Short description:

This is the first comprehensive reader that brings African experiences to bear on the ongoing global discussions of women, gender, and society. Bringing together the essential writing on this topic from the last 25 years, these essays discuss gender in Africa from a multi-disciplinary perspective.

Long description:

This is the first comprehensive reader that brings African experiences to bear on the ongoing global discussions of women, gender, and society. Bringing together the essential writing on this topic from the last 25 years, these essays discuss gender in Africa from a multi-disciplinary perspective.

'Contributors to African Gender Studies address, in very valuable ways, a variety of theoretical and methodological issues regarding study of the status of women in Africa as contrasted with notions of feminism in the North. Among those issues are the construction of gender in different African contexts, innovative development strategies, the role of the African academic, pedagogies in the North and South, insider and outsider perspectives, and revisionist historiography. This volume should be required reading for all students of Africa and its diaspora.' - Betty J. Harris, University of Oklahoma

'For the diversity and renown of its authors as well as the breadth of its topical coverage, this book deserves a wide reading. Its subject matter, African gender studies, is important not only for Africa but also for its ability to affect both the discourse about and action on global issues dealing with gender, 'development,' and social and economic justice. ' - Cheryl Johnson-Odim, Columbia College Chicago; author of For Women and the Nation: Funmilayo Ransome-Kuti of Nigeria

Table of Contents:

PART I: INTRODUCTION - CONCEPTUALIZING GENDER: DECOLONIZING FEMINISM White Women's Burden; O.Oyewumi Women's Roles and Existential Identities; I.Kopytoff The 'Status of Women' in Indigenous African Societies - Implications for the Study of African American Women's Roles; N.Sudarkasa Feminism and Difference: The Perils of Writing as a Woman on Women in Algeria; M.Lazreg PART II: CONSTRUCTING KINSHIP: FAMILY TIES AND THE 'DOMESTIC' Down to the Fundamentals: Women-Centered Hearth-holds in Rural West Africa; F. Ekejiuba African Bride Wealth and Women's Status; J. Ogbu Home-Made Hegemony: Modernity, Domesticity, and Colonialism in South Africa; J. Comaroff & J. Comaroff Colonial and Missionary Education: Women and Domesticity in Uganda, 1900-1945; N.Musisi Crisis and Reconstruction and the Mobilization of Labor; K.Atkins PART III: MAKING HISTORY/DOING GENDER Making History, Creating Gender: Some Methodological and Interpretive Questions in the Writing of Oyo Oral Traditions; O.Oyewumi What's So Feminist About Doing Women's Oral History?; S.Geiger Spirituality, Gender, and Power in Asante History; E.Akyeampong & P.Obeng PART IV: JUDICIAL DISCOURSES Wives, Children, and Interstate Sucession in Ghana; T.Manuh Narratives of Power: Women's Experience of the World of Familial Relationships and Legal Discourse in Botswana; A.Griffiths Concepts of Equality in Cases of Discrimination Against Women: Examples From Africa; C.Jones PART V: WRITING WOMEN - READING GENDER Gender, Feminist Theory and Post-Colonial (Women's) Writing; J. Makuchi Nfah Abbenyi The Female Writer and Her Commitment; M.Ogundipe-Leslie Posessing the Voice of the Other; N.Nako PART VI: NECESSARY DIALOGUES: QUESTIONS OF POWER AND KNOWLEDGE Epilogue: In My Father's House; K.A.Appiah Questions of Identity and Inheritance: A Critical Review of Kwame Anthony Appiah's In My Father's Hourse ; N.Nkegwu Reinventing Africa; I.Amadiume Chasing Shadows: The Misplaced Search for Matriarchy; N.Nzegwu PART VII: DEVELOPMENT ORSOCIAL TRANSFORMATION Definitions of Women and Development: An African Perspective; A.Pala Research Methodology and Investigative Framework for Social Change: The Case for African Women; F.Steady Recovering Igbo Traditions: A Case for Indigenous Women's Organizations in Development; N. Nzegwu PART VIII: TOWARDS DEMOCRATIC FUTURES - MODELS OF ACTIVISM Bitu: Facilitator of Women's Educational Opportunities; C.Obbo Funlayo Ransome-kuti: A True Citizen; C.Johnson-Odim & N.Mba Sheroes and Villains: Conceptualizing Colonial and Contemporary Violence Against Women in Africa; A.Mama