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Angola Organization of Angolan Women
The OMA was established in 1963 to mobilize support for
the
fledgling MPLA. After independence, it became the primary
route by
which women were incorporated in the political process.
Its
membership rose to 1.8 million in 1985 but dropped to less
than 1.3
million in 1987. The group attributed this decline to the
regional
destabilization and warfare that displaced and destroyed
families
in rural areas, where more than two-thirds of OMA members
lived. In
1983 Ruth Neto, the former president's sister, was elected
secretary general of the OMA and head of its
fifty-three-member
national committee. Neto was reelected secretary general
by the 596
delegates who attended the OMA's second nationwide
conference on
March 2, 1988.
During the 1980s, the OMA established literacy programs
and
worked to expand educational opportunities for women, and
the
government passed new legislation outlawing gender
discrimination
in wages and working conditions
(see Conditions after Independence
, ch. 2). MPLA-PT rhetoric emphasized equality between the
sexes as
a prerequisite to a prosperous socialist state. At both
the First
Party Congress and the Second Party Congress, the MPLA-PT
Central
Committee extolled contributions made by women, but in
1988 only 10
percent of MPLA-PT members were women, and the goal of
equality
remained distant. Through the OMA, some women were
employed in
health and social service organizations, serving refugees
and rural
families. More women were finding jobs in teaching and
professions
from which they had been excluded in the past, and a very
small
number occupied important places in government and the
MPLA-PT.
However, most Angolan women were poor and unemployed.
In addition to leading the OMA, Ruth Neto also served
on the
MPLA-PT Central Committee and as secretary general of the
PanAfrican Women's Organization (PAWO), which had its
headquarters in
Luanda. The PAWO helped sponsor Angola's annual
celebration of
Women's Day (August 9), which was also attended by
representatives
from neighboring states and liberation movements in South
Africa
and Namibia.
Data as of February 1989
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