aïcha S’y, in a lively maquis in Yopougon, a popular commune in Abidjan.
A paradoxical system that allows women to access a form of “financial independence” … through dependence on a man’s money, summarizes Boris Koenig.
A trap, for Rebecca Ezouatchi, because “all this work of seduction unfortunately stops when we pass the milestone of marriage”, when the man can then abuse his position.