Company Location

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.

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.

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.

It is challenging, in a way, to talk about legal feminism in Africa when the concept of “African feminism” itself is an issue of persistent contestation on the continent.   What I address myself to here are the various ways that feminists around the continent have analysed the law and the ways they have used it to pursue their struggles for gender equality and women’s human rights.   What gains have been made and what are the limitations?