It is not often that a book on gender that deals with Africa in its entirety comes across one's desk. So, this one was a welcome acquisition for me as an African gender scholar, who is interested in the development of gender scholarship on the continent.
What the book does very cleverly is to bring together a lot of literature that has its origins in gender research that encompasses more than women's movements. To explain the role of women's movements, the authors provide analysis of women's representation as well as gender machineries, state bureaucracies, peace negotiations and the role of gender studies on the continent. This organization of the book shows that in order to understand women's movements, we have to use a wide-angle lens, an important focus.
The book is important for another reason—bringing all of this literature together in one manuscript. Gender scholars are sometimes under the impression that little information or research exists on gender-related topics in Africa. Often, Western scholars cite only articles that have been published in American or European journals, neglecting important literature that has been published in lesser-known African journals or published only in local African contexts. This book includes literature on numerous African countries and highlights the successes and challenges of women's movements on the continent, and in this regard it is pathbreaking.
In the last decade, two other important books on women's movements in Africa appeared—that edited by Ali Tripp and Joy Kwesiga, The Women's Movement in Uganda (2002), and Shireen Hassim's Women's Organizations and Democracy in South Africa—Contesting Authority (2006). Together, these three books represent the cutting edge of African scholarship on women's movements.
In chapter 1 of African Women's Movements, the historic influences on the contemporary women's movement are explained. Almost all African countries were colonized and fought disruptive decolonization battles. Women's mobilization under these conditions was important, and the authors illustrate it with interesting examples of, for example, Cameroon, Mozambique, and Uganda, among other African countries. Political motherhood (as a source of power) is explained, as well as historical continuities in the use of tactics of shaming and grieving.
In chapter 2, the postcolonial women's movements are discussed. Women were often excluded from government after decolonization and women's movements had to start mobilizing them around their collective interests. In this regard, political liberalization and democratization, together with international influences, made an important contribution.
New forms of mobilization replaced strategies used during colonial times. The major challenge of new women's movements, as discussed in chapters 3 and 4, was to gain associational independence from the government. Often governments attempt to co-opt women's movements. Those of the 1980s and 1990s originated during a period of proliferation of nongovernmental organizations (NGOs) in Africa when a space was created for women's movements to link women's issues to a range of wider concerns, such as human rights and youth issues.
Women's movements also built links across ethnic, clan, and religions lines—important identities in Africa. Another aspect that sets the African women's movement apart from those in the West is the cooperation with men in order to promote women's issues, for example, mobilizing men against rape. But challenges remain, such as the importance of redefining the (“the political” in the) private sphere, often the place where patriarchal customs and tradition operate most strongly. But even more, “the political” in authoritarian and semiauthoritarian states often means the interest of the ruling elite, and that attempts are made to curtail any other meanings of the political. Another challenge is the undue influence of donors on the gender agenda: Donors may link their own interests to funding and put the interests of women's organizations second.
Chapter 5 interrogates constitutional and legislative challenges. Useful tables are incorporated to enable us to see, at a glance, constitutional, political, economic, labor, and social policy measures affecting women in many different African countries. We also see the impact of (in most cases) conservative family law on women, but with the focus redirected to show how women's movements deal with these challenges in ongoing constitutional and legislative battles around issues of sexual harassment and land rights, for example.
Chapter 6, which deals with women's representation, looks closely at different means of representation, such as reserve seats, constitutional measures, voluntary party measures, and executive appointment. It also looks at the quota debate and how quotas have contributed to transform women's representation.
In chapter 7, national gender machineries and gender mainstreaming are analyzed as a way of engendering the bureaucracies. Here, issues of co-optation, underfunding, and women's machineries working against women's interests are assessed. Only when there are strong women's movements to keep national machineries accountable are they more successful. But the link between women's movements and national machineries that implement gender mainstreaming (often viewed as a depoliticizing, technocratic process) is tenuous at best.
In the last chapter, the authors discuss important contributions that African women's movements have made in international arenas such as the United Nations through, for example, the Association of African Women for Research and Development (AAWORD) and the African Women's Communication and Development Network (FEMNET), as well as contributions to transnational women's rights, often unacknowledged.
The book ends with challenges for future research, or what the authors call “the paradoxes of change.” The first is embedded in the question of what made it possible for some countries to expand women's rights without a lot of pressure from the women's movement, while other countries, such as Cameroon, Kenya, and Mali, had active women's movements but slower recognition of women's issues and legislative outcomes. The second is the slower embrace of women's rights despite active women's movements. The third paradox relates to the reasons that some legislative reforms have been easier to pass than others, such as issues related to family and clan, as well as reproduction. And the fourth concerns why the shift to democracy was not the main driver behind women's rights. Some clues for answering these questions are hinted at, but more extensive research is necessary.
Although the book does not deal explicitly with theories of women's movements, the theorization is implicit. The golden thread that runs throughout is the opening up of, and shifts in, political opportunity structures that enabled women's movements to mobilize women and to set a political agenda. Important mobilization occurred during transitions from colonialism and also during the third wave of democratization when many African countries shifted to nominal democracy. Spaces opened up for women to mobilize, first against racial colonial oppression and second against exclusion and marginalization in newly created democratic systems. But a third opportunity arose for women in war-torn countries such as Rwanda and Liberia, when women's representation became part of postconflict settlements, as discussed in chapter 8.
I recommend this book to a wider audience than African scholars and nonscholars; for gender researchers in the West, it will counter what the authors call the “safari stance.” As they argue (p. 22):
[T]he research is not always grounded in the fabric of African societies and therefore likely to draw erroneous conclusions. False parallels are drawn between patriarchy in Western and African societies; overgeneralization, oversimplification, or misinterpretation of African realities has led some African scholars to raise questions about who should reflect on the experiences of African women to promote research that is produced by those who themselves are of a particular society and understand its dynamics and complexities.”
