The Struggle Continues
Could winning equal rights on the battlefield earn Eritrean women more rights in civil society? Through her front-line photography, IRP Fellow Cheryl Hatch aimed to find out.
ERITREA -- During Eritrea's 30-year battle for independence from Ethiopia, from 1961 to 1991, Eritrean women fought next to men in the trenches and on the battlefield. Reporter and photographer Cheryl Hatch was on the scene in Africa near the end of that war, around the time the tiny nation of Eritrea won its autonomy. Given the patriarchal nature of Eritrean culture before the war (women were not allowed to own property, the vast majority were illiterate, most marriages were arranged, and genital mutilation was routine), Hatch wondered: "Could winning equal rights on the battlefield earn women the same rights in civil society?"