African Gender Studies A Reader

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.

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

OYERONKE OYEWUMI is Associate Professor of Sociology, State University of New York, Stony Brook, USA. She is author of The Invention of Women: Making Sense of Gender Discourses (University of Minnesota Press, 1997).