Over the past ten years, there has been an influx of women into the Hip Hop sector in Senegal and Mauritania. However, despite significant progress in education and access to decision-making positions, the situation of women in the Hip Hop sector does not reflect their academic background or their professional achievements in this sector. Other constraints are added with countries very attached to traditional values and societies where religion is very present.
Given the fact of old and new forms of discrimination targeting women in Hip Hop, both in the workplace and in access to employment, and how to support women to better reconcile family and professional responsibilities, it is necessary to add in passing how to encourage and support women who are entrepreneurs to the means of combating discrimination, exploitation and harassment at work. In Senegal, as in Mauritania, Hip Hop, a protest and artistic movement, is largely dominated by men and their creations, with female artists remaining a minority and relatively unseen.
The Dames Hip Hop project addresses a dual challenge: professional inclusion and civic visibility. It offers mobile, adaptable platforms anchored in working-class neighbourhoods, while building lasting bridges with European institutions. Dames Hip Hop thus strengthens local dynamics while being part of a regional strategy for inclusive cultural cooperation.
Fighting structural inequalities in the public cultural space
Dames Hip Hop is a cultural cooperation project led by Impact Senegal, in partnership with Assalamalekoum Cultures, and with European partners in Senegal, which aims to strengthen the role of women in Hip Hop through training, creation, and artistic dissemination. Designed as a cross-disciplinary platform, it offers creative residencies, technical workshops, screenings, showcases, and documentary production. Deployed in Dakar and Nouakchott over 12 months, the project fosters the emergence of strong female voices while promoting regional mobility and intercultural dialogue. Dames Hip Hop aims to fight the structural inequalities that hinder women's participation in the cultural public space. It contributes to professionalising artists, stimulating South-South cooperation, and promoting inspiring career paths.
The project's challenges are to identify who and where women are within the Hip Hop movement, and beyond, how they perceive their own experience. It also aims to measure the access and visibility of female Hip Hop artistic expression in the public space. The aim of the project is therefore not to define what "feminine speech in Hip Hop" would be, nor what its differences would be with the speech of men (then considered as legitimate speech), but rather to consider how this artistic expression tends to subvert dominant norms in order to go beyond them.
Alignment with the UN Sustainable Development Goals
- SDG 5, Gender Equality: Women's leadership is a core aim of the project.
- SDG 4, Quality Education: The project provides access to non-formal training.
- SDG 10, Reducing Inequalities: Inclusion of Marginalised Women and fighting inequalities is at the heart of the project.
- SDG 16, Peace, Justice, Strong Institutions: The project promotes freedom of civic expression through art
