A comprehensive overview of the existing literature on gender, bringing together important and influential essays from widely disparate sources. A valuable collection for scholars and students. ANDREA CORNWALL is a Research Fellow at the Institute of Development Studies, University of Sussex Contributors include: JOSEPHINE BEOKU-BETTS, NIARA SUDARKASA, OBIOMA NNAEMEKA, RUDOLF P. GAUDIO, TIMOTHY BURKE, JANE I. GUYER, MEGAN VAUGHAN, JANET M. BUJRA, IRIS BERGER, BARBARA COOPER, DEBORAH GAITSKELL, STEPHAN E. MEISCHER, BOLANLE AWE, JEAN ALLMAN, SUSAN GEIGER Published in association with the International African Institute North America: Indiana U Press

This is a comprehensive overview on the existing literature on gender in Africa. It covers areas such as Western perceptions, colonial morality, religion and politics.

Gender is one of the most productive, dynamic, and vibrant areas of Africanist research today. This volume looks at Africa now that gender has come into play to consider how the continent, its people, and the term itself have changed.

Images and stories about African sexuality abound in today's globalized media. Frequently old stereotypes and popular opinion inform these stories, and sex in the media is predominately approached as a problem in need of solutions and intervention. The authors gathered here refuse an easy characterization of African sexuality and instead seek to understand the various erotic realities, sexual practices, and gendered changes taking place across the continent. They present a nuanced and comprehensive overview of the field of sex and sexuality in Africa to serve as a guide though the quickly expanding literature. This collection offers a set of texts that use sexuality as a prism for studying how communities coalesce against the canvas of larger political and economic contexts and how personal lives evolve therein. Scholars working in Africa, the U.S., and Europe reflect on issues of representation, health and bio-politics, same-sex relationships and identity, transactional economies of sex, religion and tradition, and the importance of pleasure and agency. This multidimensional reader provides a comprehensive view of sexuality from an African perspective.

This timely and expansive multidisciplinary and transdisciplinary collection dissects precolonial, colonial, and post-independence issues of male dominance, power, and control over the female body in the legal, socio-cultural, and political contexts in Africa. Contributors focus on the historical, theoretical, and empirical narratives of intersecting perspectives of gender and patriarchy in at least ten countries across the major sub-regions of the African continent. In these well-researched chapters, authors provide a deeper understanding of patriarchy and gender inequality in identifying misogyny, resisting male supremacy, reforming discriminatory laws, embracing human-centered public policies, expanding academic scholarship on the continent, and more.

How does our understanding of Africa shift when we begin from the perspective of women? What can the African perspective offer theories of culture and of gender difference? This work, as unique and insightful today as when it was first published, brings together a wide variety of African academics and other researchers to explore the links between literature, popular culture and theories of gender. Beginning with a ground-breaking overview of African gender theory, the book goes on to analyse women's writing, uncovering the ways different writers have approached issues of female creativity and colonial history, as well as the ways in which they have subverted popular stereotypes around African women. The contributors also explore the related gender dynamics of mask performance and oral story-telling. This major analysis of gender in popular and postcolonial cultural production remains essential reading for students and academics in women's studies, cultural studies and literature.

Religion, Gender, and Wellbeing in Africa argues that, in many African societies, ideas and practices of wellbeing and gender relations continue to be informed and shaped by religious epistemologies. The contributors affirm that for many Africans, it is through religio-spiritual frameworks that daily experiences, interactions, and gender relations are understood and interpreted. However, for many African women, religions have functioned as a double-edged-sword. Although they have contributed to the struggle against issues such as colonialism, gender justice, climate justice, and human rights, they have also endorsed and perpetuated sexism, heterosexism, homophobia, and the denial of human rights for a wide variety of people on the margins. The chapters within this collection demonstrate that most religions and religious formations in Africa have not yet positioned themselves as forces for wellbeing, gender justice, and security for African women and children. The contributors challenge simplistic and superficial readings and interpretations of religio-spirituality in Africa and call for deeper engagements of the interplay between Africa’s religio-spiritual realities and the wellbeing of women, particularly around issues of gender justice, reproductive health, and human rights.

This brilliant, influential, exquisitely written book describes in vivid detail the psychological effects of the cultural norms, entrenched traditions, and gender biases prevalent throughout the continent of Africa that undermine and violate women's basic human rights. This book is particularly dramatic and riveting because it narrates in detail the personal, revealing account of those violations based on the author's own experience as a child growing up in the country now known as Zimbabwe. Protected and guided by the wisdom and values of her grandmother, called ugogo in her native language, Blessed was able to survive and eventually thrive, although too many African girls and women have not been as fortunate. Blessed skillfully invites her readers to traverse her journey through the numerous intersecting traditions and norms of the male-dominated African culture. The journey begins with a celebration of unique, colorful cultural traditions, then gradually guides us through the darker side of women's experiences, including exclusion from education and from property ownership rights, marital subjugation and family isolation, genital mutilation, and all-too-common cases of rape, torture, as well as murder of innocent girls and women. Yet, despite the many severe challenges girls and women face, the narrative journey is reparative. Blessed concludes with a compelling argument that education is the key to gender equality, and the book ends with a history of notable women in Africa who demonstrate that educating girls provides a sustainable means to improve the quality of life for women at all levels and in all contexts-family, culture, nation, and world-then and now. Blessed concludes with the poignant, compelling point that girls' education is a human right, not a privilege.

This sixth volume of the CODESRIA Gender Series is a collection of discourses, perspectives, practices and policies on the role of the female gender in science and technology, particularly in the African context. Although widely advocated as the indisputable foundation for political and economic power in the modern world, science and technology remains marked by various layers and dimensions of gender inequality that work to the disadvantage of girls and women. Despite the fact that a lot of awareness has been created, and gender issues are now more readily acknowledged by various development initiatives in Africa, participation in science and technology still remains a hurdle as far as girls and women are concerned. A common theme that runs through the book is how feminine identities, ideologies of domesticity and gender stereotypes, and the inadequacy or lack of clear policies facilitate the invisibility of women in science and technology. This notwithstanding, women have never ceased devising clever and ingenious ways that would enable them to master nature, from the margins. The book provides a window onto the current state of female participation in science and technology in Africa, along with an analysis of the historical backgrounds, current educational and professional contexts, and prospects for the future. While it is evident that more research needs to be done, with more groups in different regions, this volume brings together a rich and inspiring collection of qualitative insights on gender, science and technology in Africa. The CODESRIA Gender Series acknowledges the need to challenge the masculinities underpinning the structures of repression that target women. The series aims to keep alive and nourish African social science research with insightful research and debates that challenge conventional wisdom, structures and ideologies that are narrowly informed by caricatures of gender realities. It strives to showcase the best in African gender research and provide a platform for emerging new talents to flower.