World Radio Day. Ousmane Sembene's "Moolaade": the radio as a symbol of women's empowerment

Ousmane Sembene's "Moolaade": the radio as a symbol of women's empowerment

Radio is an important player and an essential part of maintenance and transition to peace. It is part of its agenda-setting function and provision of essential services to bring forward issues of concern, feature matters that deem attention from authorities and citizens, and give them salience.

UNESCO - World Radio Day

Modernity undermines patriarchy and films especially set in the village highlight this vulnerability, as often these features of modernity are foreign, western elements. The village is the signifier of the culture’s language, it is a metaphor, a symbol.

Exploring this concept in the context of the film Moolaade, Ousmane Sembene incorporates, the radio, which is an important means of communication for the village women and a source of knowledge about local as well as global issues. 

As the village patriarchy burns the radio in order to destroy the women's growing empowerment, as a symbol of opposition to female excision, the women throw their knives into the burning pile.