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This syllabus is designed for senior undergraduate, or early postgraduate students. Its objectives are:

Here I have referred to the work of African liberationists, feminisms in the global South, diasporic feminisms in the global North, Euro-American feminisms, transcontinental organising, the political economy of sexuality, Freud, post-structuralism and queer theory.

This part of our review essays covers an introduction to the broad area of gender-based violence for teaching. PART TWO presents ideas about different 'sectors' of gender-based violence work.

Websites of Interest

New African magazine,

Available: http://www.africasia.com/newafrican/
 
New African Woman magazine,

Available: http://www.africasia.com/newafricanwoman/

Rhodes Journalism Review,
Available: http://www.rjr.ru.ac.za/
  

Teaching and curricula on gender and women.s studies in Africa have predominantly focused on issues of development and/or policy, as indicated by a recent and ongoing survey carried out by the African Gender Institute. At the same time, scholars, practitioners and policy makers recognise that there is a “gap” between policy and its implementation.

We would like to thank and acknowledge the World Association of Christian Communication (WACC) for allowing us to use some of the profiles they put together. We also thank all the women who agreed to have their profiles included in this project. With time, more profiles will be included.

- an approach to embedding gender processes into specific historical, cultural, and economic/political contexts.

Amina Mama’s Notes on Gender stress the historical specificity of the operation of gender, and Oyewumi considers carefully how this operation was, and is, placed within the organization of different societies: where and when is “gendering” a central political and cultural force? How, for example, does “gendering” interact with the dominance of class construction, or the weight of colonial influences?

This course aims to introduce students to the various approaches and assumptions that are implicit in the phrase Gender and Development. The everyday use of the term Development assumes that societies are on a linear path of continuous material improvement in terms of technology, economics, population growth, health, and education. Secondly, the phrase Gender and Development is usually understood to mean that women need to be brought on board the development project. Critics of the linear approach to development argue that social change linked to colonialism and migration in the third world have contributed to these societies’ economic and social underdevelopment. Similarly feminists have argued that development for women is more complex than a simple process of adding women to general development.

Peace studies is a growing academic field that has its scholarly roots in international relations (IR), political science, and history. All three academic disciplines consider the nation state as a primary constitutive element of the international system and central to social stability, security, and peace. This has been heavily critiqued by IR feminists (Still, 1998; Stean 1998, among others) who associate the notion of the nation state with an embedded patriarchal system that entrenches hierarchical social relations across race, class, and gender.

Course Rationale

This course should explore key issues of gender, conflict and peacebuilding in the African context. Overall, the course should also aim to investigate how gender, violence and war have a variety of impacts upon development in Africa, and how development concerns are intrinsically linked to peacebuilding. The course would hence seek to analyse how each aspect of conflict, from domestic violence in peacetime to violence in wartime, is influenced by the real and perceived needs and responsibilities of men and women. Why conflict is gendered at critical moments is a key question, as is how men and women develop different strategies of survival. The course ideally invites an exploration of the role gender plays in political development and achieving sustainable peace. Women’s roles as actors as well as victims of conflict should hence be evaluated as will gender specific peace initiatives.