GWS Directory

Locating Gender and Women's Studies Teaching and Research Programmes at African Universities: Survey Results (May 2003)

Report by Barbara Boswell

1. Background and Rationale

The "Locating Gender and Women's Studies Teaching and Research" Survey forms part of the AGI's Gender and Women's Studies for Africa's Transformation (GWSAfrica) Project, initiated in June 2001 and aimed at strengthening and building gender teaching and research capacity through a series of training, research and publishing activities. The project has facilitated the formation of a network of African-based gender scholars and researchers on the continent, which it continues to support and maintain, with the goal of creating a coherent community of African gender scholars and researchers. This strengthened community will enhance teaching and research in the field of gender studies, resulting in a "a pool of locally-grounded gender competent personnel equipped with the analytical and policy advocacy skills required to ensure the delivery of gender justice in African contexts." [1]

Noting the centrality of gender justice to the social and political transformation of the African continent and the key role of gender activists, scholars and researchers in bringing about a transformation in oppressive power relations, the GWS Project's inaugural workshop brought together over 30 teachers, researchers and ICT gender specialists from eight African countries. The workshop undertook to:

· establish a regional network of scholars, researchers and ICT activists;
· set up a list-serve for ongoing discussion and engagement among network members;
· establish and grow a dedicated GWS website hosted at the AGI (see http://www.gwsafrica.org);
· launch an electronic journal (see http://www.feministafrica.org);
· publish electronic and hard copy teaching resources and
· plan future curriculum development and ICT training events.

In order to attain these goals, it was imperative that the GWS Africa Project undertake a mapping of the gender and women's studies terrain on the African continent. Given the conditions faced by women in general, and gender scholars particularly, located at various African higher education institutions (Mama: 1996), the community of feminist teachers and researchers has tended to be fragmented, with few formal links existing between gender studies departments and programmes both within and between different countries (Essof: 2002). As a consequence, gender teachers and researchers have worked in isolation, devoting time and energy into the politics of survival in hostile local institutional settings, without having the space or opportunity to strategically network around regional or continental issues. If gender studies teaching and training is marginalised and atomised within tertiary institutions, then research is even more constrained, as opportunities are rare for the teamwork and collaboration across universities that is so necessary for pushing the boundaries of knowledge production.

African Gender and Women's Studies has largely been an unexplored and uncharted terrain in need of urgent mapping to inform the GWS Project's stated goals of strengthening gender studies through capacity-building activities and the formation of a continental network of gender scholars. It was against this backdrop that the GWS Project conceptualised the "Locating Gender and Women's Studies Teaching and Research Programmes at African Universities" Survey in order to locate gender teaching and research sites on the continent, as well as facilitate and inform networking.

Because of the enhanced capacity for networking offered by information and communications technologies (ICTs) as a networking tool, the GWS Africa Project has a strong ICT component. Many of the outputs initially envisaged by the project - such as the electronic feminist journal, Feminist Africa and a list-serve networking African gender scholars and researchers on the continent, which have since been launched, and curriculum and teaching resources which are currently being devised - are envisaged as using ICTs as tools for cost-effective information dissemination and communication. ICTs were therefore, from the outset, regarded as an integral part of the GWS Africa Project. The "Locating Gender and Women's Studies" survey was thus also an important tool for determining the ICT capacities at the various sites of gender teaching and research in Africa.

2. Methodology

The GWS Africa Project circulated about 1500 three-page questionnaires [2] at the end of 2001, to various universities in Africa, from a list of over 300 universities supplied by the Association of African Universities (AAU). Drawing in the AGI's own networks, we also targeted individuals known to be active in gender teaching and/ or research and used various existing electronic fora, such as GENNET, Women'snet, GAIN and APC-Africa to disseminate and publicise the questionnaire electronically. We received 30 responses from gender and women's studies teachers and researchers located in 13 different countries: Cameroon, Ethiopia, Ghana, Kenya, Malawi, Namibia, Nigeria, Sierra Leone, Sudan, South Africa, Uganda, Zambia and Zimbabwe. In some cases we received more than one questionnaire from different faculty and researchers located at different gender and women's studies teaching and research sites within the same institution.

Data collection was ongoing from the period January 2002 to May 2003. Following the initial survey, results were used by GWS Africa Project to set up a directory listing individuals teaching or researching in the field of gender and women's studies, while also cataloging institutions that serves as sites for teaching and researching gender studies (view the directory at http://www.gwsafrica.org/directory/index.html). Work on updating these directories was ongoing, as completed questionnaires were returned. Ultimately we collected data from 30 African universities - each serving, to a lesser or greater extent, as sites for gender teaching and research.

3. Limitations of the Survey

Survey completion relied heavily on the activation of the AGI's growing network of contacts, including former associates, and the collegial networks of individual faculty. Even so, many of the questionnaires were sent to vice-chancellors or rectors, and may never have found their way to relevant personnel. Limited ICT capacity at certain African universities could mean that those who were not targeted with postal questionnaires would not have had access to electronic versions of the questionnaire circulated via various feminist electronic media. The results of this survey should therefore be viewed as an initial mapping of the terrain of gender and women's studies, which could serve as a foundation for a more detailed and deeper excavation of the field on the continent.

The survey result is limited in that returns came from universities where English is the language of instruction. Francophone universities located in Africa, as a rule, do not offer gender studies programmes [3] , and including Arabic universities would have been beyond the capacity and infrastructure available to the GWS Project.

4. Results

4.1 Continental Spread and Institutional profiles of Gender and Women's Studies Sites
The survey affirmed the earlier observation that despite the beleaguered conditions faced by most African higher education institutions, gender studies as a field of study has flourished, with an increasing number of sites, and growing numbers of faculty and students entering the field (Mama, 1996).

A total of 30 universities across the continent responded to the survey, identifying their institutions as sites for teaching and researching gender and women's studies. These universities are Addis Ababa University in Ethiopia; Ahfad University in Sudan; Ahmadu Bello University, Lagos State University, Obafemi Awolowo University, University of Benin, University of Ibadan, University of Nigeria and Usmano Danfodiyo University in Nigeria; Makerere University in Uganda; the Universities of Buea and Yaounde 1 in Cameroon; the University of Cape Coast and the University of Ghana in Ghana; The University of Malawi; the University of Namibia in Namibia; the University of Sierra Leone; the University of Zambia; the University of Zimbabwe; and Rhodes University, the University of Cape Town, Fort Hare University, the University of Durban-Westville, the University of Natal, the University of Pretoria, the University of Stellenbosch, the Institute for Gender and Women's Studies at the American University in Cairo, Egypt; the University of South Africa (UNISA) and the University of the Western Cape in South Africa. South Africa has the greatest number of Gender and Women's Studies teaching sites, with 9 out of the country's 27 universities offering some degree of gender and women's studies teaching. With seven universities out of forty teaching gender and women's studies, Nigeria has the second largest number of gender studies sites on the continent. Ghana and Cameroon identified two universities each serving as gender studies teaching and research sites, while most other countries included in this survey had only one.

This high concentration of gender and women's studies sites within South Africa and Nigeria is not surprising, given the country's strong women's movement and the role it played in placing gender and women's studies on the agenda in the higher institutional landscape (Awe, 1996). Nigeria was the site for the first Women and National Development seminar in 1976, which launched the United Nations International Women's Year (Pereira, 2002), and the continent's first course in gender and women's studies - Women in Society - situated within Ahmadu Bello University's Sociology Department was initiated in this country in 1979. The formation of Women in Nigeria (WIN) in 1982, and the publication of its blue-print document, "Conditions of Women in Nigeria and Policy Recommendations to 2000 AD" focused attention on the socio-economic and political realities of women's lives, and emphasised the need for women's participation in research, policy making, and information dissemination (Awe, 1996). The published proceedings of WIN's annual conferences yielded considerable contributions to the field of gender and women's studies in Nigeria. Two seminal gatherings further contributed to the growth of the field also took place here during the eighties: a seminar entitled "Women's Studies: The State of the Art Now in Nigeria, organised by the Institute of African Studies in 1987, and the seminar "Theoretical and Methodological Issues in Women's Studies", which compared Canada with Nigeria, and was held in 1988 (Awe, 1996). These developments in the field took place against the backdrop increasing repression at higher education institutions, described by Pereira:

African debates on education in the 1980s took place under conditions of increasing inequity, characterised by structural adjustment, economic stabilisation and cost cutting. By the 1990s, not only had the relations between academics and previous understandings of citizenship changed but so too had the role of universities in Africa. These shifts took place in the wake of persistent state harassment of academics in the context of intensifying struggles for democratisation. Some of the consequences were killings, imprisonment, displacement and the flight of many intellectuals from their countries. Academic freedom was under assault; the attacks came from different quarters - not only the state but civil society, international funding agencies and from within academia itself (Pereira, 2002: 4).

South Africa holds the largest number of gender and women's studies sites on the continent: one reason may be an enabling, progressive climate generated by political transformation in 1994. Formalised gender studies teaching sites proliferated at universities post-1994, though progressive gender research took place throughout the 1980s, and was published journals like Agenda and the anti-apartheid women's magazine, Speak (Lewis. 2002). A forerunner of South African gender studies programmes and units was the Centre for Women's Studies, established in 1985 at the distance learning institution, the University of South Africa (UNISA), which was run largely by volunteers committed to the liberation of women within the South African context. The Women's Studies Centre became the Institute for Gender Studies in 1996 and today coordinates a seminar programme which attempts to reach audiences both on and beyond the campus (Lewis, 2002). The programme at the University of the Western Cape, established in 1995, was grounded in the work and activism of the University's Gender Equity Unit, which galvanised women on that campus around issues such as rape, and women's access to maternity benefits and housing subsidies. The programmes forerunner was the Women's Studies Group, founded in 1988 and consisting of staff members across various faculties (Kadalie: 2002). Because formal gender studies units or programmes are a relatively recent phenomenon in South Africa, dating back to around 1994, they may have escaped the narrow focus on Women in Development (WID) and Women and Development (WAD) theoretical approaches prevalent elsewhere on the continent. While South Africa is perceived as displaying "the most radical gender politics in the region" (Mama, 1996), the field of gender studies in South Africa has traditionally been dominated by the work of white academics, who enjoyed privileged access to education and other resources under the apartheid system (Lewis, 2002).

Sites for teaching and researching gender and women's studies are structured and administered in a number of different ways. Certain institutions have departments, units or programmes dedicated to gender and women's studies teaching and research, while other institutions have gender interwoven or "mainstreamed" within other, more traditional disciplines or taught courses. Of the 30 institutions 17 have dedicated gender teaching and/or research units, programmes or departments, while the remaining 13 institutions offer gender studies as courses or modules within other institutional departments or courses. Dedicated gender programmes, units or departments, for the purpose of this study, are defined as units which specialise in, and have as their core function gender teaching and/or research, with dedicated staff and a dedicated coordinator, director or chair. The existence of a dedicated gender studies unit, can be taken as a superficial indicator of institutional commitment, but for this to be meaningful requires additional investment in infrastructural and highly-trained human resources in gender and women's studies.

Sixteen of the 17 dedicated gender studies programmes listed above, are situated within units, programmes or departments named as Gender Studies or Gender and Women's Studies Departments, Programmes or Institutes. These are the Women's Studies Unit at Ahfad University in Sudan, the Department of Women's and Gender Studies at Makerere University in Uganda, the Centre for Gender and Social Policy Studies at Obafemi Awolowo University in Nigeria, the Department of Women's Studies at the University of Buea, Cameroon, the Institute for Gender and Women's Studies at the American University in Cairo, Egypt; the African Gender Institute at the University of Cape Town, the Development and Women's Studies Office (DAWS) at the University of Ghana, the Programme in Gender Politics at the University of Durban-Westville in South Africa, the Institute for Gender Studies at the University of Pretoria in South Africa, the Gender Research and Documentation Centre (GRADOC) at the University of Sierra Leone, the Gender Studies Programme at the University of Stellenbosch in South Africa, the Women's and Gender Studies Programme at the University of the Western Cape in South Africa, the Gender Studies Programme at the University of Zambia, the Institute for Gender Studies at the University of South Africa (UNISA) and the Gender Studies Programme at Usmano Danfodiyo University in Nigeria.

Of these, only four gender studies programmes have full departmental status: the University of Makerere's Department of Women and Gender Studies, the University of Buea's Department of Women's Studies, the University of Cape Town's African Gender Institute and the University of Zambia's Gender Studies Department.

4.2 Intellectual Content
Gender and Women's Studies is most commonly taught under the rubric of development studies. Five institutions teach gender from within or together with development studies programmes or units, linking the themes of gender with development: the Centre for Research, Training and Information on Women in Development (CERTWID), the Gender and Development MSc. Programme at Ahfad Universities Women's Studies Unit, the Development and Women's Studies Office (DAWS) at the University of Ghana and the Institute of Development Studies at the University of Zimbabwe.

Universities that do not have dedicated gender units, departments or programmes, but teach gender within other programmes or courses also lean heavily towards a focus on development: 7 out of the 13 universities without a dedicated gender and women's studies department, unit or programme, offer courses or modules such as Gender and Development, Women in Development and Women and Development: Ahmadu Bello University in the Sociology and Geography Departments; Lagos State University, in the Social Work Programme; Moi University, in School of Environmental Studies; University of Cape Coast, Ghana, in the Department of Sociology's Centre for Development Studies, the University of Fort Hare; the University of Malawi, which has a Gender Seminar Series for students and staff with the theme "Gender and Development", and University of Nigeria, in the Sociology/Anthropology Department.

The various configurations of gender with development studies are unsurprising, given the history of women's movements and their co-option by various state machineries on the continent. Pereira (2002: 8) describes this process as follows:

The period during which state structures for women were first developed on a visible scale coincided with the UN Decade for Women (1976-1985) and was also the period during which SAPs were first implemented in many African countries. This was a time when political regimes were increasingly short of funds but when donors were willing to provide money for WID (Women in Development) structures and projects. Accordingly, many regimes found it expedient to either create new structures, co-opt existing structures or combine the two in authoritarian efforts to increase their legitimacy and their access to resources.

Tsikata (2000: 6) asserts that "the institution of donor conditionalities for gender and development has meant a mechanical and add-on approach to gender issues", the impact of which reverberates through many institutions of higher learning, where gender and women's studies graduates are prepared for careers in national machineries. Kasente (2002) describes the increasing pressure the Women and Gender Studies Department at Makerere University faces from government and other stakeholders to focus on gender training and programming, as opposed to gender analysis. The formation of the Ministry of Women and Development by the Ugandan government has meant a shift in the Women and Gender Studies Department focus from training "a cadre from various backgrounds who will serve in government, academic, commercial and non-governmental organisations, where they will act as catalysts for change and facilitate the integration of gender in decision-making and policy formulation" (Kasente, 2002: 92), to producing capable personnel to staff the ministry.

The coupling of gender with development indicates the extent to which gender and women's studies continue to be driven by agendas linked to the efforts of international donor agencies seeking to include women in development, and also the displayed tendency of some African countries' to mobilise women for purposes of accessing international development donor funding (see Imam, 1997; Mama, 1996; Mama, 1997; Tsikata, 2000 and Lewis, 2002). The emergence of the field of gender studies on the continent in the early 1980s occurred for very different reasons from feminism as a field of study in western contexts, where the introduction of gender and women's studies had strong links and resulted from the wave of western feminist activism in the 1960s. In Africa, gender studies commenced for a number of different reasons, not least of which was the influence of a "donor-driven development industry" (Lewis, 2003). The WID approach did not, however, secure a rightful, legitimate place for scholarly work underpinned by feminism. Here it is important to note the difference between women's studies, and courses that are so named, and gender studies, which Pereira (2002: 2) asserts are "differentiated by the extent to which research is aimed primarily at describing women and gender relations, as opposed to subverting oppressive gender hierarchies. The latter are more likely to address issues of change and transformation, and in the process, to challenge accepted notions of what constitutes knowledge". While women's studies teaching based on WID theories were fairly widely accepted in African universities, academia's hostility and suspicion towards feminism propelled women into creating their own feminist scholarly networks, of which the Association for African Women for Research and Development (AAWORD), established in 1977, was the first, seeking the development of feminist research and scholarship (Pereira, 2002; Mama, 1996).

Gender and women's studies are also often taught from within law faculties or programmes, or clustered with law courses. The University of Zimbabwe and Makerere University, for example, offer a postgraduate Diploma in Women and Law, and a Gender and the Law Course in the Law Faculty respectively, which run independently from other gender courses or programmes taught at the same institutions. The University of Zimbabwe has plans to run a Master's programme in Women's Law in 2003. The Universities of Pretoria, Stellenbosch, the Western Cape, Fort Hare and Ibadan also offer courses or modules on law and gender or women and gender.

Gender studies programmes, courses or modules also proliferate within the discipline of Sociology at many institutions, with courses or modules offered in Sociology Departments at Ahmadu Bello University, Lagos State University the University of Nigeria, the University of Stellenbosch (jointly with the Political Science Department) and the University of Pretoria. Cultural Studies is another popular location from which gender is taught: Ahfad University, the University of Ghana, the University of Stellenbosch and the University of Zambia.

There is some evidence to suggest that Women's and Gender Studies programmes on the continent shy away from teaching in more controversial areas such as sexuality. In her recent review essay Lewis (2003) remarks that

the social and academic silences surrounding sexuality in Africa and on the tendency to pathologise questions of sexuality in relation to women, rather than to explore issues from the perspective of women's general health and well-being. Few scholars have dealt with women's sexuality in relation to heterosexual or homoerotic desire and pleasure, with the writings on sexuality of a feminist like Pat McFadden in SAFERE and SAPEM offering a rare exception to the norm

This perception is borne out by this study, which located only five courses or modules on sexuality within gender studies programmes, three of which are located at South African universities. Sexuality is taught as a module called "Sexuality and Social Control" at the University of the Western Cape's Women's and Gender Studies Programme, as a course called "Women's Sexuality" at Stellenbosch University's Gender Studies Programme, and as a module called "Health, Sexuality and AIDS Education" at the University of Natal's M. Ed. in Gender Education Programme. Outside South Africa, sexuality appears to be taught in at only two locations - as a "Gender and Sexuality" course in the University of Cape Coast's Sociology Department, and as a course called "Gender Roles and Human Sexuality" in the Sociology/Anthropology Department of the University of Nigeria.

4.3 Levels of study and degrees offered
Gender and women's studies are taught at both undergraduate and postgraduate level. Courses range from one-hour, introductory sessions on gender, to PhD programmes. Five institutions offer undergraduate degrees in Women's and Gender Studies: Makerere Unversity, the University of Cape Town, the University of Pretoria, the University of the Western Cape and the University of Buea. Five institutions offer an honours programme in Gender Studies, all of which are located in South Africa. These are the University of Durban-Westville, the University of Cape Town, the University of the Western Cape, the University of Pretoria and the University of South Africa.

Master's programmes are far the most prolific, with 12 institutions on the continent offering Master's Degrees in Gender and Women's Studies, six of them being based in South African institutions: the Universities of Cape Town, Durban-Westville, Natal, Stellenbosch, Pretoria, and the Western Cape. Master's degrees are also offered by Ahfad University, Sudan; Makerere University, Uganda, University of Buea in Cameroon; the University of Zambia; the University of Zimbabwe and Usmano Danfodiyo University in Nigeria. Three institutions also offer postgraduate diplomas in Women's and Gender Studies: the University of Namibia, the University of Buea and the University of Sierra Leone.

It is disturbing to note that only three institutions out of over 300 in sub-Saharan Africa (less than 1%) offer doctoral programmes in Women's and Gender Studies. These are the University of Cape Town, Makerere University and the University of Pretoria. However, the latter institution will soon rename its programme "PhD in Sociology, with Specialisation in Gender", effectively leaving only two universities on the continent offering Gender and Women's Studies PhD programmes. This is no accident, given the struggles for legitimacy gender studies scholars have fought and continue to fight within academia, where it remains a marginalised, much maligned area of study.

4.4 Disciplinary spread within Gender and Women's Studies departments, units or programmes
Gender Studies programmes are almost always interdisciplinary, drawing on an array of scholarly expertise and resources from departments and faculties. Disciplinary configurations within gender studies units are largely driven by the strengths and interests of individuals teaching gender; thus the foci of what is taught can change quite rapidly with the departure or acquisition of certain individuals. In what follows I profile Gender and Women's Studies Departments, Units or Programmes by country or region [4] , looking at key sites for gender studies teaching across the continent.

4.4.1 Ghana
Development and Women's Studies Office (DAWS), Institute of African Studies, University of Ghana
The Development and Women's Studies Office (DAWS) offers an Honours Degree in Gender and Development to about 12 students per year and a series of graduate seminars, lectures, film shows, field trips, and presentations by invited guests at the University of Ghana. Headed by Dr Akosua Ampofo, the office also has a strong research focus, concentrating on researching issues such as men and masculinity, land and poverty, in collaboration with faculty from other departments at the University. Teaching faculty are also drawn from various departments, including the Sociology Department, Social Work Department, Geography Department, Faculty of Law, and Institute of Adult Education, which are also alternative sites for teaching gender studies. The Honours degree comprises two semester courses: Culture and Gender in African Societies, and Gender and Development in African Societies. Elsewhere at the university, Gender Studies is also taught within the Department of Sociology; within the Faculty of Law, which runs undergraduate courses Gender and Law I and Gender and the Law II; the Geography Department, which offers a module called Geography of Gender and Development in Africa, and the Institute for Adult Education, which teaches Gender and Development.

University of Cape Coast, Ghana,
In Ghana, Gender and Women's Studies is also taught at the University of Cape Coast, though teaching does not take place at a dedicated gender studies unit, programme or department. This university offers Gender and Women's Studies in the Department of Sociology, through a concentration in Gender Studies at both graduate and undergraduate level, headed by Professor Mansah Prah (she also heads the Sociology Department). The concentration has two faculty: Henrietta Abane, who teaches the courses Women in Society and Women and Development, and Professor Nancy K. Lundgren, who teaches Women and Development. Other sites of teaching includes the English Department, which offers a course called Women in African Literature.

4.4.2 Uganda
Department of Women and Gender Studies, Faculty of Social Sciences, Makerere University
The largest site for gender studies is the Department of Women and Gender Studies at Makerere University, which offers undergraduate and postgraduate degree programmes, and is one of only 2 universities in Africa offering a PhD programme in Gender and Women's Studies. The department is the largest Gender and Women's Studies site on the continent, with a staff complement of 13 full-time and 4 part time teachers, who teach a student body of about 1000 undergraduates and 30 graduate students, and is headed by Dr Grace Banjebya Kyomuhendo. The three-year BA Programme in Gender Studies includes the core courses (over three years) Gender, the State and Civil Society, Gender and Human Rights, Gender Focused Research Methodology, Gender and Population, Gender and Human Resources/ Organisational management, Gender and Violence, Gender and the Law in Uganda and Gender and Development strategies for change in Uganda. Students may opt to take a major or a minor in Gender and Development at undergraduate level. The MA Programme offers the following core courses: Feminist Theory and Social Reform, Gender and Development Economics, Gender, Rural and Urban Development, Images of Women in society, Gender, Policy Formulation and Civil Society, Research Methods I, Research Methods II, Women and the Social Sector, Gender, Law and Human Rights and Project Management. MA students are expected to write a research-based dissertation. The Department also offers PhD studies. The Law Faculty is another important site for Gender and Women's Studies at Makerere. This faculty teaches a Gender and Law course within the Department of Law and Jurisprudence, headed by Dr Sylvia Tamale, and serving about 120 undergraduate and four postgraduate law students.

4.4.3 Nigeria
University of Ibadan
While this university does not have a dedicated gender and women's studies programme, it is home to the Women's Research and Documentation Centre (WORDOC), established in 1987 in response to challenges faced by feminist researchers and women in Nigeria, as well as a centre for documenting, systematic collection and dissemination of feminist research and materials on women's studies (Odejide, 2002). Situated within the Institute of African Studies, and coordinated by Prof Abiola Odejide, the centre has the strategic objectives of researching and consultancy, gathering information on women as a key resource, disseminating information and formulating policy. The centre does not teach students, but offers seminars, workshops, conferences and public lectures on themes such as Women in the Media, The Impact of Colonialism on Women, and The Effects of the Debt and Food Crises on Women. WORDOC also publishes feminist research and media. The University of Ibadan also has various sites for teaching gender and women's studies. These include: the Department of English, which offers a Literature and Gender course; the Psychology Department, the Law Department and the Geography Department.

University of Nigeria, Nsukka
This university offers various uncoordinated courses on women and gender, located within the Sociology/Anthropology Department. Courses include Women in Society, Gender Roles and Human Sexuality, Women and Development and Women in African Culture.

Gender Studies Programme, Geography Department, Usmano Danfodiyo University
Situated in the Geography Department headed by Dr D Shehu, this postgraduate programme offers an M.Sc in Gender, Environment and Development with modules such as Gender and Development, Gender and Islam and Gender and African Societies. The programme has four teaching staff and up to 15 students per year. The curriculum contains the modules Gender and Development, Gender and African Societies, and Gender and Islam (Danfodiyo is an Islamic university). A project based on original research and fieldwork is presented and examined orally. The programme collaborates with staff in the Department of Sociology.

Sociology Department, Ahmadu Bello University
While this university does not have a dedicated gender unit, programme or department, it is worth noting that this was the first African university to institute a course in women and gender, called Women in Society, in Africa. This course is still taught within the Sociology Department, along with other women's studies courses, Women and Development, Family in a Changing World, and Sociology of the Family. The Mass Communication Department offers a course called Women in Gender, while the Geography Department has a postgraduate course called Gender and Development.

4.3.4 South Africa
African Gender Institute, University of Cape Town, South Africa
The AGI runs both undergraduate and postgraduate degree programmes, as well as offering electives for undergraduate students from various other disciplines in the Faculty of Humanities. Undergraduate studies include a B. Soc. Science in Gender and Women's Studies, while postgraduate programmes include a coursework-based Honours Programme in Gender and Transformation, and a Research Master's Programme in Gender Studies. The AGI is one of two GWS sites on the surveyed which runs a PhD Programme in Gender Studies, albeit with modest student numbers. The institute has three permanently-employed faculty, which includes a Director, Dr Jane Bennett, a Chair, Prof Amina Mama and lecturer Elaine Salo, with Ginny Volbrecht contracted to teach on undergraduate level. The undergraduate Gender and Women's Study Programme produced 34 gradates at the end of 2002, with five research Master's students registered for 2003, and 12 students registered for the Honours programme for 2003. At Honours level, four compulsory courses are taught: Introduction to Gender and Transformation, Gender Analysing the Theory and Politics of Development, Research Essay/Project and Honours Interdisciplinary Research Methods Course. As part of this course, the module in Gender Analysis as a Tool of Research Design and Implementation, where offered, is required. In 2002, the AGI offered lectures and seminar blocks in other departments at the university, including Sociology, Social Work, African Literature, Clinical Psychology, and Obstetrics and Gynaecology, with some input from staff in other departments, notably the History Department, on AGI programmes.

Programme in Gender Politics in the Political Science Department, University of Durban-Westville, South Africa
This postgraduate programme offers Master's and Honours degrees in Gender Politics, situated within the Political Science Department and coordinated by Lubna Nadvi. The following courses are offered within the Honours Programme: Research Methods, Feminist Theory, Gender and Society, Research Essay, with electives offered: Gender and Public Policy, Women and International Politics, Gender and Globalisation, Feminist Philosophy and Selected Issues. The MA programme includes the modules Advanced Research Methods, Research Project, Feminist Philosophy, Women and the State and Selected Issues. The programme currently has one Master's student.

Gender studies is also taught at various others sites across the university, such as the Department of Education, which offers a postgraduate course called Gender and Education; the School of Languages and Literature, which runs a third-year and Honours course called Language and Gender; the School of Psychology, which teaches Feminism and Research; the School of Religion and Culture, which offers a courses called Women in Religion and Culture, and Women in Church and Society in African Contexts; and the School of Social Science and Development. The Financial Management Programme within the School of Governance also teaches gender as part of its programme.

Women's and Gender Studies Programme, Faculty of Arts, University of the Western Cape
The Programme has four core teaching staff running postgraduate and undergraduate programmes, with staff from other faculties teaching various modules. Degrees offered are a BA in Women's and Gender Studies, a BA Honours Programme and an M Phil Degree in Women's and Gender Studies. The Honours programme comprises two compulsory core modules: Feminist Research Methodologies and Theories of Feminism, along with a compulsory research paper, equivalent to one module. The Master's programme has two compulsory modules: Trends in Contemporary Feminist Theory and Research Methodology for Feminist Research, along with a compulsory mini-thesis which constitutes 50% of students' final mark. Elective postgraduate modules include: Gender and Nationalism, offered by the History Department, Developing Nations Developing Selves? Fictions of Identity Formation in Post-colonial Contexts, offered by the English Department, Gender, Development and Public Management, offered by the School of Government, Women and Technology, offered by the Philosophy Department, Gender and Law, within the Law Faculty, Sexuality and Social Control, taught within the Women's and Gender Studies Programme; Women's Health, offered in the Nursing Department, and Gender in Cross-cultural Perspective, taught within the Anthropology/Sociology Department. Twelve faculty from the English Department, Law Faculty, School of Government, Anthropology Department, Nursing, History, Psychology and Philosophy Departments teach interdisciplinary modules which are cross-listed with the Women's and Gender Studies Programme. The programme has between 45 and 50 undergraduate students, and 7 to 10 postgraduate students per year.

5. Conclusion

It is extremely difficult to generalise around trends in teaching at gender and women's studies, as approaches and content of courses are extremely diverse and to a large extent, dependent on resources available at particular institutions. However, gender and women's studies as a field of study and research continues to grow on the continent, with enrolment numbers increasing steadily. For various reasons, Development Studies is an area which most often intersects with gender studies teaching, indicating a conflation of the two areas, which, given the approach of Women In Development (WID), may not always signal a commitment to rigorous feminist analysis or feminist political underpinnings.

What is disturbing is that this survey located only three PhD Programmes in gender and women's studies on the continent, with two of these situated in South Africa, which has a proliferation of gender studies programmes relative to other African countries. The scarcity of doctoral programmes has dire implications for research and feminist knowledge production which is locally grounded. Without more gender and women's studies PhDs there is little hope for bridging the divide between western and African feminist knowledge production, and addressing the current domination of western feminist scholars as the producers of knowledge about African women. The paucity of doctoral programmes in Africa also has implications for the continued western domination of research and publication in the field - all the more worrying in the light of the limited impact African feminist knowledge production has had on mainstream scholarship (Mama: 2002). The dearth of PhD programmes in gender and women's studies points towards an ongoing battle, far from over, for inserting gender studies as a recognised and legitimate field of study within the academy.

References

Awe, B. 1996. A Brief Overview of Nigerian Women's Studies," in Mama, A. ed. Women's Studies in Nigeria: Report of the Network for Women's Studies in Nigeria, 1.

Bennett, J. 2002. "Exploration of a "Gap": Strategising Gender Equity in African Universities", Feminist Africa 1: 34-63.

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Footnotes