Feminist Knowledge | Education/Higher Education

Making our Voices Heard: The Politics of Writing and Publication in African Higher Education
By Elaine Salo

'Central to our gender analytical approach is concern for Africa. We are Africa -centred. It is Africa and African women and men who are at the centre of what and how and why we do research, and to whom we have a political commitment and feel responsibility. However unlike afrocentrists, feminism and the development of feminist theory is not eschewed' (Ayesha Imam, in Imam, Mama and Sow 1997:24)

Gender in the African Social Sciences: The Case Against Perpetual Deafness [1]

Knowledge production about African societies is an act that imparts agency to Africans in a global milieu where we have long been constructed as the objects of study. Kwesi Prah (1997) notes that African scholarship needs to claim some space in the production of knowledge about African societies, and in so doing, challenge a status quo in which the authorial voice is mainly located in Europe or North America, whilst the object of study is African. If the unequal power relationship between the producers and objects of research is to be transformed, then it is necessary to blur the boundary between object and subject through the act of Africans' writing and publishing about themselves. Prah argues that Africans writing about Africa is essential for three reasons: first, it is necessary to destabilise "Western sources as the centre of gravity of knowledge of Africa" (1997:10); secondly, if the discourses and debates about African societies and cultures are to reflect their complexity and diversity, African scholars' voices must be reflected in existing debates about African society and culture. Finally, scholarship on Africa by Africans challenges the authority of scholarship produced in Europe and North America and ensures that the "the universal quality of what we have to say will…register" (1997:10). Prah therefore makes an impassioned plea to African scholars to "appropriate centre-stage in the production and reproduction of knowledge about African society and history" (1997:10) and establish a robust body of Afrocentric social science.

Despite Prah's important message, like most male Afrocentric scholars, he dilutes the force of his appeal by ignoring a growing tradition of African feminist and gender studies scholarship on the continent. Since the early 1980s, a substantial number of feminist scholars and writers, including Bolanle Awe (1991), N'dri Assie-Lumumba (1985), Jacklyn Cock (1989), Ayesha Imam (1985; 1997), Amina Mama (1997), Nina Mba, Pat McFadden (1991), Ruth Meena (1992), Zenebeworke Tadesse (1986), Cheryl Walker (1982) and Tiyambe Zeleza (1997) have illustrated why gender is a central concept in the social sciences. As Ayesha Imam (1997) argues, it is not adequate to produce an Afrocentric social science that sees its sole task as writing against Western social science while proscribing other questions about power in the name of African solidarity; we need to contribute to an Afrocentric social science that struggles against scholarship which "forces our realities into Western-shaped boxes" (Imam, 1997:17) at the same time that it writes against the simple homogenisation of African societies. This would mean producing social analysis that adequately mirrors the vibrant, living pluralities of African societies (Hontoundji, 2000), which reflects the fissures and fractures of power relations, and which ultimately insists upon the transformation of African societies into more just social systems.

The scholarly interventions of feminists and gender scholars are essential to this task. Recognising this, Ruth Meena (1992) has called on critical scholars to challenge work that disregards the diverse voices (and women's views in particular) in African civil society. As she suggests, we need to interrogate the perspective that "maintains an efficient deafness" (Bennett, 2000:8) within African scholarship and the work that obdurately disregards women's voices. For, as Zingisa Gunzana argues, "If women are referred to as silent, we need to re-examine the context that renders them silent" (2000:75).

In the following section, I consider the educational context that often makes writing skills inaccessible to women. I indicate that the obstacles to tertiary education that most young women face, such as denial of access on the basis of admission and institutional culture, are enormous in most African contexts.

Women's Access to Tertiary Education in Africa: The Context

Access to tertiary education, and women's access in particular, is determined by a host of factors that are mutually reinforcing. These include favourable admissions policies, physical access to institutions, availability of financial resources, prior access to secondary school, training in fields that determine entry into professions in information technology, actuarial science and medicine, such as mathematics and the sciences, as well as the quality of the institutional culture. A gendered analysis of all these factors is necessary if we are to understand how women's access to tertiary education is determined. Examining the interrelationship among all these factors is beyond the scope of this paper and has been dealt with in detail elsewhere (See Badsha, 1994; Kethusigile, et al., 2000; Mukangara and Koda, 1997; Subbarao, et al., 1994). Here I examine only two factors that affect women's access to tertiary education in the African context, namely enrolment numbers and the quality of institutional cultures.

Women's Enrolment - The Numbers Game

Since the 1990 World Conference on Education for All held in Jomtien, Thailand, various governments, non-governmental organisations and UN agencies committed themselves to eliminating the gender gap in children's access to primary school education. Declarations such as the one made at Jomtien sharply focused attention on the importance of girls' education (Rufa'i, 2001). This awareness is clearly essential if democratic rights and socio-economic empowerment are to be ensured in African societies. Yet the call to ensure the access of women and girls to primary education is not enough, and this goal should be considered a minimal requirement, rather than an end in itself. Moreover, the focus on primary education should not overshadow gender gaps in access to tertiary education. Women's rights and access to higher education should also be guaranteed.

In many African countries, women's enrolment rates in higher education remain appallingly low in comparison with those for primary education. In the proceedings of a workshop on issues in higher education in West Africa held in Lagos, Nigeria, George Benneh (2001) indicates that the 1992 Ghanaian constitution provides for free, compulsory and universal basic education as well as equal access to university. He goes on to show, however, that the gender gap for enrolment at all levels of education has increased, and is exacerbated at the higher education level. While girls' enrolment for primary school was 46.3% as a percentage of total enrolment in Ghana, for 1996/97, it dropped to 26,5% at tertiary level for the same period. The workshop findings indicate that only about 2% of youth of university age are enrolled at tertiary institutions in Ghana and Nigeria respectively, and that women constitute a very small proportion of these abysmally low rates. Chinyere Ohiri-Aniche (2001) reports that in Nigeria, women constituted only 13,5% of gross enrolment numbers for the age range 18-29 years at tertiary institutions between 1993 and 1994. Exploring women's experiences of tertiary education in this country further, Jadesola Akande (2001) notes that the dropout rate for women is higher than it is for men at the tertiary education level.

The situation of Tanzanian women in tertiary education is slightly better than it is for Ghanaian and Nigerian women, with women having constituted 17% of all tertiary level students in 1994/5 (Mukangara and Koda, 1997). However, the gender disparity is still more pronounced at this level than it is at the primary level for the same period. Fenella Mukangara and Bertha Koda (1997) argue that a gender bias in favour of men's access to tertiary education has been naturalised. This is revealed in the limited effect that affirmative action policy has had on women's enrolment numbers. Women's enrolment at the University of Dar Es Salaam (UDMS) increased to 19,6% after affirmative action legislation favouring women's access was implemented in 1974, but dropped to a low of 14,4% in 1993/94 after the policy ended, before increasing to a high of 17% in 1994/95. It was only when attention was once again focused on the special recruitment of women for the 1996/97 academic year that women's enrolment increased (Kethusigile et al., 2000).

In South Africa, women's enrolment in tertiary education constituted 47,8% of total enrolment, and is amongst the highest on the continent. This increase can be ascribed to policy-makers' deliberate efforts to correct the racial and gender injustices of the past. After 1994, the doors of learning were opened to South African blacks, women and other disadvantaged groups in response to the racially exclusive and heavily male-biased policies of the past. By 1998, women constituted 51% of total student enrolments at universities and technikons (Statistics South Africa 2000).

Overall, statistics on women's education in Africa indicate that although girls' enrolment at primary school level is increasing favourably in the countries mentioned, the picture for women's enrolment at tertiary institutions is not encouraging. The gender gap in enrolment rates at tertiary level has been narrowed only in those countries where gender-sensitive policies have been formulated and implemented.

Beyond the Statistics: Socio-cultural Textures and Politico-economic Patterns of Access

Yet statistics tell only half the story. Bookie Kethusigile, et al. (2000) indicate that a myriad socio-cultural, political and economic factors determine or constrain the access of women and girls to higher levels of education. The factors that influence women's access vary across the continent. Constitutional rights and gender-sensitive policies that deliberately target women for recruitment into educational institutions have been mentioned as factors that facilitate women's access in Ghana, Tanzania, and South Africa. Gender-sensitive policies were also implemented in Zimbabwe immediately after independence and continued into the mid-1990s. Affirmative action favouring girls was implemented at "A" level and therefore placed them in a favourable position for entering university. Furthermore, the entry requirements for tertiary education were lowered in 1995, this leading to an increase in women's enrolment from 26% in 1994 to 31% in the following year. Clearly, the complete success of gender-sensitive policies can be measured only if women's enrolment figures are compared with the numbers who have completed their studies since policy implementation. Still, women's increased physical presence in tertiary institutions is an indication that they have formal access to higher levels of education.

Despite the positive effects of gender-sensitive policies, factors that constrain women's entry into tertiary educational institutions seem to exert a greater impact on gendered access in the contemporary context than factors that facilitate it. Bookie Kethugisile, et al. (2000) indicate that socio-economic and cultural factors which inhibit girls' access to education in the primary and secondary levels effectively cut off their access to tertiary education. They cite factors such as inadequate educational facilities; male-biased or inappropriate curricula; the devaluation of girls' education; teenage pregnancies; financial considerations; early marriages; the timing of girls' initiation ceremonies and psychological, social and cultural barriers that portray women as perpetual minors and which in turn negatively affect girls' and women's perceptions of higher education.

Some women clearly do enter tertiary institutions despite numerous obstacles, but for most women, the battles to overcome gender impediments and obtain qualifications once they are enrolled continue unabated. They often encounter an institutional culture that has not been transformed and that remains hostile to their gender needs. Within this culture, they either negotiate their specific needs as discretely and unobtrusively as possible, or drop out when the environment makes learning untenable. Their requirements may vary from the need for childcare for parent-students, the need for women's residences, for safe and accessible transport to and from educational institutions at all hours, to an institutional culture which values women's intellectual capacities and skills. In the following section, I focus on sexual harassment as a major aspect of institutional culture, and one that presents a persistent and unyielding obstacle to women's education in tertiary institutions.

Encountering a Culture of Sexual Harassment

Since the 1970s, a number of international conventions and declarations have been adopted which define violence against women as an infringement of human rights. These include the Convention on the Elimination of all Forms of Discrimination Against Women (CEDAW), the UN Declaration on the Elimination of Violence Against Women (DEVAW) and the Draft Protocol to the African Charter. All these conventions and declarations take an unequivocal stand against violence against women and enjoin signatory states to work towards its elimination (quoted in Imasogie, 2002). Because sexual harassment is identified as an act of violence against women, it is seen as an infringement of women's human rights and a factor that helps to create a hostile environment for women in the workplace, in institutions of learning and in the home.

In spite of awareness of the serious threat that sexual harassment poses to women's rights and well-being in educational institutions and the workplace, the practice remains commonplace (see Imasogie, 2002; Equal Opportunities Research Project 1993). Reliable data on sexual harassment are notoriously difficult to collect because it is a practice that often remains invisible, is never reported or is completely ignored. In addition, as Mosunmola Imasogie indicates, there is considerable disagreement about what constitutes sexual harassment: "to one person, an arm around the shoulder may be perceived as a gesture of affection; to another person the same gesture may be offensive and harassing" (Imasogie, 2002:15). Behaviours that constitute harassment include the whole spectrum of human interaction, from verbal comments and facial gestures to physical interaction. What these different behaviours have in common is that they are shot through with unwelcome sexual advances and/or requests for sexual favours as a means to ensure the individual's continued employment or education. These advances create a hostile environment that usually affects the targeted individuals' performance in a negative manner.

Mosunmola Imasogie's study set out to investigate the prevalence of sexual harassment at the Olabisi Obasanjo University in Nigeria and its effects on academic performance. She found that women students felt that they had no alternative but to succumb to men lecturers' unwelcome requests for sexual favours if they wished to succeed academically. She also found that sexual harassment was so entrenched within the institutional culture that women students advised their friends "to accept the harassment as normal and keep quiet about it. Some… even impressed upon them the advantages of dating lecturers"(Imasogie, 2002:22). The collusion of certain women is evident in this instance, and suggests the need for educational programmes about the negative implications of sexual harassment for all women. The extent to which sexual harassment is informed by social hierarchies and the abuse of power is evident in Mosunmola Imasogie's findings about the far-reaching impact of sexual harassment on all students: not only did women students fear reprisals from the men lecturers who harassed them; male colleagues of the women who were harassed felt that they were vulnerable to the retaliation of socially senior men lecturers. Some men students in the study even cited the potential rewards of harassment as a motivational factor for pursuing a teaching career at a tertiary institution.

Nearer home, a 1993 report on sexual harassment at South African universities indicates that practices such as rape in residences, sexual voyeurism and other related forms of behaviour were standard practices (The Standard quoted in Imasogie, 2001). The Equal Opportunities Research Project (EORP), the forerunner of the AGI, was founded at the University of Cape Town (UCT) after a group of black women students protested to the university authorities in 1989 that the level of sexual harassment they were subjected to severely restricted their opportunity for advanced education (Friedman, 1999). An inquiry into these initial charges concluded that sexual harassment was a key feature of student life at UCT, and that sexual discrimination was one of numerous strands in a web of discrimination affecting staff and students' relationships to the institution. The EORP was established as a research unit that would undertake to investigate employment and educational practices contributing to an institutional culture that discriminated against sectors of the university community such as women and blacks. The EORP therefore set in place the first step towards transformation of institutional culture.

The students' complaints that led to the founding of the EORP indicate that the prevailing culture at tertiary institutions presented persistent obstacles to women's educational access. Their complaints also indicate that even though extending university admission to groups that have been discriminated against, such as black women, is an important step in transformation; it is only the first barrier to overcome in the quest for gender equity in education. In this case, women students became increasingly outraged at the acceptance of sexual harassment as an insidiously normal aspect of university life. Their rage assisted not only in drawing senior officials' attention to this pernicious issue; it forced the much-respected South African institution to take the first faltering steps towards institutional transformation.

The EROP project's findings and recommendations later informed the AGI's commitment to combating sexual harassment and violence at all Southern African tertiary institutions through the Network of Southern African Tertiary Education Institutions Challenging Sexual Violence and Sexual Harassment. The network, which includes more than fifty institutions across the Southern African region, aims to encourage discussion about sexual harassment and its effects, as well as to assist educators to formulate university policy that discourages this form of gender violence. The network attempts to ensure that women students and staff inhabit a safe learning environment in which they are able to realise their full intellectual potential, have the opportunities to make valuable contributions to the production of knowledge in Africa and engender our intellectual community.

Towards Engendering the Intellectual Community: the Associates' Programme

In 1993, the Forum for African Women Educationalists (FAWE) undertook a comprehensive study of the working conditions of women academics at institutions in Western, Eastern and Southern Africa. The study found that, across regional, cultural and national divides women were poorly represented at all levels in African universities and were concentrated in traditionally feminine fields such as education. It also found that the limited involvement of women in fields outside the traditional feminine disciplines such as education was associated with a low prioritisation of gender in policy formulation. The situation was exacerbated when governments and educational institutions were hostile to the inclusion of gender in their work. Generally, the dominant perception within these institutions was that women's work should focus primarily on family responsibilities. This attitude undermined African women's progress in the areas of policy formulation and educational leadership. The study also concluded that that few documentation centres exist on the continent that compiled publications devoted to women's and girls' experiences in Africa.

The findings of the FAWE study supported the establishment of the AGI as an institute committed to strengthening the capacity of women scholars based at African tertiary, governmental and non-governmental institutions. It was felt that the objectives of the AGI could be achieved by establishing strong network linkages between gender research and teaching programmes, and by promoting research collaboration and the exchange of ideas between women practitioners and academics in Africa. In line with the recommendations of the FAWE study, the AGI also focused on promoting gender- sensitive research in Africa to effect democratic social change and on the need for a supportive environment for African women intellectuals to develop their capacity, to exchange ideas and to work toward the promotion of gender justice on the continent.

The AGI's Associates Programme is an initiative that seeks to create a supportive environment in which women can both contribute to and engender knowledge production in Africa. The work contained in this collection demonstrates the centrality of gender research to a range of fields: health, economics, cultural studies and law. Collectively, the Associates' work demonstrates the political and intellectual value of gender-sensitive subject-matter, research methodologies and analytical approaches in fully exploring experiences, relationships and practices that affect all Africans.

The Associates' papers were first presented at a mini-conference held at the Centre for African Studies at UCT on 6 November 2000. The conference presentations were divided into four panels: "Gendering Economic Development"; "Women and Identity in Two African Countries"; "Women's Health Issues" and "Citizenship Rights and Women's Rights". In order to convey a full sense of the Associates' contributions, as well as the scope of the mini-conference, the following survey briefly considers a number of these papers.

"A methodology for Assessing Gender Equity under Adjustment Policies in Sub-Saharan Africa, With an Introduction to the Case Study of Madagascar" by Milasoa Cherel-Robson, aims to design a research methodology for bringing gender analysis to bear on the Structural Adjustment process. She begins by critically reviewing the gendered implications of World Bank Structural Adjustment Policies (SAPs) in sub-Saharan Africa, and in so doing, addresses a key area of debate between proponents of World Bank and International Monetary Fund programmes and social scientists who argue that these programmes impose enormous social costs on national populations, especially women. She reviews the central components of SAPs, such as stabilisation measures and adjustment policies, as well as their intended aims, namely to decrease a state's public spending and improve economic efficiency. Next, she examines the growing body of studies that illuminate the high social costs of SAPs, especially whether and how each methodology employs gender as a unit of analysis in its design.

Cherel-Robson's interrogation of the gendered character of research methodology is a necessary and important intervention. Her meticulous review indicates that, while many studies examining the impact of SAPs on different African societies claim to be gendered, the quality of the data collected is informed by prior epistemological interpretations, which do not adequately explore power relations in specific African contexts. She shows that analytical approaches such as Women in Development (WID), Women and Development (WAD) and Gender and Development (GAD) all utilise gender as a key analytical tool. However, she draws on theorists such as Naila Kabeer (1994), Amina Mama (1997) and Ayesha Imam (1997) to show that GAD's focus on the different power dynamics that influence gender relations and the societal institutions that sustain them is far more helpful. As she indicates, the GAD approach offers a more comprehensive picture of the texture and complexity of African societies than is the case with the WID and WAD approaches that frequently inform gendered studies of SAPs.

Cherel-Robson also argues that World Bank studies which examine the gendered impact of SAPs draw on the assumptions of neo-classical economic theory and therefore implicitly assume that gender bias in economic processes are a given. These studies consequently ignore many of the complex and ambiguous gendered dimensions within male and female-headed households. She then reviews various studies conducted across African countries that have assessed the gendered impact of SAPs at micro (household), meso (farming and marketing) and macro (national economic institutional) levels, such as Kenya, Ghana, Zimbabwe, Nigeria and Tanzania. These studies, she argues, deploy both quantitative and qualitative research methods and so provide richer findings on the gendered effects of SAPs. Because researchers were able to disaggregate data categories such as household headship according to gender, as well as identify inter- and intra-gender economic relations, the more intricate interlinkage between SAPs' macro-level policies and their often negative gendered effects at the meso- and micro-levels were illuminated.

Building on the strengths of these research designs, Cherel-Robson develops a methodology and related research methods for analysing the relationship between gender equity and SAPs. She argues for a methodology informed by detailed attention to the connections between gender, class and location. Such a methodology would incorporate both qualitative, interpretative research methods as well as quantitative indicators that are sensitive to gender and inequality and the linkages between gender and well-being. She suggests that such a methodology would consist of four components: a contextual analysis which would examine the political, socio-economic, geographic and gendered context of research; a descriptive analysis of gender relations that would reflect not only the state of intra-household gender relations, but also the patterns of gender inequality linked to location and occupation; a comparative analysis that accurately reflects whether and how women have experienced change after the implementation of SAPs; and a causality analysis that indicates what specific channels these gendered changes operate along. Finally, she examines whether this gendered methodology can be applied to Madagascar. Overall, therefore, Cherel-Robson presents a comprehensive critical appraisal of dominant gender approaches to SAPs, as well as detailed reflections on how to register the intricate patterns presented by a particular context.

Gail Smith and Mulumubet Zenebe presented their work on South African and Amharic women's identities respectively in the second session. Smith's paper, entitled Oiling the Drum, confirmed an observation of many other South African researchers by noting that numerous Drum Magazine articles captured the vibrant black urban life associated with the township, Sophiatown, in the fifties. She went on to show, however, that while these magazine articles illustrate facets of Sophiatown's richness and dynamism, they reflect the lives of men only. Her paper set out to recuperate women's lives and realities during the Sophiatown era by using archival records as a main source of information. She indicated that archival photographs tended to capture remnants, rather than whole tapestries of women's lives in the famous township. These fragments often reflected prominent political activists such as Lilian Ngoyi and Winnie Mandela, although the everyday activities of ordinary women remained invisible. Smith's work, although focusing on South Africa, illustrated the wider difficulty that limited archival resources pose to research that seeks to document and interpret the stories of ordinary African women.

Mulumubet Zenebe presented a proposal for her doctoral research on images of women in Amharic oral narratives such as folktales, legends and myths. A central aim of her paper was to give visibility to creative, multiple channels through which women's agency is expressed. Zenebe offered an extensive review of a little-known body of ethnographic literature that foregrounds Amharic women's voices. Her project also drew attention to dominant cultural images of women among the Amhara; highlighted the perceptions of gender relations among rural men and women; identified the social and cultural determinants that influence Amhara women's lives; and finally, considered the importance of gender-related information for helping to improve these women's lives.

Apart from the suggestive subject matter of her work, her presentation was methodologically important in demonstrating how a research question is linked to and formulated by the extensive literature survey preceding it. It illustrated how African gender researchers are grappling with a wealth of information and resources to find avenues for exploring the everyday life and cultural expression that scholars often neglect.

The third session was devoted to gender relations and health issues. Margaret Kemigisa's paper "Gender Equality and Equality in Health: A Ugandan Analysis" documents the gender gap in health promotion in Uganda. She raises the question of why, despite state attempts to improve the population's general health status, women's health status remains poor - a situation clearly revealed by the fact that women had higher morbidity levels than men. Kemigisa indicates that the gender differences in health are the result of gender inequities that exist at multiple levels in the society. She partly ascribes this problem to women's relatively difficult access to the health services, their under-representation in the health professions; their concentration in the lower echelons of these professions, and a tendency to equate women's health needs only with reproductive health needs.

Kemigisa then goes on to indicate how gender inequity in other sectors in society has a recursive effect on women's health. She therefore deals with women's limited access to socio-economic resources such as education, labour and other income-generating activities and focuses on factors including relationships within households and geographic location. The network of social hierarchies and inequalities she traces indicates not only that patriarchal practices are deeply rooted in the Ugandan social structure, but also that many substantive steps need to be taken within the health and other sectors to correct the gender differences in health and well-being. Kemigisa indicates that both the Ugandan state and civil society organisations have provided opportunities to reduce gender inequities by committing themselves to various conventions and plans at international and national level. These include the Convention on the Elimination of Discrimination against Women (CEDAW) as well as National Action Plan on Women devoted to addressing gender imbalances in health. This commitment creates a political environment conducive to successful advocacy for women's health.

Nkoli Ezumah's paper, "Perceptions of Sexuality and Gender Relations among the Igbo and the Implications for the Reproductive and Sexual Health of Men and Women" reports on the findings of research conducted in Anambra State, Nigeria. She examines the accepted meanings and practices of sexuality that inform gender relations among the Igbo as well as the implications that these meanings and practices have for women's sexual and reproductive health. Her focus on cultural meanings and practices adds to a growing body of work that helps explain why education about sexuality and the risks of sexually transmitted diseases are insufficient in the fight against the spread of STDs and HIV/AIDS (see for example Bolton, 1992; Herdt, 1995). Nkoli Ezumah demonstrates how a society's prescribed gender roles and the unequal power relations that inform them can contribute to the prevalence of STDs and HIV/AIDS and contradict the widespread information about these diseases.

Her findings repeatedly indicate how most people accept and reinforce a double standard for men and women regarding sexual morality. While women are expected to remain loyal to a single partner, men are allowed to have more than one sexual partner in order to demonstrate their manhood. This cultural duplicity inevitably places women at greater risk of acquiring a sexually transmitted disease. On a more positive note, she indicates that a small minority of people are beginning to acknowledge that men and women should be judged by the same cultural and moral standard and therefore indicates that the unequal power relation between men and women is open to contestation and change. She concludes that perceptions of sexuality and gender relations among the Igbo are complicatedly linked to their ideas about marriage and its role in society as well as their notions about appropriate gendered sexual behaviour prior to, and during marriage. Her paper therefore contributes to existing explorations of sexuality and sexually transmitted diseases by dealing carefully with the perceptions and beliefs that are held by particular groups. In so doing, Nkoli Ezumah demonstrates the value of strongly contextualised and localised studies of the gendered dimensions of sexuality and health.

In the last session, attorney Ada Okoye examined the gendered aspects of personhood in African constitutional law. In "Sharing the Citizenship of Women: A Comparative Gendered Analysis of the Concept Legal Personhood in Africa", she argues that African women are constitutionally discriminated against because they are not able to confer citizenship of their respective countries onto their spouses through marriage. Men, in contrast, are allowed to pass on citizenship to their wives. This unequal exercise of constitutional privilege prevents women from exercising full citizenship rights and ultimately creates a notion of citizenship that is implicitly biased in favour of men's rights. Ada Okoye's interrogation of the gendered meanings of citizenship in African contexts comes as a timely reminder that, even though many governments of African states have made formal and rhetorical commitments to democracy, these are not necessarily translated into the de facto realisation of gender justice for women citizens.

Taken together, the Associates' papers ultimately examine the progress towards, or lack of gender justice for women in the spheres of national economies, cultural practice, health and legislation. By offering gendered interrogations of various social, cultural, economic and legislative fields in different national contexts, the authors implicitly recognise that it is not enough for African states and leaders to articulate the discourse of gender equality in the era of the African Renaissance. This discourse has to bear the tangible fruits of gender equity and translate into effective empowerment of women on the ground before claims about the African Renaissance can be made.

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Footnote

[1] With thanks to Jane Bennett for introducing ‘deafness’ as an apt concept to describe why, after years of struggle, women’s voices were still not being heard in African contexts.