Women in the Lomami, African Home of the Bonobo

In the Tshuapa, Lomami and Lualaba river basins in the DRC where the bonobos live, humans have it very rough – we couldn’t say if they have it better or worse than the bonobos. However, we can say that the human women have it worse than the human men in the DRC. In the United States, women are free to get jobs, go to school and live by themselves – you may think it’s strange that we’re even mentioning those things because we are so used to these freedoms! But, in the Congo, this is not the norm. Women and girls rarely get to go to school or explore a career in computers or medicine or anything; they are kept close to home with very specific work and chores.