Feminist Knowledge | Review Essay
October 1995, Revised April 1996 (Originally published by CODESRIA as one of their Green Books)
Women's Studies and Studies of Women in Africa during the
1990's
By
Amina Mama,
Contents
i) Precolonial States i) Colonial States iii) National Liberation v) Post-independence states
I INTRODUCTION
The almost worldwide emergence of women's studies as a field of research, teaching
and study is generally viewed as resulting from the impact of the international
women's movement on the academic establishment. Over ten years after the United
Nations Decade for Women held its final conference in Nairobi, the year after
the Beijing Conference seems an appropriate time for us to review the contribution
of women's studies and gender research to social science in and on Africa.
Publications in these areas have proliferated, testifying to the opening up
of a vast new field of research, and to the generation of a new body of knowledge
that is not only about women but largely carried out by women scholars motivated
by their expressed commitment to furthering the interests of women. While there
have always been studies of women, the women's studies that emerged in the 1970's
and 1980's was almost exclusively research and teaching conducted 'on women,
by women, for women' that is to say, it was firmly identified with the feminist
agenda of liberating women. Such studies can justifiably be referred to as 'feminist
studies', because they had a progressive political agenda as well as an intellectual
one. During the seventies feminists in the West, determined not only to gain
a place in these bastions of male privilege and power, but also to transform
them into places where women too could study, develop and empower themselves,
mounted a full scale assault on the academies. This assault took various forms.
Some women sought the establishment of certified courses in women's studies
in the existing institutions of formal education. Others concentrated their
efforts on fighting for better representation of women in the mainstream of
the academic establishment, arguing that more women should be appointed to the
staff and administration of higher education institutions, and that more female
students should be admitted to hitherto male-dominated areas of study. Yet other
women, disaffected with the existing systems, pioneered the establishment of
independent study groups, libraries, research and documentation centres for
women. Feminists engaged in science have made major theoretical and methodological
contributions to world scholarship across the disciplines. It is now possible
to speak confidently of 'feminist science' and debate the ideas of feminist
philosophy and epistemology, feminist theory, feminism and methodology, and
feminist research, and to refer to the extensive literature on all of these.
It is also possible to identify feminist contributions to any of the major disciplines.
Women's studies, defined by their historical link to the women's movement, have
thus given birth to a range of changes within the scientific academies, and
within scientific production. The extent to which the link between the women's
movement and academic feminism has become a subject for debate, both in the
West and in the rest of the world. The term 'feminist studies' has been coined
by those concerned to emphasise the link between activism and intellectualism
in the service of women's liberation. Others have opted to use the more neutral
and inclusive term 'gender studies' instead of either women's or feminist studies,
ostensibly to convey greater neutrality, and to turn the lens on the oppressors
(men) as well as on the oppressed (women), or 'gender analysis' to denote social
analysis that is premised on recognition of gender inequality.
The extent to which these paradigmatic changes have penetrated African studies
and African social science is difficult to ascertain. Some light can be cast
on the question by considering that rather diffuse area of research that can
only loosely be gathered under the heading of African women's studies. For pragmatic
reasons, in what follows, women's studies is defined inclusively as studies
of women, studies by women, and studies for women, rather than limiting consideration
to studies which are all three of these. This is because the link to the women's
movement is no longer as clear and concise as historians of women's studies
in Europe and North America would have us believe it used to be. More pertinently,
there are good grounds for supposing that African women's studies are undergoing
their own distinct evolution.
Women's studies have emerged more recently in Africa, with significant numbers
of African women really only developing interest in the 1980's. Prior to this
virtually all studies of African women were carried out by Western researchers
on anthropological forays into the largely untouched territory of African women's
lives (see eg. Paulme 1963, Rosaldo and Lamphere 1974, reviews by Wipper 1972,
1988). The earliest anthropological studies were purportedly apolitical rather
than feminist, but since the 1970's, anthropological studies of African women
have increasingly been influenced by the concerns of the women's movement. Nonetheless,
it is clear that they have remained studies of 'Other' women, if not studies
of 'woman as Other' (de Beauvoir 1972).
In the middle of the 1990's it is important to assess the extent to which this
legacy has persisted: to what extent can we say that women's studies carried
out in Africa now emanate from African as opposed to external and Western interests
and forces? If we decide that the answer to this question varies from one place
to another, then we might put the question another way and ask: what are the
conditions which bestow distinctive characteristics on African women's studies?
We can no longer disregard the local and regional influences on this growing
body of thought. Today growing numbers of African scholars of both sexes are
involved in studies of women and gender relations, carrying out work far removed
from the early feminist anthropological studies of women . However, the extent
to which these are merely studies of women, as opposed to feminist studies deserves
some attention.
Although we can link the genesis of women's studies in Africa to the rise of
the women's movement internationally, it would be fallacious to insist that
African women's studies are generated exclusively by regional or national women's
movements. Other factors are clearly at play. Amongst these are the influence
of the development industry, national and subregional political conditions,
the crisis in African education and the emergence of state feminism. All of
these make it pertinent to ask whether African women's studies can be said to
have emerged in the service of African feminism in the same way that say North
American or European women's studies are said to have emerged as the intellectual
wing of a more widespread women's movement . So, what kind of linkage can be
traced between African feminism and African women's studies? Very often it seems
that this potentially transformational field of study runs the risk of being
reduced to an expedience deployed by undemocratic regimes seeking legitimacy,
or a donor-driven phenomenon irrelevant to the democratisation process. This
in turn leads us to pose a strategic question: what can be done to strengthen
the links that do exist between African women studies and the African women's
movement, and so to ensure that African women's studies emanate from the collective
concerns and interests of African women?
The reticence of the African middle class towards the idea of women's liberation
has meant that only an intellectual minority of this class have overtly embraced
feminism, articulating the oppressed situation of African women in political
terms. For the most part the African intelligentsia has preferred to dismiss
feminism as something alien and Western, to regard the international women's
movement as resulting from the activities of a covey of sexually abnormal, man-hating
eccentrics far removed from the concerns of 'real' African women. The 'real'
African woman of the collective imagination is content with her subordinate
position as wife, mother and beast of burden. She is passive in the face of
abuse, tolerant of all forms of infidelity; her only real ambition is to retain
respectability by labouring for the maintenance of a stable marriage and family
and seeing to the satisfaction of her husband's desires (see e.g. Babangida
1988).
Concern over the marginalisation of women in African societies only really took
firm root in the consciousness of Africans when the decade for women ushered
in a discourse which did not challenge the gross inequalities of prevailing
gender relations, under the rubric of 'women in development'. WID, as it became
known is able to avoid directly challenging patriarchy and capitalism and demanding
the confrontation of women's oppression, instead targetting women as a group
to be 'integrated into development'. Under this rubric, governments of whatever
political colour are called upon to mobilise women for their vaguely defined
development agenda, in the name of the equally vague notion of national interest.
This call gave rise to the establishment of regional and national governmental
machineries for women all over the region, ranging from women's desks in ministries
of social welfare, to departments of women's affairs, to the grandly named ministries
for women and development. Indeed many of these high-profile structures were
pioneered in Africa, and became a source of regional pride (see Snyder and Tadesse
1995). However, so far there is little evidence that government structures for
women have become effective vehicles for the articulation and defense of women's
collective concerns and interests.
In contrast to the conservative tone of women in development (WID) discourses,
the long involvement of women in the radical politics of the region has given
rise to a more subversive tradition of militancy with clearly feminist elements.
As early as the 1920's, Egyptian women the nationalist movement had formed an
autonomous organisation, the Egyptian Feminist Union, and were producing their
own magazine (L'Egyptienne) . However, it was more typical for women to throw
their support behind male-led struggles than to organise autonomously to fight
for more equal gender relations. During the 1950's Ghanaian women rallied around
Nkrumah's calls for mass mobilisation, and Kenyan women took to the bush as
fighters and played key roles in support of the Land and Freedom Army. During
the 1960's Algerian women joined the National Liberation Front (FLN) to smuggle
weapons and explosives and carry out intelligence work against the French, Josina
Machel formed the first women's unit in the FRELIMO guerilla force and Angolan
women responded to Augustino Neto's call to resist the Portugese, to name only
a few of the examples enriching African history. Women's involvement in African
liberation struggles became a favoured subject for feminist scholars during
the 1970's and 1980's, hence the documentation of numerous historical examples
of female militancy across the region, not so much amongst the elite as amongst
ordinary women in both rural and urban communities (see eg. Amadiume 1987, Urdang
1989, Walker 1991, Manuh 1991a).
During the 1970's, the domination of international fora by Western women with
at best charitable attitudes to women from the capitalist periphery increasingly
came under challenge. A small number of highly educated African women entered
the fray, protesting against their being marginalised, and demanding that their
voice be heard. At the intellectual level, it was made clear that African women
were no longer content to merely be the objects of study, whose situation was
used to test and verify theories conceptualised elsewhere, by Western women
scholars whose concerns and preoccupations often differed from their own.
With the establishment of the Association of African Women for Research and
Development (AAWORD) in 1977, African feminist intellectuals sought to institutionalise
their presence, and so to articulate the agenda of African feminism by facilitating
research and activism by African women scholars. Early in its existence AAWORD
facilitated workshops on methodology, women and rural development, reproduction,
the mass media and development assistance. Despite these promising beginnings,
and for reasons that cannot be detailed here, AAWORD has so far not been very
successful in acheiving its goals, or in bringing together the growing numbers
of African women scholars now involved in women's studies and gender research
within and beyond the region.
In the absence of a viable regional forum however, a series of nationally-based
initiatives have given autonomous voice to African women scholars, amongst these
the Women's Research and Documentation Centre at Ibadan University, The Development
and Women's Studies group at the University of Ghana, the Women Research and
Documentation Project at the University of Dar-Es-Salaam, the gender unit at
Eduardo Mondlane University in Mozambique, and several others in the process
of formation. A number of primarily activist projects have also generated new
understandings of women's realities, among these the Zimbabwe Women's Action
Group, Women in Nigeria, the Tanzanian Media Women's Association, and Zambian
women working on woman abuse. There has also been a proliferation of regional
and subregional projects and networks working on gender issues, of which the
Women and Law in Southern Africa project has perhaps been the most dynamic to
date. A number of university courses have also been established over the years,
but a great many of these have remained under-staffed, under-resourced and marginal,
often depending on the efforts of individual faculty members and a high degree
of voluntarism (eg those at Ahmadu Bello University in Zaria, Nigeria, Makerere
in Uganda, and at the Universities of Addis Ababa, Zimbabwe and most recently,
Malawi).
In keeping with this situation, it is true to say that most of the material
published within the region has not been generated within any autonomous African
feminist forum. Instead, most of it has been either undertaken by scholars visiting
from more affluent places, or by individual African scholars, often operating
under extremely difficult conditions. Some work under the auspices of national
universities, sometimes assisted by the support of international donors. Others
are only able to carry out research in unequal collaboration with Western scholars
who bring in the funds. A great many other would-be-researchers remain unresourced,
available to service international agencies as assistants. The most foolhardy
embark on unsponsored field work and produce research reports that never make
it into publication, but lie gathering dust on office shelves.
It seems fair to say that although African women have long been favoured as
objects of study within women's studies, perhaps a result of many of the early
feminist scholars having background in anthropology, it has taken somewhat longer
for African women's studies - studies by African women, for African women -
to develop. Combined with the dismal decline of African universities over the
last two decades, it has been difficult to sustain the material base of the
research community and its intellectual autonomy, let alone open up new areas
of study.
CODESRIA's 1991 seminar on Gender Analysis was the first regional gathering
to include both men, who treated the issues with varying degrees of seriousness,
and women (see Imam, Mama and Sow forthcoming). Heated debates culminated in
participants acheiving some consensus that gender research was a legitimate
enterprise to engage in, and one which had already yielded a body of knowledge
and methodological innovations of value to African social science in general.
It is still true to say that a disproportionate amount of the internationally
available research on African women and gender relations is that carried out
by Western scholars, often guided by philosophical, theoretical and methodological
concerns that emanate from Western rather than African feminism. This is particularly
evident when we consider the publication lists of the major international publishing
houses. It is significantly less evident from the listings of in-house research
and publications produced in local research institutions and universities for
here we see that there is a burgeoning interest in women's studies that is being
spearheaded by African women scholars. This is remarkable in view of the impoverished
and declining condition of so many African academic institutions.
The following essay considers women's studies and gender research conducted
in and on Africa during the last six years, regardless of the race or origin
of the individual scholars. Needless to say one cannot help being cognizant
of the fact that unequal power relations exist between Western and African scholars,
as much within gender research and women's studies as elsewhere. The aim of
this review is to stimulate and inspire the production of more and higher quality
work in the field of African women's studies and gender research. In so doing
I assume that encouraging more African scholars to undertake and engage in research
and publication in this area is the best way of doing this. Not only can indigenous
scholars bring local understanding of the subtleties and nuances of our diverse
and rapidly changing realities to bear in theorising and knowledge production,
but the possibilities of conducting academic work with intrinsic value to the
communities under study are far greater if such scholarship is indigenously
grounded. No doubt anthropology has generated a great many insights into so-called
primitive societies; even so, the acheivements of anthropologists are seldom
compared to those of Marx or Freud or Foucault - all of whom have developed
their theory in reference to a detailed understanding of the societies they
knew best. When Africans study Africa, not only are the conclusions they draw
about African societies often different from those reached by others, as Diop's
historiography or Hountoundji's philosophy indicate, but their theoretical and
philosophical relevance to the region and to world scholarship is likely to
be more profound (e.g. Diop 1974 & 1978 , Hountoundji 1983).
In discussing the rather wide-ranging selection of material gathered for this
review, I concentrate on drawing out the main preoccupations and theoretical
advances in each area of interest. In the final section I examine the extent
to which gender research and women's studies in Africa successfully reflect
the African feminist agenda of transforming gender relations in the direction
of greater equity.
My initial literature searches revealed a vast number of publications released
over the last five years. A significant proportion of these are reports produced
by international agencies and aid organisations, notably the International Bank
for Reconstruction and Development (IBRD) better known as the World Bank, the
various United Nations agencies and other multilateral and bilateral agencies.
These I have not included in this review. Instead I have limited my consideration
to publications from universities, research organisations and those nongovernmental
agencies involved primarily in research (like the Centre for Basic Research
in Uganda, CODESRIA and AAWORD). My coverage is thematic rather than comprehensive,
and is confined to materials published in the English-speaking world. I leave
to others the task of carrying out similar studies of French, Portugese and
Arabic publications in this wide and changing field.
To make discussion coherent, I have found it expedient to group the material
into a number of areas. This does not mean that these areas are distinct. For
example it is apparent that many publications concerned with sexuality could
be grouped readily under the heading of health and reproduction or under cultural
studies. Sex work could come under sexuality, but I chose to place it under
work since the most insightful research on the subject looked at it as an economic
activity. Where the discussion demands, items are referred to under more than
one heading. The three major divisions I finally decided to use are as follows:
I.Women and the State, to include governance, politics, nationalism, liberation
movements and structures for women.
II. Culture: religion, sexuality, identity and life history studies.
III. Work and economy: urban and rural, formal and informal sectors, domestic
labour and sex work.
Each section comprises a discussion of the literature reviewed in the light
of the concerns raised by way of introduction. This is intended both to indicate
the state of the art and to identify areas for further work, particularly by
scholars based within the African region.
I conclude with a brief consideration of the future of African women's studies
and gender research in the region and the implications for African feminism.
II.WOMEN, POLITICS, AND THE STATE
Precolonial states
Very few historical studies of the role of African women in precolonial African
states appear to have been conducted over the last five years. This has helped
to perpetuate the general paucity of information and understanding of gender
relations and women's lives in that period. Even prior to this, information
has been often been as much mythological as factual. Nontheless the cultural
and psychological importance of well-known historical figures like 16th century
Amina of Zazzau and the 18th century Nzinga of Angola, is evident in the evolving
feminist consciousness of African women. Awareness of this must lie behind the
publication of accessible collections of profiles of eminent women in history
for school or university use (eg Sweetman 19 , and more recently Awe 1992).
A number of earlier studies emphasized the complementarity of sex roles in what
they describe as 'dual-sex systems' of government. This thesis put forth the
argument that the European colonial state excluded African women from playing
hitherto important and valued roles in political life (eg Okonjo 1983, Arhin
1983, Amadiume 1987), a thesis which must be viewed more critically today in
the light of the evidence that in precolonial systems too, most women were subordinate
to most men (e.g. Manuh 1991a).
Musisi (1991) provides us with a rare study of the relationship between women,
polygyny and the state in precolonial Buganda. She confronts the methodological
challenge of relying on limited information, undertaking a reinterpretation
of the available accounts, both ethnographic and biographical, written by men.
these she supplements with interviews with 'the last wife of nineteenth century
royalty'. Her study reveals how political structures both shape and are shaped
by the marital and gender relations of the ruling class, particularly by the
'grand polygyny' practiced by the political elite. State formation coincided
with increased social inequality, and a deterioration in women's power was one
aspect of this. Nontheless, her research demonstrates the involvement of Baganda
women in state formation, not only as mothers of kings and king-makers, but
also as providers of political balance and cementers of alliances. While very
few women wielded much real power (notably princesses, who were also exempted
from marriage), a great many functioned as objects of exchange in relationships
between men and groups of men. This study indicates not only how much can be
learned from studies of how precolonial gender relations affected and were affected
by politics and statecraft, but that the method of reanalysing existing data
from a gendered perspective is a viable one which can open up this neglected
area of historiography (see also Mikell's 1989 paper on the role of women in
the Akan kingdoms).
Even the most recent publications on ancient and precolonial Africa do supply
little detailed information on the roles of non-royal women in politics and
statecraft. Because of the focus on the few exceptionally powerful women who
have invariably been members of the feudal aristocracies, one might be forgiven
for gaining the impression that ordinary women in general were politically unimportant
in many African societies. However, earlier historical studies suggest that
no such conclusion is warranted in the absence of further empirical research
on the subject (Leith-Ross 1939, Okonjo 1983).
Colonial States
Studies of the colonial period are far more numerous. Much of this work initially
set out to counter the imperialist claim that colonialism improved the condition
of African women, hitherto living as slaves and beasts of burden at the mercy
of virulently patriarchal traditional cultures. What has been revealed is a
far more complex scenario, in which transformations in gender relations have
not only been mediated by class, ethnic and cultural factors, but have also
varied widely across Africa and between different forms and stages of colonialism.
Colonial states appear not to have ever resolved the administrative, legal and
social problems posed by the fact that whereas the state required certain things
of men and set about exploiting and extracting these, African societies have
always comprised both men and women. The resulting confusion is reflected in
the contradictory official attitudes towards the presence of women, particularly
apparent in the administration of urban areas. Here we see that periods of tolerance,
during which women settled in the towns performing various tasks which usefully
provided all manner of social services to men recruited to live and work in
labour compounds, have been interrupted by the harsh imposition of decrees and
edicts designed to remove women from the towns (White 1990, Schmidt 1991, Barnes
1992). Clean-up campaigns sought to selectively remove women viewed as disreputable,
explicitly those engaged in liquor brewing and selling and the provision of
sexual services. Yet, the virtual absence of social and welfare provisions meant
that removing even targetted groups of women also undermined the informal systems
that sustained the cheap labour pool on which the colonial state relied. Writing
on Zimbabwe (then Southern Rhodesia) Schmidt (1991) uses detailed evidence to
argue that there was deliberate connivance between African patriarchs who felt
that women were 'getting out of control' and colonial authorities for whom the
control of women's and children's labour by African men was necessary for both
the establishment and consolidation of colonial rule. What is clear is that
African and European men shared the idea that African women were inferior beings
who should be kept under male control. Consequently, both were disturbed by
the growing tendency of women to exercise greater mobility and to flee the tyranny
and drudgery of life in the homesteads, something that is clearly reflected
in the numerous recorded complaints to the authorities between 1910 and the
1930's. In her book, Schmidt details various ways in which inflexible customary
laws were developed so as to coerce women into staying with their husbands,
highlighting the way in which
...indigenous and European structures of patriarchal control reinforced and
transformed one another, evolving into new structures and forms of domination
(1991:734)
Barnes 1992 takes a slightly different position, emphasising the ambivalence
of a colonial state which provided few services for the indigenous workforce,
and therefore ultimately relied on the services provided by African women in
the towns and mine compounds. Although she is reluctant to support Schmidt's
(op cit) thesis of an 'unholy alliance' between patriarchies, Barnes (op cit)
too draws our attention to the disapproval of women's mobility and the 'immorality'
that both African and European men associated with their presence. The contradictory
policies that were deployed in colonial efforts to allow some categories of
women and yet remove others from urban areas reflected a deeper struggle over
the appropriation of women's labour.
Literature on this period highlights the way in which the colonial era, accompanied
by the introduction and consolidation of capitalism, saw a gradual commodification
of gender relations. The tradition of lobola for example, changed from being
symbolic to becoming an important source of cash which they could rely upon
to pay taxes and other expenses. This was the case until their daughters started
moving to the towns and selling their services directly to men, keeping the
money themselves. Documenting the shifts in policy over time, Barnes (op cit)
concludes that in this contradictory policy climate, the constant resourcefulness
of women produced an administratively insoluble situation. In the end, a great
many women retained their mobility, thereby gaining some control over the fruits
of their labour under hostile circumstances.
Studies of the actual role of women in colonial government have until recently
been rare. Denzer (1989) provides us with a study of women's employment in colonial
government service, in Nigeria between 1862-1945. Here women were largely deprived
of access to education, something she attributes to the fact that 'Nigerian
and British attitudes concerning female roles had much in common' (1989:6).
Once women did start formal schooling, there was a slow incorporation of women
into very restricted areas of government service - women could only be employed
in the positions of nurse, lady physician, school mistress, education superintendent
or confidential secretary. Even in these select areas, women were denied access
to any position requiring them to exercise authority over men, a policy justified
on the basis that the idea would be too alien to Africans. So began the institutionalised
gender segregation that has affected the employment of women in government -
the largest formal employer - to date. Even the nursing profession was dominated
by Nigerian men until 1949, when a policy to replace them with more women was
introduced. Denzer catalogues the pioneering careers of the individual women
who did work in government during the colonial period.
Both Manuh (1991) and Perbi (1992) reveal a similar pattern of gender segregation
in colonial Ghana, with even the most highly qualified women being refused entry
to the administrative class of civil servants, and those employed being expected
to resign once they married or got pregnant.
Similar studies pulling out the available data in a range of African countries
would be of great benefit to our analyses and understanding of the gender dynamics
pervading contemporary African states, and highlighting some of the longstanding
obstacles to women's equal participation in governance today.
National Liberation
Studies of women's participation in national liberation and independence movements
have been more numerous than those of women in colonial states. One wonders
if this reflects the identification of feminism with other liberation movements?
If early studies were optimistic about the potential for the transformation
of gender relations through women's involvement in national liberation struggles
(Urdang 1970, Mies and Reddock 1982), research conducted in the 1980's has more
often reflected disappointment that the fruits of liberation appear not to have
been equally shared between the genders, Algeria and Zimbabwe being the most
obvious examples.
In the last six years these have been only slightly tempered by more mature
assessments of how far the exigencies of war can be expected to translate into
women's equality once the war is over, and other forms of subversion take over
(eg. Urdang 1989, Lazreg 1990, 1994). Incisive analyses of the gender politics
of women's participation in either the army or the armed struggle dispense with
the notion that picture-poster images of women carrying guns herald women's
liberation (Cock 1992). History has taught us that participation in armed struggle
does not guarantee gender equality in peacetime, with commentators on Zimbabwe
drawing our attention to the harassment and humiliations experienced by former
freedom fighters disparaged on the basis they are said not to make 'good wives'.
Urdang's (1989) study of post-independence Mozambique catalogues the way in
which post-war reconstruction and development were being hampered by South African-backed
sabotage. Here, economic catastrophe has followed the war and undermined the
struggle for change. These generally unfavourable factors nothwithstanding,
she also discusses the loss of momentum with regard to women's liberation, specifically
noting a number of opportunities missed by the official Organisation of Mozambican
Women (OMM). Never an autonomous movement, the OMM appears to have offered rearguard
support for the ruling party and concentrated its efforts on mobilising women
for political support and economic production, that is, in rather less than
revolutionary areas. From her account, even the famous Frelimo Women's Detachment
founded by Josina Machel in the 1960's appears to have been more of a ploy to
shame men into fighting than anything else, given that women who joined up were
deployed not as combat troops, but rather as porters, caterers and providers
of other support services (Urdang 1989). With apartheid South Africa supporting
RENAMO during the period of her research, actual transformation of gender relations
was clearly being subsumed in the struggle to survive, with the heady promises
and commitments to the liberation of women which were made in the earlier period
remaining unfulfilled.
Lazreg's analysis of gender and politics in colonial Algeria (1990) notes that
the French had an obsessive preoccupation with Islam. In popular reactions against
this, Islamic conservativism became a key aspect of Algerian self-identity.
Similarly, their repeated attempts to symbolically appropriate Algerian women
(e.g by unveiling them on public stages) alongside appropriation of the Algerian
nation, has had persistent undermining effects on Algerian gender politics,
effects only partly mitigated by the heroism that women demonstrated during
the war. Even then the FLN's definition of women's tasks was based on the conventional
sexual division of labour, allocating to women the tasks of lending support
to combatants (male), information, liaison and supply work, sheltering militants
from the police and assisting the families of guerillas and prisoneers (Lazreg
1990, 1994 Tlemcani 1992). Nontheless, as these writers point out, even this
somewhat limited participation in the war marked such a radical break with tradition,
that it has not been without influence in postindependence politics.
Post Independence States
I have noted elsewhere that the constitutional and legal status of women and
the level of women's participation in governance are often taken as key indicators
of the general level of democracy in a society (Mama 1995a). Because of the
history of women's involvement in the independence struggle waged across the
region, in Africa it is also taken as a measure of the extent to which the promises
of nationalism have been fulfilled. Since the UN Decade for Women (1975-1985)
and the rise of a highly articulate international women's movement, governments
everywhere have found it expedient to display a certain level of committment
to the participation of women in development. International donor insistence
that attention be given to 'the gender question' has now been incorporated into
the post-Cold-War preoccupation with democratisation. It is in this context
that African governments have lately come under international pressure to become
more democratic. Under the twin rubrics of 'multipartyism' and 'good governance'
international bureacracies have now begun to articulate their disillusionment
with military dictatorships, one-party states and the other male-dominated forms
of authoritarianism which they have for so long financed and supported. Whatever
rhetoric is used, women's involvement in politics and governance is rightly
seen as integral to democratisation. Furthermore, a decade after hosting the
Nairobi conference, African women themselves now expect to play more significant
roles in national politics and public life.
In view of the patriarchal character of colonialism itself, and the correspondingly
high level of women's participation in independence struggles, it is somewhat
ironic that postindependence governments have not made more viable efforts to
involve women at decision-making levels of politics, finance and governance.
Instead, we have a situation in which wealthy Western nations, now operating
as creditors instead of colonial powers, and formerly so disinterested in the
well-being of African women, are one of the main forces pushing African governments
to address themselves to the question of improving women's level of participation.
Indeed, the empirical evidence shows that the vast majority of African women
are still working like beasts of burden in under-renumerated tasks, are still
almost completely excluded from decision-making levels of government, and play
only marginal roles in national politics and public life.
Perhaps it is because women are so marginally involved in government in Africa
that scholars have been slow to examine the gender dynamics in statecraft and
politics. Yet it is precisely in the areas of government, statecraft and politics
that, at least until recently, the bulk of national resources and decision-making
power have been concentrated, and from which women have been largely excluded.
The research that has been carried out on the subject of women and the state
in Africa has not taken women as actors within the state, or looked at their
participation in the public services, administration or policy-making. The influential
collection edited by Parpart and Staudt (1989) primarily addresses the effects
of the colonial and postcolonial state on different aspects of women's lives,
lives which are portrayed as being lived largely outside the auspices of government
and the formal economy. It is generally agreed that the state has acted primarily
as a vehicle for elite male interests, enhancing and extending men's power over
women and offering women little access to ownership of land or means of production,
few avenues for participation in the formal economy, and even less political
power. Other researchers have drawn attention to the means by which women have
struggled to defend and advance their collective and individual interests under
changing conditions (Mbilinyi 1989, Munachonga 1989, Tranberg Hansen 1989, Jacobs
1989, Tsikata 1990, Schmidt 1991, Barnes 1992). Nonetheless, Chazan (1989:186)
feels able to conclude that African women have played no significant role in
statecraft, and have not been able to influence decision-makers in any consistent
manner. She feels that this is why state policies towards them have continued
to be both discriminatory and coercive. Whether or not one agrees with the grim
conclusion that Chazan was able to draw at the end of the 1980's, it is still
worth asking whether the same conclusion could be drawn today?
The early emphasis on the effects of the state on women generated little discussion
of women's overt or covert influence on national politics and policy-making.
This may partly be because the state itself has been conceptualised in fairly
monolithic terms until as recently as the late 1980's. The model of the African
state is that of a powerful leviathan acting on the various groups within society.
With a strongly dominant central state in operation, marginalised social groups
experience the state as oppressive and exploitative, rather than beneficial.
Since the state does not serve their interests, many choose to operate largely
outside the realm of the state, a notion encapsulated in the concept of 'exit'
(Fatton 1989).
More recent work by African feminist scholars has overturned the notion that
women exist largely outside the state, beginning to analyse women's role in
statecraft itself (Tsikata 1989, Manuh 1993, Mama 1995a). Generally these studies
examine the important roles that women and their organisations have played in
support of nationalist movements and political parties, but bemoan their lack
of success in effecting changes in gender politics and advancing women's interests.
Tsikata's study targets women's political organisations in Ghana, providing
us with a critical and clear-sighted analysis of how it is that, despite the
impressively high level of activity, these have not been able to tackle the
important problems faced by women in Ghana. This failure is attributed to:
the unfavourable political climate for independent struggles; the political character and practice of the organizations in question; and weaknesses arising from the lack of a tradition of independent political organization in the country (Tsikata 1989:73-74)
Tsikata documents a pattern of co-option of women's organisations by the ruling
groups - first by Nkrumah's Convention People's Party and more recently by the
Provisional National Defence Council under Rawlings. She concludes that for
women's political organizations to outlive the ruling regime, and to be more
effective vehicles for women's political as well as social interests, would
require a change in the political culture. Such a change would favour independent
organisation and the pursuit of objectives emanating from the concrete conditions
of ordinary women's lives, rather than objectives thought up by a leadership
representing ruling political interests.
Manuh (1993) also writing about Ghana, analyses relations between women, society
and the state under the rule of the PNDC. She comes to similar conclusions regarding
the need for greater independence of women's organisation. In fact, Manuh's
analysis of the women's movement concludes that this has not so far engaged
in the necessary questioning of social structures and unequal gender relations.
Instead it has continued to mobilise women as another support base for a ruling
regime seeking its own consolidation and legitimacy.
Nzomo (1993) concludes Khasiani and Njiro's (1993) collection on the Kenyan
women's movement in similar vein, describing the movement as 'muzzled and toothless'.
She observes that despite their numerically high membership, the Women's Bureau
(MYWO) and the National Council of Women of Kenya (NCWK) have been ineffective
in empowering women and advancing their participation in decision-making. She
attributes this to the fact that these organisations are controlled by conservative
leaders who have consistently supported the ruling regime.
Likewise, Abdallah (1993) also decries the failure of women's organisations
to address issues of gender subordination in Nigerian society, or to challenge
the conservative agenda of government programmes like the Better Life Programme
instituted under the Babangida regime. 'Military regimes' she writes ' are by
their nature repressive and undemocratic and cannot therefore undertake responsibility
for the liberation of any sector or group in society' (1993: 32).
Mama (1995a), also writing on Nigeria, analyses the emergence, not of a women's
movement, mass-based or otherwise, but of a femocracy. This she defines as a
feminine autocracy paralleling and servicing a persistent military dictatorship,
and advancing a highly conservative brand of gender politics in the name of
'women in development'. This argument reaches similarly pessimistic conclusions
about the likelihood of existing organisational forms challenging women's oppression
or advancing women's political, social or economic interests.
What then are the prospects for women's involvement in the state and politics
in the coming years? This is clearly an area for more study. So far, only one
collection of seminar papers (Kabira et al 1993) attempts to consider women's
likely role in democratisation . Following the introduction of multipartyism
in Kenya, it contains useful discussions of the possibilities democratisation
may afford women in the areas of health (Ngechu), reproductive rights (Khasiani),
education (Mukudi; Obura), culture and language (Mukabi-Kabira; Adhiambo-Oduol;
Ngechu), and political life (contributions by Nzomo; Kameri-Mbote et al &
Gachukia). However, there is no critical discussion of whether Kenyan multipartyism
is likely to translate into fully-fledged democracy, something which seems to
be assumed by the contributors. Nor are we informed about the actual involvement
of women in party politics. Nzomo introduces the collection by defining a democractic
political system as 'one which encourages and makes possible the free and voluntary
involvement of the people in the political life of the nation' (Nzomo 1993:7),
noting only approximations of this ideal have ever been acheived. She argues
that women must be involved as much as men for a system to be trully democratic.
Although she cites facts and figures to point out that Kenyan women have been
completely marginalised from politics and public-decision-making, she nontheless
lists a series of strategies for overcoming this history of exclusion. Amongst
these strategies she specifies the need for a strong and autonomous women's
movement, political education and mobilisation and the identification of women
candidates.
Recent research carried out in predominantly Muslim areas of Africa has centred
around comparison of the gender politics of the nationalist period and those
of the contemporary period, during which the rise of Islamist movements has
undermined the dominance of secular and socialist discourses. The struggle between
secular nationalism and Islamism appear to be most pronounced in the Algerian
case (see Lazreg 1990 Knauss 1992, Cheriet 1992, Tlemcani 1992, Baffoun 1994,
Bouatta & Cherifati-Merabtie 1994). It is however, also a key theme in gender-aware
studies of the state and politics carried out in Tunisia (Baffoun 1994), Egypt
(Badran 1994, Shukrullah 1994), Sudan (Hale 1993) and Senegal (Creevey 1993,
Callaway and Creevey 1994).
The main themes of this literature can be illustrated with reference to the
Algerian studies, which are by far the most detailed. Particularly outstanding
is Lazreg's (1990, 1994) work, which furnishes us with a thorough case study
of Algerian women's situation from precolonial times until the present. She
reanalyses the gender politics of the nationalist discourse espoused by the
FLN to highlight the ways in which they accomodated conventional notions of
femininity. She distances herself from the Western feminist analysis which implies
that Algerian women were duped into participating in a revolution which then
betrayed them, providing a more balanced and nuanced understanding of the gender
politics of Algerian nationalism.
During the war, in which over 10,000 women are on record as having worked for
the FLN, mostl were in the civilian service where they performed tasks that
were 'less spectacular, perhaps even tedious, but equally dangerous' (Lazreg
1994: 124), taking charge of food, medical and weapons supplies and the underground
network of sanctuaries, and washing clothes for the fighters. Only 11% of the
military wing were women, mostly serving as nurses. Very few engaged in highly
publicised paramilitary acts of destruction or combat, and it is hard to make
sense of the reluctance showed by the FLN on the question of arming nurses working
in combat zones for their own protection. Casualties were high for both sexes:
as many as one woman in five was either imprisoned or killed by the French during
the war. The fact that more than half of the women registered with the Ministry
of War Veterans who were killed were under twenty five years of age indicates
that many of those who joined up were young, single women who did not have children
they would have had to leave.
Lazreg concludes that priority had to be given to driving out the French, and
in any case, women did not voice concerns that would be considered as 'feminist'
today. Instead they tended to assume that 'they would naturally be recognised
later'(1994:140). These factors, combined with the complete absence of women
in the leadership are used to explain why the FLN failed to take any concrete
steps to redress gender inequality.
At the end of the war, victory was characterised by a restorationist rather
than a revolutionary mood, with young vigilantes, and Mohammed Khider, the leader
of the FLN ushering women back to the kitchens. No women served on the FLN Central
Committee, either during Ben Bella's government (1962-1965) or during Boumediene's
(1965-1978). Nor has any woman ever sat on the National Council of the Revolution.
In 1968, the National Union of Algerian Women, formed in 1962, was incorporated
and subordinated to the FLN (Knauss 1994, Lazreg 1994).
Analysis of Algerian nationalism is followed by an impressively thorough study
of how women have fared under the different regimes that have governed Algeria
since independence. Broadly speaking, after independence, official statements
and documents suggest that FLN government did initially intend to pursue the
gains made by women through their participation in the war, but never went beyond
polemic. The 1964 Charter of Algiers, for example, made general recommendations,
but the only concrete prescriptions for women pertained to widows' pensions.
Lazreg sums up the early 1960's period thus:
'Women, as a group, were seen as necessary to the building of the state, but
as contributors, not participants...Sacrifice, not duty complemented by right,
was the cornerstone of the new state's view of women (Lazreg 1994:146).
Subsequently, the neither the National Charter (1976) nor the constitutions
have committed the state to defending women's rights. Gradually, committments
to socialism have been superceded by a liberalism more concerned with appeasing
the growing Islamic brotherhoods than with challenging them. Until the 1980's,
gender relations provided an uncontested site of compromise.
The Family Code was drafted in the 1970's, but not passed until 1984, largely
because it proved so contentious, not only to women, but also to conservative
and liberal men, for different reasons. For women it heralded the institutionalisation
of the gender inequality that had increasingly been encroaching on their lives
over the previous two decades. Public demonstrations and lobbying made feminist
activity visible for the first time. Women were unable to prevent the passage
of the Code, and the fact that it took this codification of sharia law to draw
women out of their political stupor is telling. However, this setback has also
provoked the emergence of a small but independent women's movement which Lazreg
regards with optimism.
What the afore-mentioned studies of gender politics in predominantly Muslim
African states show is a pattern in which nationalist and secular forces have
repeatedly given ground on gender issues in futile efforts to appease and accomodate
the gathering forces of political Islamists. This they have done by condoning
the reassertion of patriarchal values and institutionalising gender inequality,
often in the name of cultural authenticity.
South African studies on women and gender display the most radical gender politics
in the region. Unapologetic in their commitment to women's liberation, and their
discussion of feminism, South African scholarship displays great awareness of
the failings of African national liberation struggles when it comes to the question
of gender equality. Perhaps because there is a long tradition of activist scholarship
in the region, women scholars here have not hesitated to be critical of the
conservatism that has, at least until recently, characterised the gender politics
of African as well as Afrikaner nationalism. Occasional progressive statements
in favour of women's participation in the struggle notwithstanding, several
authors have drawn attention to the unreconstructed practice of politics: the
exclusion of women from leadership positions within the nationalist movement,
the view that women's liberation is a divisive issue that must only be considered
insofar as it facilitates and remains subordinate to, national liberation (Hassim
1991, McClintock 1991, McFadden 1992). Until the end of the 1980's at least,
it was pertinent to pose the question:
'Why has the oldest anti-colonial struggle on the African continent not moved beyond the conventional nationalist position on gender?' (McFadden 1992:512)
Several researchers have homed in on the way in which ideologies of motherhood
have been mobilised, not just by conservative forces such as the Afrikaner nationalist
organisations and the Inkatha Freedom Party, but also by the African National
Congress (e.g. Gaitskell and Unterhalter 1989, McClintock 1991). In focussing
on one of women's roles to the exclusion of others, all such ideologies fix
women in accordance with their biological proclivities, and ignore the fact
that, important though motherhood may be to many women, not all women are mothers,
and many women are other things besides the producers of subsequent generations
of Zulu, Boers or African nationalists.
South African studies of gender and national politics have examined the momentuous
changes of the last few years from a gender perpective. Whereas some retain
a healthy cynicism with respect to the prospects for women in a new and democratic
South Africa, at least one analyst finds grounds for optimism. Seideman (1993)
draws our attention to the structure of the South African economy, in which
over one third of African women are were employed in the formal economy by 1985,
making South African women the most proletarianised in the region. She also
extols the high level of independent political organisation by women at local
and community levels, and the extent to which feminist activists within the
nationalist movement have managed to push the debate on gender forward and into
the public eye over the last few years, despite the historical conservatism
of the ANC Women's League. In analysing the changes within COSATU and the ANC,
she concludes that since the beginning of the 1990's there has been a qualitative
change in gender politics, not emanating so much from the political leaders
as from community organisations and rank and file women. Issues formerly ignored
by the mainstream - domestic relations, sexual harassment and women's representation
in decision-making - are no longer deferred quite as easily as they have been
in the past. In 1991 for example, the ANC Women's League, long viewed as a 'ladies
auxiliary organisation' chose to insist on a 30% quota of women to be elected
to the national executive committee of the ANC. The fact that rank and file
men, comprising 83% of the membership successfully opposed the motion until
it was withdrawn does not detract from the fact that the issue was raised, and
provoked the most heated debate at the entire conference. Her evidence suggests
that in the South African case at least:
'...feminist demands within the South African nationalist movement emanate not from a few educated women or the national leadership but from within precisely the popular base from which the ANC draws its support' (Seideman 1993: 315).
More generally, scholarship on women, gender and the African state over the
last five years shows a growing attention to the dynamic interaction between
state and society, and between competing groups within civil society. Even though
the concept of the state is still monolithically patriarchal, society begins
to be viewed as comprising men and women, with women's actions and responses
having unforseen effects on the male-dominated state, and the relationship between
women and the state combining various degrees of autonomy and reciprocity. This
change in emphasis is partly an effect of the different disciplinary and methodological
influences that studies of women and the state display. Not being limited to
macrosociological methods, women's studies have introduced microsociological
techniques, and these have in turn brought new insights. Even the most oppressed
and marginalised groups are seen as actors rather than passive recipients of
whatever the state metes out to the people. Key features and dimensions of state-society
relations - the relationships between what is official and what is unofficial,
formal and informal and between the centre and the periphery - are all illuminated
through the lens of gender.
The state itself must then be viewed as a site of contestation, an entity embedded
in complex relationships of reciprocity and conflict with different social groups.
The 'woman question' has generally been treated opportunistically and exploitatively
by insecure regimes on the one hand wishing to retain creditability within the
international community, but on the other, seeking to authenticate themselves
with populist appeals to anachronistic notions of masculinity. With this more
nuanced understanding of state processes comes an extension of the boundaries
of what is deemed to be political, which in turn demands an expansion of the
African political science agenda. No longer can political science be limited
to the study of the formal and public sphere, but instead it must also address
the dialectics of private and public life, of the household and the community,
of the formal and the informal.
There are also great gaps in the literature. While a great many seminars have
been held on women and politics, or women and democracy, these have tended to
focus on multipartyism and mobilising women to run and vote in elections. Meanwhile,
a subject as pertinent as gender and militarism remains neglected. Nor are there
many studies on the participation of women in the purported clan and ethnic
disturbances. What role have women played in the destruction of states, and
what will a gender analyses of the genocidal regimes in central Africa uncover?
Media footage suggests that Liberian politics is an all-male affair, but is
this indeed the case, and if it is, where are the women of Liberia and what
are they doing?
The above mentioned studies of gender politics in contemporary African states
all agree that women's interests would best be advanced by the existence of
national, independent and united women's movements. Several draw attention to
instances where this has been an effective check on the unmitigated assertion
or re-assertion of patriarchy. The analyses put forward however are more informative
on what has gone before and what should be avoided than on current situations
and how women's involvement might be strengthened. Politically, African women
are no longer novices, but it seems they still have much to overcome.
A significant proportion of the research on African women carried out over the last five years falls under the cross-disciplinary rubric of cultural studies, looking at the various aspects of women's lives and their role in the production and reproduction of culture. This interest may be partly due to the fact that many more women social scientists have backgrounds in anthropology, history or sociology rather than in the drier disciplines of economics, political science or international relations. It can also be traced to the methodological innovations of women's studies which have favoured the use of ethnographic methods, biographies and oral histories, all methods more amenable to holistic and cross-disciplinary analyses, all of which are easily accomodated under the umbrella of cultural studies. A third possible cause of the popularity of cultural studies lies in the fact that 'culture' has long been identified as that pervasive terrain on which patriarchy manifests, resisting change and perpetuating women's oppression. Changing the longstanding cultural practices - the traditions - which sustain and reproduce gender inequality is therefore fundamental to the agenda of women's movements worldwide, and research is often viewed as a necessary prelude to such change. The reverse is also true: it is where attempts are made to change cultural practice that the status quo most clearly springs into view and tradition asserts itself most strongly. This means that feminist activism itself has often led to the revelation and reassertion of patriarchal culture, reinforcing the choice of culture as a worthy target of feminist scholarship. Although ethnographic work has often been sensitive to gender, early studies were often imbued with patriarchal biases resulting from the male dominance of the discipline, the reliance on male informants and the preconceptions that researchers from patriarchal Western societies carried over into their analysis. The earliest studies of African women however, (eg Paulme 1963) introduced a focus on women's power in traditional societies which many more recent studies have continued. Cultural studies in and on Africa have begun to address the dynamism, diversity and complexity of gender relations undergoing rapid change as well as producing detailed analyses of the changes wrought in women's lives and realities by a range of political, economic and social forces.
Ideologies of Domesticity
In a somewhat different vein, several studies and at least one major collection
(Hansen 1992) have examined the colonial attempts to instill Western notions
of femininity and domesticity in African women, efforts intended to ensure the
creation of a select cadre of 'suitable wives' for that class of African men
entering in colonial serviceas clerks and junior adminstrators. Several of the
contributions to Walker's (1990) collection address the role of mission settlements
and elite schools in furthering this end in South Africa. Hunt (1990) documents
the social clubs were set up to domesticate 'native' women the Belgian Congo.
These organisations were not explicitly designed government agencies: they emerged
instead out of the 'good intentions' of the wives of missionaries and colonial
officials (see also Musisi 1992 on Uganda, Denzer 1992 on Yorubaland, Ranchard-Nilsson
1992). Nevertheless, their agenda was clearly compatible with the interests
of the colonial state, which welcomed a development which was to see at least
a section of African womanhood being trained in the social graces of Victorian
fashion and etiquette, cake making, needlecraft and flower arranging. The ideology
of domesticity was also a way of ensuring that women's reproductive work remained
outside the public sphere, so enabling the appropriation of labour that had
been so integral to the development of Western capitalism. That this sometimes
resonated with African traditions of female domesticity is amply demonstrated
in the literature on African households (see for example Mack's (1992) discussion
of harem domesticity in Kano, Nigeria).
Religion
Religion has been a popular subject of study, presumably because religion, like
custom, is a major vehicle for gender ideologies that oppress women. Feminists
are in agreement that, on the balance, all the major religious texts have provided
justifications for the oppression of women and assertions of male superiority,
whether one regards this as intrinsic to the texts themselves, or attributes
it to men's success in appropriating these texts. Perhaps because of the predominance
of Western scholars interested in societies different from their own, more studies
have addressed themselves to Islam than to Christianity within gender research.
Fewest of all are studies of the role of women in African traditional belief
systems (but see e.g. Amadiume 1987). Major texts on African philosophy make
little reference to gender (Hountoundji ), although it is often suggested that
women were more powerful in these than in the more recently arrived monotheistic
faiths (Diop ).
The preference for studying the effects of Islam on women may stem from the
widely held assumption that Islam has generally been more oppressive to women
than other religions, an idea that has gained currency with the contemporary
proliferation of islamist movements which re-assert conservative gender ideologies.
This assumption is questioned from time to time, but not really laid to rest
by their evidence, in Callaway and Creevey's (1994) book The Heritage of Islam.
Addressing itself to 'women, religion and politics in West Africa', this major
work draws primarily on data collected by Creevey and Callaway in Senegal and
Nigeria respectively, with occasional reference to other countries in the subregion.
The comparative framework they use compares the various forms of Islam practised
in Senegal (Wolof, Serer, Tukulor and Dyola), not with the various forms of
Islam practised in Nigeria, but with the Islamic culture of the Hausa in northern
Nigeria. This creates the impression that Senegalese Islam is relatively favourable
to women, a position which would not had been upheld had they either limited
themselves to an inter-ethnic comparison of say, Tukulor Islam with Hausa Islam,
or compared the various forms of Islam that exist in the two countries . In
defense of Nigerian Islam, one would not challenge their observation the Hausa
Muslim interpretation is amongst the most conservative in Africa, but rather
draw attention to the very different practice of Islam by the very large Yoruba,
Nupe and even non-Northern Hausa communities in Nigeria, not to mention the
Islam practiced amongst the numerous smaller ethnic groups scattered across
the country.
In Senegal, where Islam has been established for longer than amongst the Hausa
Muslims of Northern Nigeria, it has also been tempered by the French insistence
on limiting the influence of Islam on the national body politic. Another distinctive
feature of Senegalese Islam that Callaway and Creevey draw attention to is the
system of brotherhoods, some of which they see as allowing women to play a greater
role in the public affairs than is countenanced among the Muslim Hausa. Although
women are not technically accepted as members of brotherhoods, women do identify
themselves as belonging to these associations. They also consult marabouts about
their problems as often as men if not more, and play active roles in the social
and religious life of their communities.
The strength and coherence of this study lies in way their account centres on
the question of whether religion shapes or reflects society, a question they
pursue in relation to traditional cultures, women's education, their roles in
the formal and informal economies and questions of political empowerment. This
analysis takes us some way beyond the assumption that Islam is responsible for
the oppression of women, generating an interactive account in which the influence
of Islam continuously combines with old and new cultural forces which can, but
by implication need not necessarily, subordinate women. Nontheless, it is clear
that women are far from equal to men even in the 'more progressive' Islamic
context of modern Senegal. Where women have made the greatest advances, it is
not due to Islam, but to the mitigation of the effects of Islam by traditional
cultures which allowed women greater power, access to Western education and
paid employment, or by political or legal conditions which granted women some
rights not granted within Islamic law as it has been interpreted in either context.
The fact that the Senegalese Muslim feminist organisation Yeewi-Yeewi is unrestrained
in the advocation of gender equality bears a marked contrast to the careful
conduct and conservative tone taken by Nigeria's Federation of Muslim Women
(FOMWAN) .
Generally speaking, recent studies of Islam in West Africa (Creevey 1991, Callaway
and Creevey 1994, and Imam 1994) afford us a more nuanced understanding of the
impact of Islam on the lives of specific groups of women - one which acknowledges
that Islam has both undermined and strengthened women's position in society
at different historical moments, but has always had its effect in conjunction
with other variables. In other words, religion does not operate as a determining
factor on its own, and it is therefore virtually impossible to assert whether
a given faith is more or less favourable to women as compared to another.
Other studies have focussed on the corrosive effects of Islamic fundamentalism
on women's situation in various African countries, including the Sudan (Hale
1992), Egypt (Shukrallah 1994), Algeria (Bouatta and Cherifati-Merabtie 1994
) and Tunisia (Baffoun 1994). All these studies draw our attention to the way
in which gender has been a key site for the production and proliferation of
Islamic fundamentalist ideologies. The circumscription and curtailment of women's
activities and visibility, for example, has been a major dimension of militant
Islam in all the countries under study.
Shukrallah (1994) outlines the conditions giving rise to the emergence of the
Egyptian Islamic movement, arguing that the failure of modernisation for the
majority of the people has led to a crisis in nationalist secular discourse.
More than this however, she draws attention to the way in which the leadership
of the nationalist movement compromised on the gender question, never really
upholding their right to be full citizens in the emerging nation-state. It seems
that ever since that time, Egyptian women have faced contradictions between
their status as citizens of a supposedly secular nation-state, and their explicitly
circumscribed status within the umma (religious community). Within conservative
Islamic discourse they are cast as bearers of authenticity, and subjected to
a narrow reified identity.
Also writing on Egypt, Badran (1994) looks at the different discourses positioning
feminists, pro-feminists (women with feminist sympathies who do not wish to
be publicly known as such) and Islamist women, noting that the rise of conservatism
in Egypt occurred during the 1970's, just as second wave feminism was sweeping
other parts of the world. She uses the term 'gender activism' to accomodate
the fact that there are competing discourses on femininity emanating from these
different groups of women. In today's conservative-dominated Egypt, feminists,
most of whom are Muslim, speak with a muted voice and are reluctant to declare
themselves to be proponents of women's liberation, whereas Islamist women are
loudly proclaiming their views on women, and are avaowedly antifeminist. They
disown historically famous women like Huda Sharaawi as morally corrupt, and
insist that women's rights are better protected within Islam, from behind the
veil, as it were. It is their efforts to secure women's rights, as prescribed
by Islam which qualifies them for the term gender activists. They play an important
role in mobilising women for the Islamic movement. It is a situation which is
differs markedly from the 1920's, when Egyptian feminists held the centre of
the public stage within and beyond the boundaries of the nation.
Badran (op cit) perhaps optimistically, argues that a general widening of Islamist
discursive space has allowed the emergence of younger 'Islamist feminists' who
do not reject feminist writings entirely, but read them critically, returning
to the Koran to appropriate the more acceptable elements of feminist thought.
Less scornful of other women's struggles, they call for a movement to liberate
women from within Islam, and engaging in the ideological task of reinterpreting
the Koran.
Boutta and Cherifati-Merabtine 1994) analyse the FIS newspaper El Mounquid as
a way of investigating the representation of women in Algeria's Islamist movement.
Although this organ officially denies the need for any consideration of 'the
woman question' on the basis that 'Islam has provided all rights to the woman'
its pages are nontheless replete with articles prescribing Muslim femininity.
The new 'Muslim woman' is construed in manner which is both detailed and contradictory.
She is simultaneously celebrated as being superior to all other women, and subjected
to a series of taboos, all of which are viewed as leading to depravity and a
return to the ever-threatening Jahilia (pre-Islamic state of ignorance). Like
the Egyptian and other Islamists, the writers of El Mounquid use biological
arguments to justify these taboos: women are the psychological and physical
inferiors of men, born to be wives and mothers, and clothed in the cloth of
honour and purity - the hijab. The authors point out that this simplistic and
static construction of Islamic femininity denies both the diverse realities
that constitute modern women's lives and the collective history in which the
moudjahidates played a heroic role in the war for national liberation.
Hale's work on the Sudanese Islamic movement explores the role of women in the
National Islamic Front (NIF), taking note of the fact that being activists within
it has had some dividends for the elite women who have become main spokeswomen.
She argues that it is clearly not an emancipatory development, but one that
reflects class interests and which is negotiating a new sexual division of labour
which has selectively removed women from prestigious professional positions,
while allowing less privileged women to continue to work in unrewarding menial
capacities, when they have to support their families. It is a renegotiation
which accomodates the realities of an economic crisis which has meant that fewer
men than ever are able to live up to the ideal of keeping their wives at home,
and ensures that women can still be exploitated in marginalised sectors of the
labour market while denying them any significant place in public life.
Arguing in a similar vein, Arlene MaCleod (1991) has conducted a rich and detailed
study of the lives of lower middle class women in Cairo, particularly examining
the conditions which have given rise to the 'new veiling'. In the best methodological
tradition of women's studies, she spent years living and socialising with the
group she interviews in depth, and presents her findings in a clearly-written
and unpretentious manner which allows an intimate level of identification between
reader and researched. Although like Hale, MaCleod has an eye for the contradictions
between Islamist discourse and socio-economic realities, the women in her study
are very clearly not just victims of macrosociological forces, but architects
of their own destinies. The openness of her methodology allows us to comprehend
the deliberate manner in which those who are adopting the new veiling weigh
up their situation and make the choice, invariably as a strategy for attaining
other goals. Here are women who will don the veil because they want to continue
to work outside the home and at the same time remain respectable, in a socially
conservative climate. Furthermore, the veils they wear are modified: no longer
a uniform black cover, the modern veil has become a display of indigenous fashion.
A range of elegant stylistic variations allow a much fuller expression of individuality,
one that is not a mere mimicry of of Western fashion, but culturally grounded.
It is the series of compromises and innovations that the new veiling encompasses
that has led MaCleod to the term 'accomodating protest', which aptly denotes
the constant negotiations and changes that are occuring in urban Egypt at the
present time as a result of unique conjunctions of international and local forces.
Much remains to be investigated regarding the legacies of centuries of Judaeo-Christian
influences in Africa. Christianity has presented itself as uplifting and progressive,
emphasising the role of mission schools in educating and raising the 'heathen'.
In opposition to this view, anti-imperialists and cultural nationalists alike
have argued that the European religion played a key role in the subjugation
of African people, derogating indigenous cultures and instilling a psychology
of self-hatred and contempt for African ways. Gender analysis of the legacies
of Christianity throws new light on the whole debate, revealing a complex and
varied picture in which there were both gains and losses in women's status,
changes which were part and parcel of changes in notions of masculinity and
femininity, the sexual division of labour and in marital and sexual practices.
All of these were inextricably intertwined with the radical transformations
that accompanied the different stages and forms that colonialism took at different
moments and in different places. Not only did the impact of Christianity depend
on what existing gender relations were like, but also on the class and caste
position of the women in question. Exemplary historical studies have been carried
out in South Africa (Meintjes 1990, Hughes 1990 and Gaitskell 1990), using official
records and archival sources to investigate aspects of missionary communities,
schools and church organisations between the 1800's and 1945.
Meintjes (op cit) examines the changes in gender relations in a Wesleyan settlement
in Natal, noting that the doctrine introduced by James Allison, catechist and
missionary, was not passively imbibed by the multiethnic community that constituted
Edendale, but that there was rather a complex synthesis between this and traditional
norms, a synthesis which was largely governed by the exigencies of survival
in a changing colonial economy.
This meant that while the Wesleyans favoured the exclusion of women from work
outside the home, African women were traditionally engaged in heavy agricultural
labour, with the result that women performed a combination of domestic tasks
decreed by Christianity and poorly remunerated farm labour. Boys were taught
wagon-making and masonry, whereas girls would be tutored in the skills required
of 'angels of the house', namely cooking, preserving, making Victorian clothes
and laundering. African women, far from being lifted out of drudgery, then found
themselves combining these additional domestic responsibilities with their traditional
duties of rearing animals, hoeing, weeding, harvesting, food storage, the making
of mattresses and so forth, something undoubtedly facilitated by the emphasis
on duty, subservience and quietude in the home.
Although Christian marriage rites were introduced, African marriages continued
to be governed under customary laws which afforded women the status of minors
under the full control of fathers, then husbands, and on widowhood, husbands
brothers or even their own sons. Those women who worked (often before or after
marriages) invariably found themselves taking in laundry, becoming maids or
seamstresses. As if seeking a positive note, Meintjes also highlights the possibilities
for socialising between women that emerged in church groups, and how they took
pride in their cooking, sewing and other skills and found avenues for self expression
in their homes and elaborate dress styles.
Hughes (op cit) study of the then revolutionary establishment of the first boarding
school for African girls presents fascinating study of both the concern to regulate
the femininity and control the sexuality of the favoured daughters of converts.
African education was almost exclusively maintained by missions and as such
centred around the religion. As a school for the daughters of the African elite,
the Inanda seminary developed an emphasis on academic education rather than
restricting its courses to training suitable for future maids as many other
schools did. Nontheless the perceived options, even for relatively privileged
African women centred around the dominant notion of femininity: they were to
be helpmates to their husbands, teachers or nurses. The conflicts that these
girls experienced and the insights they had into their world are glimpsed through
Hughes' rare use of excerpts taken from school essays.
The highly visible and active participation of women in African church organisations
at times appears to suggest that there are instances of Christianity empowering
African women, an argument taken up by Gaitskell when she concludes her study
of manyanos, the higly popular and highly cohesive women's unions that accompanied
the spread of Christianity to urban areas. Engaging in evangelical and fund-raising
activities, and adopting enthusiastic revivalist style praying and preaching,
these organisations appear to have been partly responsible for the preponderance
of women converts. she discusses the different motivations that men and women
had for converting, suggesting that whereas men may have more often bee seeking
self-improvement, women may have more often been 'refugees' from tradition,
fleeing to mission compounds to avoid forced marriages, escape domestic violence
or avoid the misery of widowhood. However, having converted, women at best received
a 'contradictory package', with their traditional powerlessness being replaced
by subjection to Christian patriarchy and domesticity. It is in this context
that Church unions seem to have offered women both a means of self-expression
and release and a potential means of empowerment, while at the same time introducing
clearly African variants of Christianity.
Studies of the church in contemporary African have continued to show the various
churches having contradictory results for African women, sometimes facilitating
their oppression and sometimes offering a means of protection or even, on occasion,
empowerment, whether through granting women access to Western education, or
through women's direct participation in church activities and networks. Two
recent studies draw attention to the complex interplay of gender and power within
African churches.
Crumbley (1992) for example, looks at the role of women in the indigenous Christian
movement that has given rise to the Aladura churches in Nigeria. Characterised
by the central role of prophet healers, belief in faith healing and the efficacy
of prayer to change material circumstances, by incoporation of features of Yoruba
traditional religion and by belief in the validity of divinely revealed knowledge,
the Aladura churches have proliferated in and beyond West Africa. She looks
at three denominations: the Celestial Church of Christ, The Christ Apostolic
Church and the Church of the Lord-Aladura. Only the last of these allows women
to play leadership roles, having parallel male and female offices at each level
of its structure, and training both prophets and prophetesses. Regarding itself
as a progressive and pace-setting church, the Church of the Lord-Aladura is
radically different from the Christ Apostolic Church and the Celestial Church
of Christ which observe strict menstrual taboos, therefore excluding women from
religious participation for a significant proportion of the month. Women are
furthermore forbidden to speak unless called upon. In discussing the different
'ideologies of impurity' in these different churches, Crumbley reveals the complexities
of cultural analysis which have to take historical and stuctural ambiguities
as well as cultural legacies and the role of ritual into account.
Marshall (1991) analyses the rise to religious and social prominance of the
newer charistmatic or Pentecostalist Christian movement, thousands of new churches
and groups having been set up all over Southern Nigeria. Her analysis links
the personal and social processes of rebirth to the creation of autonomous spaces
which defy existing power monopolies and propogate new power relations, presenting
new opportunities for survival. Despite the doctrinal emphasis on women's primary
obligation being to her family, being a born-again woman does offer some avenues
for empowerment, offering strategies for resisting the demands of powerful men
for sexual favours, and demanding sexual restraint, marital fidelity and monogamy
from male as well as female members of the community. In the context of widespread
commoditisation of sexuality and the profligate habits of urban men, the fact
that a man may be denied sexual favours, or a husband called to account enables
women to regain an exceptional degree of control over their sexuality. Overall
the movement offers ways of replacing disintegrating extended family systems
and patron-client networks with relatively egalitarian and dignified systems
of spiritual solidarity and mutual support, systems equipped with the new spiritual
power of the born-again community, power believed capable of transforming the
social and material world as well as the individual.
Sexuality
Considering that sexuality has been a major area of interest within women's
studies internationally, the first question one asks in surveying the African
work is why there are so few studies of sexuality in contemporary Africa? It
is possible that the historical legacy of racist fascination with African sexuality
has deterred Western researchers. For African scholars, sexuality remains a
minefield few venture into for fear of further jeopardising careers already
endangered as a result of addressing gender issues. The virtual absence of good
research in this field means that we lack an analytical understanding of contemporary
sexual relations in African societies, at a time when one of the worst scourges
ever to sweep the region happens to be sexually transmitted. The resultant problems
of ignorance and prejudice are exacerbated by the fact that the work that has
been carried out has tended to focus on the most problematic aspects of African
sexual behaviour. So it is that we have studies concentrated around the issues
of female genital mutilation, prostitution, population control and disease.
This leaves a great many areas of African sexual culture unresearched since
the early colonial studies of initiation, puberty and marriage rites conducted
within the tribal paradigm, or the coffee-table photographic collections of
Leni Riefenstal and Mirella Ricardi. Analytical studies of the transformations
in the type and form of relationships between the sexes that have accompanied
the wide ranging social, economic and political changes are rare, as are studies
of masculinity, femininity, homosexuality or the changes wrought in these by
industrialisation, urbanisation, militarism, civil war or any aspect of development
and underdevelopment.
In view of the change agenda of feminist-inspired research on women and gender
relations, it is not surprising to find a number of studies addressing traditions
inimical to women. The 1980's saw the publication of several books and reports
detailing the various forms of genital mutilation still being carried out in
various parts of the region (El Sadaawi 1980, Abdalla 1982 El Dareer 1982, Warsame
and Ahmed 1985, Koso-Thomas 1987). It is an area to which African women scholars
have worked hand-in-hand with activist groups to confront the uphill task of
organising against the various forms of female mutilation. It is an onerous
task partly for the historical reason that the colonialists were the first to
proscribe and legislate against these customs in the 1940's and 1950's, with
the result that the issue became linked with colonial represssion. This meant
that nationalists as renowned as Kenyatta proclaimed support for clitoridectomy
on the basis that it was integral to African tradition and morality, a defensive
position which defined progressives who wished to do away with the practice
altogether as 'traitors'. Today cultural nationalists continue to be apologists,
insisting that their ancient traditions have been misunderstood and misrepresented,
notwithstanding recent documentation by indigenous as well as international
scholars.
During the last five years, the genital mutilation of women has continued to
be a major concern of activists in the region, and several major books and articles
have addressed the topic (eg. Hicks 1993, Knudsen 1994, SWDO/AIDOS 1989). Nontheless,
the literature is far from comprehensive, and would be greatly enriched by a
deeper understanding of the cultural conditions under which many these clearly
harmful practices have persisted.
The recent work reflects the continuing concern over the damaging effects of
the various forms of excision and infibulation in the region, and tell of the
various efforts to reduce or eradicate them (eg SWDO 1989). The early tendency
to address the issue under the less controversial health policy paradigm has
been supplemented by studies which pay greater attention to the cultural dynamics
of these practices, particularly the sexual politics underlying them. It is
also now recognised that in addition to sustaining male control over female
sexuality, many women have vested interests in the perpetuation of the custom.
Perhaps the most ambitious study in recent years is that by Hicks (1993) which
focusses on infibulation in Islamic North-East Africa, where the practice of
the more extreme forms of excision and infibulation are most pervasive. Deploring
the lack of comprehensive and systematic data (even in the Horn of Africa where
most of the existing research has taken place) she nontheless sets out to map
the cultural correlates of the practice across 26 infibulating populations and
20 noninfibulating control populations, a sample taken from the 105 groups she
identifies in her targetted area (Chad, Ethiopia, Sudan, Somalia and Eritrea).
Unique in its scope, her use of a diachronous statistical analysis leads her
to isolate and hierarchically order 21 significantly associated variables, and
to identify patterns amongst these, eventually coming up with 8 primary variables
and 5 secondary variables which are compositely associated with the practice
of infibulation. Of primary relevance are: i) wives retaining full membership
in natal group ii) male absenteeism, iii) unstable marriages, iv) low position
of women, v) sheep and goats herded by wives, vi) high brideprices, vii) Islam,
viii) negative correlation with exogamy. Of secondary relevance were nomadism,
a preference for parallel cousin marriage, men being camel and/or cattle owners
and the use of livestock in brideprice payments. Although many of the variables
she isolates can be found individually in other Moslem pastoral populations,
Hicks argues that it is the fact that they are compositely found in infibulating
populations which suggests that further studies will reveal their functional
importance to the practice.
In her discussion of the composite relationships between these variables, Hicks
observes that 'unstable households' relate to the exigencies of differential
mixed herd pasturing, where ecological and domestic instabilities combine to
result in lengthy periods of spouse separation, and where a norm of separate
sleeping arrangments, perhaps combined with the demands of polygamy are all
likely to lead to psychological distance between husbands and wives. With regard
to Islam, she notes that although
'Islam has no relationship to the origin and practice of infibulation, it has functioned, and continues to function, as a vehicle for its perpetuation.'
It does this by maintaining women's inferior status, alienating them from economic
resources and public life, perpetuating modesty codes, physical restriction,
and their symbolic role as custodians of male honour, and reasserting men's
exclusive rights over female fertility. This weak social position means that
the only avenue for social status open to women is through their roles as wives
and mothers, a status which will be denied to the uninfibulated. This explains
Hicks' remark that in societies where infibulation is practiced, it is incorrect
to regard it as a social problem, since it is the uninfibulated that constitute
a social problem. Her approach is based on a cultural analysis which recognises
the centrality of infibulation to the lives of women in such societies, and
the ostracisation likely to be faced by those who are not subjected to it. As
such it marks a change from the sensationalism of many reactions to this custom,
and moves away from the medicalisation that has characterised many responses
to it.
In her conclusion she discusses the difficulties of effecting change in what
she describes as 'closed cultural systems', where infibulation is 'part and
parcel of the reproductive process' and the rigid control of women is a direct
result of their central role in reproduction. She maintains that the practice
cannot therefore be attacked in isolation from the intricate web of social relationships
that it is so central to, an insight which suggests that infibulation will not
be reduced, let alone eradicated without profound social transformation. It
is this that leads Hicks to argue that in areas where the secularised state
has virtually no impact on people's lives or livelihoods, means that strategy
of using religious authorities to advocate the Sunna circumcision (excision
of the clitoris, some of the labia and only slight stitching of the wound) over
the more drastic pharonic type, may be the most effective way to effect change
and reduce the appalling consequences of the latter for women's sexual and reproductive
capacities. The disadvantage lies in the fact that this is likely to cement
the link between Islam and mutilation, a link that has been claimed, but not
fully institutionalised to date.
Knudsen (1994) provides a rather less systematic preliminary study of genital
mutilation in her native Ghana, preferring to use the technically incorrect
term 'female circumcision' to avoid the moral judgement implied by the word
'mutilation'. In fact she address a variety of practices, including the enhancement
of female sexual organs by stretching as well as their diminuition by surgical
removal or scarring. She objects to the fact that male circumcision is not also
viewed as a form of mutilation. More disturbingly she draws a link between 'declining
sexual morality' (for example teenage pregnancy) and the decline in these customs.
Her documentation of the variations amongst Ghana's different peoples is nontheless
informative, particularly given the absence of information on the subject in
most African countries. Although Knudsen does not specifically address the issue,
her information seems to suggest that in Ghana, female genital mutilation is
practiced by traditionalists, rather than being conveyed by either Islam or
Christianity, both of which seem to be linked to a reduction in the practice
of female excision.
From this brief review we can see that the conditions under which female genitalia
are excised, infibulated or otherwise modified differ from place to place. It
is interesting that since colonial rule many such practices have declined in
West Africa, whereas they have gained popularity or persisted in many parts
of North East Africa, amongst Muslims and non-Muslims alike. It is also clear
that cultural analysis of pre-Islamic and pre-Christian traditions in general
could contribute greatly to our understanding of indigenous gender relations.
Studies of practices which are inimical to women invariably reflect a desire
for the practices to be discontinued, because they are physically, psychologically
and socially damaging to women, and to women's capacities for sexual and reproductive
fulfillment. One is left to ask, where is the research on traditions which empower
women, which give them more control of their sexual and reproductive lives?
Are there no surviving traditions which benefit women in ways not apparent within
contemporary cultures and religions, all of which arrogate more power to men?
Virtually all other studies in the area of sexuality are linked to one of
two major recent international concerns: population and HIV\AIDS. It is fair
to say that women have most often been researched as perpetrators of both. This
material has for the most part been funded by international agencies and directed
towards preventative strategies directed at curbing population growth, or curtailing
the spread of the HIV/AIDS pandemic. It is not therefore dealt with in this
review, beyond noting that the availability of research funding in these areas
is leading to a growing number of publications.
In addition to this, there are a number of international and African organisations,
like the Global Women's Network on Reproductive Health, or the Black Women's
Health Coalition, which have sought to bring a feminist perspective to bear
on these important areas of international policy and intervention, and which
have included African women in their activities to varying degrees.
Herstories: Giving Voice to Women
The genre which epitomises the methodological innovations that have accompanied
the development of women's studies is one in which women's voices are given
pride of place. These are best sited under the broad heading of cultural studies
because of their anthropological antecendents and because they necessarily embody
a holistic approach to women's lives which defies mainstream disciplinary boundaries.
Women's accounts of their life experiences and daily practises, their histories
and myths, their reflections on their past and present existences: the collection
and analysis of these has been one of the major ways through which feminist-inspired
scholarship has sought to redress the gender inequities suppressing women's
voices and viewpoints. In social science, women's actual social subordination
has often been hidden from view, naturalised and so compounded by androcentric
theoretical frameworks and research methods. Having mounted major epistemological
challenges to the imbuement of science with patriarchal values and perceptions,
feminist-inspired scholars have made recourse to methods which give women a
voice as a way of overcoming their absence from the more conventional archival,
library and man-to-man fieldwork sources.
Several different methodological approaches are evident in recent studies of
this genre. The first are in-depth, gender sensitive anthropological studies
of specific communities of women (eg Early 1993), or men and women (Pankhurst
1992). Both of these examples started out with research aims that were abandoned
in favour of others, aims which seemed more relevant once fieldwork had commenced,
something which suggests an intellectual openess and willingness to hear and
respond to what women have to say. Pankhurst (op cit) is more burdened with
her own theoretical preoccupations than any of the others, and, although she
admits to relying predominantly on biographical interviews with women as her
primary source, displays a certain insecurity when she explicitly resists defining
her work as being on 'woman and that kind of thing'. The 70 biographical interviews
with women that she quotes extensively in her text are duly accompanied by 97
questionairre interviews mostly with men, use of her own field diaries and the
usual archival and written sources. Her study of an Amharic-speaking village
of Gragn in Menz seeks to unravel the relationship between the state and the
peasantry in Mengistu's Ethiopia, and to examine gender relations in this context.
Yet, lengthy contextualisations and background information notwithstanding,
Gender, Development and Identity is primarily a study of the changes wrought
in women's lives by government policy and changing economic conditions, a study
which contains rich ethnographic detail, but at the same time provides an analysis
of the relationship between the peasant community and Mengistu's state. It illuminates
the failure of the state strategy of villagisation, the antagonistic relationship
between a militarily powerful and extractive state machinery and the community,
and the ineffecacious and tokenistic attempts to involve women in administrative
and community structures. Pankhurst's research also reveals women's ability
to negotiate and manipulate their restricted circumstances in order to attain
the least unfavourable of possibilities. Divorce, invariably initiated by women,
is identified as a major strategy deployed by women dissatisfied with their
circumstances, with the result that divorce and multiple serial marriages are
the norm in a society which is unfavourable to women, but which allows them
some choices within the overall patriarchal culture.
Early's (1993) study of traditional, urban Egyptian women in the Bulaq Abu'Ala
district of Cairo is a more focussed documentation of these predominantly low-income
women's lives; one which deploys social observation techniques to gather and
convey not only the activities but also the values, wits and multiple identities
of baladi women, some of whom became close friends as well as indispensable
informants. A fluent speaker of Arabic, Early spent 3 years observing and gathering
material towards the doctoral dissertation which yielded Baladi Women of Cairo.
Her theoretical concerns are much less cumbersome than Pankhurst's. Although
both are anthropologists, and both use what can loosely be termed participant
observation methods - noting other people's conversations and activities as
well as asking questions - Early has none of Pankhurst' ambivalence over relying
on women's narratives. She is thus able to convey a much richer and more nuanced
order of information about the realities and concerns of her target group, one
which credits them with a greater degree of agency. She concludes not with a
tying together of theoretical concerns, but with a summary of what it means
to be baladi, a meaning that has been developed through her study of the narratives
and performances of baladi women, often through their own counterposition of
themselves to the afrangi (westernised, modernised) Egyptians amongst whom they
live and work.
At the other end of a continuum in women's studies are compiled biographies
and life histories, all of which (introductory and editorial additions nothwithstanding)
are published in the first person (eg Mirza & Strobel 1989, Russell 1990,
Staunton 1990). Here the researcher's role, is given varying degrees of salience.
Russell (op cit) is credited as the 'author' of Lives of Courage, her carefully
presented compilation of South African women's stories. Mirza and Strobel (op
cit) present the 'edited and translated' life stories of three women of Mombasa,
gathered through interviews conducted in Swahili during Strobel's doctoral fieldwork.
Staunton, a Zimbabwean who runs local publishing house, is the most modest of
these researchers: she does not even put her name to the carefully gathered
and presented stories of thirty Zimbabwean women's experiences during the liberation
war. All 3 of these collections of biographies retain the orginal names and
identities of the contributors, as well as photographs. Each woman is thus not
only given a space in which to tell her story, but does so in full awareness
that she will be appearing in a book for public consumption. They are thus part
of the project in a way that is precluded by the conventional anthropological
use of pseudonyms. Whereas the majority of the contributors to Staunton's Mothers
of the Revolution are rural women probably not well known beyond their communities,
Russell appears to have made an effort to include many of the famous women active
on the South African scene prior to the demise of the apartheid regime, and
her book displays accolades from the good and the great (Alice Walker, Nadine
Gordimer, Archbishop Desmond Tutu and Oliver Tambo have all been delighted by
it). Both Russell and Staunton's collections revolve on the particular conditions
of the respective struggles of the people of South Africa and Zimbabwe, a fact
which gives them focus and clarity. Mirza and Strobel (op cit) for their part,
regard the presentation of three women's lives as informative enough in their
own right, and make no explicit attempt to situate them in any given historical
or political framework other than that implied by the somewhat diffuse tag of
Swahili-ness.
The third variation in the women-speak genre combines the commitment to unleashing
women's world views and experience with a commitment to reflection on these
and a recognition of the importance of theorising on the basis of these realities
(see Bozzoli 1991, Cock 1992, Mcleod 1991). Mcleod's is a rich examination of
the lives and strategies of lower-middle class working women in Cairo, whereas
the other two are South African studies of women during the apartheid era. All
three books are outstanding in their analytical acumen as well as in successfully
conveying women's contemporary history. None have any hesitation in asserting
the value of listening to what women say, yet neither is this sanctified or
assumed to be simple truth. Much attention is given to the social relations
of the research process, and the epistemological importance of these.
Bozzoli's authorship of Women of Phokeng includes an acknowledgement of her
main fieldworkers contribution: 'with the assistance of Mmantho Nkotsoe'. And
so it should. Bozzoli points out that she does not speak or understand the language
used by the women of Phokeng, and that as a white woman and an outsider, she
would not have been able to attain the intimate level of rapport that Nkotsoe,
a university-educated woman from a village neighbouring on Phokeng, was able
to develop, particularly in view of both the context (under an authoritarian
apartheid state) and the subject matter (women's often 'illegal' migrancy).
Several pages are devoted to an exploration of Nkotsoe's relationship with the
women she interviewed at great length. Not only does Bozzoli devote several
pages to detailing the relationship through which all the material was gathered,
but she also points out that at least we are looking at the English version
of a Setswana original, which has to be better than attempting to interview
in English, as is still common practice. She implicitly includes herself amongst
the 'students of South African society who await the day when a new generation
of fluent Bantu-speaking sociologists emerges, able to convey to the English
speaking world what insights they gain from the analysis of the words of ordinary
speakers of their own tongue' (1991: 12). Here I have to insist that white scholars
should not merely wait on the laurels of their privileges, continuing the practice
of using indigenes as insightful but dispensable assistants. It seems to me
that the insights of African scholars can be and are being used for a great
deal more than conveying information about their societies to the English-speaking
world.
Bozzoli and Mmantho's study uses the oral histories of women born between 1900-1915
to investigate the consciousness, life strategies and movements of women between
the so-called homeland of Bophutatswana and the cities. It is the inclusion
of the dimension of subjectivity that sets Bozzoli's analysis of these women's
lives apart from other studies of life strategy and migration. Whereas the early
chatpers are devoted to chronologically organised narrative, the later chapters,
while retaining the prominence given to women's voices, provides us with a detailed
documentation of the process of politicization. It is a process during which
women who consider themselves highly respectable find themselves being repeatedly
subjected to intimidation and harassment by the authorities, harassment which
leads them to develop a counter-counter-consciousness that resents and defies
the persecutors, thus foretelling the demise of the apartheid regime.
This upholds Bozzoli's thesis that consciousness is organised around life strategies
devised by women, but remain linked to, and depend upon the wider and changing
material world in which they live, a world textured by race and gender relations
as well as economic forces. The analysis put forward takes us beyond the caricaturised
notions of South Africans, either as victims of apartheid, patriarchy and capitalism,
or as heroic revolutionaries. It also transcends the determinism of orthodox
materialist analysis, revealing the far more subtle processes through which
individual identities are constituted and changed in the course of life, and
may be collectivised and politicised, so beginning to resemble ideologies. By
conducting her analysis from the bottom up - by grounding it in the life strategies
of her target group - Bozzoli is also able to move beyond the structuralism
of grand marxist and early feminist theories, and so make a major theoretical
contribution to the study of consciousness.
Cock's (1991) study, Women and War in South Africa is original both in its subject
matter, and in its methodology. Employing an unstructured interview method rather
than the oral history method used in the Bozzoli-Mmantho study, Cock bases her
analysis of the gender politics of the South African war of liberation on a
comparative examination of the experiences of white women within the South African
Defence Forces (SADF) and black women in Umkonto we Sizwe (MK). She begins by
noting that both the whites and the Africans come from patriarchal societies
lacking any tradition of gender equality, and in a somewhat contentious exercise,
likens the apartheid regime, the Congress of South African Trade Unions (COSATU)
and the ANC on the basis that none of them have women playing significant leadership
roles.
While the numerical paucity of women in the leadership of all three forums is
a matter of empirical fact, her comparison would not have withstood the substantial
evidence that the ANC and COSATU, while they may be a long way from espousing
feminism, have far more progressive gender ideologies than the apartheid state,
as any reference to their congresses or the statements made over the years by
their leadership would have indicated. Moreover her reference to the diverse
African cultures is rather limited, since it is the Zulu culture propounded
by Inkatha which she quotes in support of her argument that both African and
white cultures, although patriarchal, contain something of a 'tough-but-submissive
woman' tradition evident in the images of Voortrekker wives and Zulu mythology
respectively.
Several other authors have drawn the comparisons between the gender ideologies
of Zulu and Afrikaner nationalism, but these have stopped short of suggesting
that the African liberation movement and the apartheid regime shared more than
the most superficial similarities in gender politics (Gaitskell and Unterhalter
1989, Hassim 1993, McClintock 1991). The interview excerpts reveal a far more
subtle complex of gender values and attitudes than is suggested by the rather
global analysis of South African gender politics Cock puts forward as a prelude
to her commendable study of the role of women in the armed forces of the apartheid
regime and in the struggle against it. Here more space is devoted to the highly
conventional gender dynamics of SADF than to 'the resisters' - MK and the End
Conscription Campaign (ECC). The picture that emerges of SADF is one of a conventional
military organisation with highly circumscribed gender roles, roles which rely
on notions of men as 'protectors' of women, and which cannot therefore countenance
more equal participation of women. The increased participation of white women
in SADF in recent years is attributed to the exigencies of being a losing side,
rather than any radical change. The interview material reveals something of
the motivations of white women entering SADF: many of them are simply seeking
a training ground or a short career prior to marriage, rather than having clear
ideological commitments for or against the regime they serve. It is on this
point that they differ from the MK women who come across as being politically
aware, committed to the liberation struggle and highly motivated, as indeed
must be the case for any person (male or female) volunteering to undertake training
as a guerilla, and thereafter to participate in actions against the powerful
military machine of the apartheid state. Neither SADF nor MK deploy women in
combat roles, although perhaps because MK are ideologically committed to gender
equality they do give women the same training (including the use of weapons
and explosives) as men.
Cock's consideration is fascinating but brief: a more detailed study of women
in the pre- and post-apartheid military forces remains very much in order. Her
material is used to reconsider the confrontation between feminism and militarism
that has been in evidence since Wollestonecraft first argued for women to take
an anti-militarist position. A great many feminists have concurred with the
conventional view that war is 'men's business', and that women should be kept
out of military matters, given their 'special qualities'. As Cock observes,
this persistent view is not one which has been espoused by many Third World
feminists. For many of us, participation in armed struggles has often been seen
as a necessary aspect of the national liberation movement, colonial legacies
and military traditions of sexism notwithstanding, and revolutionary movements
have (justifiably or unjustifiably) prided themselves on their inclusion of
women (see Urdang 1989 on Mozambique's Frelimo, Wilson 199 on Eritrea's EPLF).
Feminists remain divided into those who feel that equality means equal participation
in the violence as well as the glories of war, and those who feel that women
should stay out of this unpalatable aspect of human endeavour. Both schools
of thought ultimately seek to build a world in which wars do not occur: the
question is whether this can best be done by entering the powerful military
establishment and participating in military activities, or remaining outside
it, a question which Cock poses and explores through her material but, perhaps
wisely, does not answer definitively.
Mcleod's Accomodating Protest (op cit) shares the methodological commitments
of Bozzoli and Cock. Like Early (op cit) she has the advantage of being able
to speak the mother tongue of her target group. She too is able to develop intimate
relationships with women in the community she has targetted, and over a period
of time, gathers oral data comprising narrative about various aspects of their
lives. Her central interest is to explore why it is that today's young, educated
career women have taken to donning veils, when only a few years ago, the same
group of upwardly mobile women would not have done so. The answer she gradually
uncovers for us is encapsulated in her title: it is about the way in which women
delicately negotiate a way of acheiving their goals through the various contradictory
forces that impinge on their lives. The dominant, Islamic ideal is one in which
these mainly young women with children would stay at home as housewives like
their mothers before them. But in todays's Egypt this is no longer an economically
viable option, and nor is it one that educated women would wish upon themselves.
Thye therefore do go out to work, but wear the veil: not because they are fundamentalists,
but because they are breaching the dominant discourse. Furthermore, they do
not want to be perceived as stooges of Western imperialism.
What distinguishes all these studies is the degree to which women's agency is
revealed, something only possible through the open-ended, woman-centred methods
that all of them deploy. It is a paradigm which takes the study of the oppression
that all these women experience far beyond studies which leave one angered by
the sense of passivity that is inevitably conveyed using more directive methods
which impose theoretical frameworks on the subtleties, nuances and innovations
that make women into makers of history rather than mere victims of it.
Conceptual issues
Studies of women's work have led to major reconceptualisations of what we mean
by the terms 'work' and 'economy'. The fact that men and women perform different
tasks in most societies has led scholars interested in gender to study the sexual
division of labour. To say that there is a sexual division of labour means that
not only do men and women perform different kinds of work, but that their labour
is also differentially valued and remunerated in accordance with the gender
of the workforce performing it.
A separate but related issue is the invisibilisation of women's work. It has
long been apparent that a substantial amount of the work that women perform
in most parts of the world has not been included in the formal definitions of
'work' or 'labour' as these have generally referred to waged employment in a
formal economy in which men have predominated. Many of the tasks carried out
by women in and beyond the household have thus been taken for granted, rendered
invisible and devalued. The most obvious tasks included here are housework,
child-bearing and childcare and food preparation, but in many contexts 'domestic'
labour has also included household-level production of both food and goods.
In capitalist economies, work has been unjustly divided into productive and
reproductive spheres, with production defined in economistic terms denoting
production of tradeable goods and expropriatable surplus. Work concerned with
biological and social reproduction has not been included in most macroeconomic
calculations, except where these are performed as waged work. For the most part
such work has not been renumerated, or if carried out as waged work, is so devalued
that it is poorly paid. In short much of what has tended to be defined as 'women's
work' has been unpaid, whatever its centrality to the functioning of the formal
labour force, and indeed, of the society as a whole. This unequal scenario has
been facilitated by gender ideologies: notions of maternal altruism, of wifely
duty and of men's right to women's service and nurturance and to their reproductive
capacities.
Whether this has always been the case in all societies has been the subject
of much historical and anthropological study and speculation. Historical and
cross-cultural studies have revealed that the sexual division of labour prevailing
in Western capitalist societies is far from universal. Even here, it has changed
radically over the generations, influenced by the advent of wars, economic booms
and slumps and other macro-economic phenomena. Nontheless, at the ideological
level, notions of what women should and can do have been unreasonably consistent:
women's work has been taken to mean the unpaid labour of housework, childbearing,
cooking and caring for children, husbands and other relatives, and a legion
of other unremunerated domestic and reproductive tasks, most of which are performed
in increasingly atomised individual households, headed by male authority figures
who, for their part, are supposed to be the economic providers.
Research shows this scheme to be a patriarchal ideal which has seldom been attained
by the vast majority of households within the West, and even less often achieved
by households in other parts of the world, however much it has been extolled.
Nontheless, because the ideological currency of this ideal has been so powerful,
women in many parts of the world perform a great many unremunerated tasks, regardless
of whether or not men are providing for them. Discussions of women's work cannot
escape acknowledging the influence of this prototypical sexual division of labour
on the actual conditions under which women work in and beyond the home and workforce.
African research into gender relations and work is particularly fascinating
because of the enormous range of activities that African women engage in and
the permutations that these have undergone with the changing circumstances of
precolonial, colonial and postcolonial societies. Here we see that the sexual
divisions of labour have been subjected to such major transformations that any
notions of the immutability of what men and women can or should do are rendered
nonsensical. Consideration of the activities that women engage in subvert many
of the dichotomies that have been developed to characterise labour, notably
those between formal and informal work, between productive and reproductive
work, and between the household and the market.
Above and beyond all this, the research reveals the remarkable creativity with
which African women, widely perceived as beasts of burden hopelessly locked
into their exploitation, have addressed their situation, negotiated new terms
in their relationships both with individual men and with governments, and have
come up with innovative ways of ensuring the economic survival, not only of
themselves, but of entire families and communities.
Women's Work in Precolonial Africa
Little of the recent gender research carried out on Africa has addressed work
in the precolonial period in its own right. Set against the burgeoning literature
on labour relations in the colonial period, the few available studies suggest
a great deal more than they state. Most of the insights contained therein derive
from observations about the impact of colonisation, often gathered from archives
and records, journals and travelogues, and from oral histories obtained from