Researcher of the Month
Every month we get to know one of the researchers at the department better. Read about their research areas, fieldwork and why they do what they do.
Sten Hagberg: Breaking the glass ceiling
2023-03-20
A power transfer to the municipal level has opened up opportunities for women to take the lead in Burkina Faso, West Africa. Still, change has been slow.
- What does the glass ceiling look like in Burkina Faso and how do you break it? says Sten Hagberg, one of the anthropologists who tried to find out.
A power transfer to the municipal level has opened up opportunities for women to take the lead in Burkina Faso, West Africa. Still, change has been slow.
- What does the glass ceiling look like in Burkina Faso and how do you break it? says Sten Hagberg, one of the anthropologists who tried to find out.
The Forum for African Studies is running the research project Burkina Faso seen from below together with the Burkinian Institute des Sciences des Sociétés and the Swedish Embassy in Ouagadougou. The project, which is funded by Sida, results in annual studies of how residents view different social issues.
An important part of the project is to develop research collaboration with local actors, both researchers and actors within the state and civil society. Professor Sten Hagberg, who has more than 30 years of research experience in Burkina Faso, leads the project together with associate professor Ludovic Kibora, from the Institute of Sciences des Sociétés, but a number of younger Burkinian researchers also participates.
The research focus of 2019 was female leadership and its link to the decentralization - a power transfer from central to municipal level - which has characterized Burkina Faso and many other African countries in recent decades.
- With the decentralization, a lot of opportunities were opened for women to step up and develop a leadership, says Sten Hagberg, who previously researched many aspects of decentralization.
He describes that there is a strong rhetoric that women should participate in politics, and yet the result is very modest.
- And it was even more modest in the freest democratic elections the country has experienced, in 2015. By then, the number of women elected to parliament fell. And it was the same case in the municipal elections the following year. We could see a reduction in the number of female politicians who were elected, both to the municipal council in 2016 and to the parliament in 2015, Hagberg says.
To understand why this is the case, one cannot just examine the national level, Sten Hagberg argues. One has to study from the bottom up - by starting from small towns and at the municipal level, and thanks to the fact that the project's many anthropologists are conducting fieldwork in several different municipalities they hope to still be able to draw conclusions about society as a whole, and thus show that anthropology, despite its common focus on the local also is extremely relevant to highlight greater contexts.
Moreover, it is not sufficient to focus only on the women who actually succeeded, but also on those who did not, the researchers have concluded. Younger women are rarely seen in power, for example, while strong female leaders at the national level are often over 50 years of age.
- Many studies have focused directly on these women, trying to understand their situations, but it is at least as important to look at high school and working life, for example, to detect the young ones. We have interviewed female students, and they have told us about their dreams as well as the problems they face, says Sten Hagberg.
The end result of the research will be a book in the series Uppsala Papers in Africa Studies, published initially in French, as the series' largest readership is found in West Africa but also in countries such as France, Belgium and Canada. An English version of the book will come later.
Text: Alexander Öbom
Researcher of the Month
-
Oscar Pripp: About the political power in music, the ethnological ID in working life, and how good people create bad effects
Oscar Pripp is an ethnologist whose work revolves around culture in several ways. He studies music as a means of expression for politics and civic engagement. He also works with ethnological tools to address exclusion processes and structural discrimination in schools and working life. As Oscar has held the role of director of studies, he has become a familiar face to many who have studied at the department.
-
Annika Björnsdotter Teppo: Researches the post-apartheid lives of white South Africans
The interest in studying "race" led Annika to South Africa as field of reserach. For more than 25 years, she has researched various aspects of the lives of white South Africans in the post-apartheid era, with a focus on religiousity and kinship, to name a few topics. In 2022, Annika was appoined Professor of Cultural Anthropology at Uppsala University. She is also working at Univesity of Helsinki in Finland.
-
Carl Rommel: Fieldwork among big and small projects in Cairo
Anthropologist Carl Rommel studies the function of large and small projects in urban spaces in Egypt. In a Zoom conversation between Uppsala and Cairo, he talks about the anthropological research process and what perspectives the discipline contributes.
-
Susann Baez Ullberg: People’s relationships with water, the role of anthropology in fighting climate change, and the ethical aspects of environmental degradation
Susann Baez Ullberg is an environmental and disaster anthropologist who specializes in research on human water relations. She is involved in several research networks with a focus on the environment and sustainability, and believes that anthropology can play a crucial role in the fight against climate change and other environmental problems
-
Carina Johansson: Scrutinizing the power aspects of naming and depicting cultural heritage on Gotland
Carina Johansson is a senior lecturer in ethnology at Campus Gotland. Her research has strong local roots on Gotland and combines previous experiences of working with photography and plants. Carina is also a frequent collaborator with stakeholders outside of the university.
-
Owe Ronström: Totalizing sustainability
From previously dealing with individual species, the idea of sustainability has expanded to include everything. Owe Ronström and his colleagues will add another perspective to this research field, by focusing on the concept itself.
-
Sten Hagberg: Breaking the glass ceiling
A power transfer to the municipal level has opened up opportunities for women to take the lead in Burkina Faso, West Africa. Still, change has been slow.
- What does the glass ceiling look like in Burkina Faso and how do you break it? says Sten Hagberg, one of the anthropologists who tried to find out. -
Karin Eriksson-Aras: Tools to catch the desires of inhabitants
Reaching out to inhabitants in order to know how they want to live is difficult for municipalities. But there might be a solution; ”that we develop a methodological toolbox that they can use, says ethnologist Karin Eriksson-Aras.
-
Sverker Finnström: Existential fears, global wars and to see cracks in the narrative of good versus evil
War and death are themes that cultural anthropologist Sverker Finnström investigates in his research. Issues that can teach us something about human's universal thoughts about life and our place in the world. Starting with the civil war in Uganda, his research has taken him through time and space to Asia during the Second World War. He can also see parallels to Russia's invasion of Ukraine.