African Feminisms: Cartographies for the Twenty-First Century

In 1981 Filomina Chioma Steady boldly proclaimed that black women, particularly those from the African continent, were the original feminists. In her now classic anthology, The Black Woman Cross-Culturally, Steady argued that “true feminism” stemmed from “an actual experience of oppression, a lack of the socially prescribed means of ensuring one’s wellbeing, and a true lack of access to resources for survival” (36). In her mind, feminism was simply a reaction to oppression, one that resulted in “the development of greater resourcefulness for survival and greater self-reliance.” Two years later the budding Sierra Leonean anthropologist delivered a powerful keynote address on African feminism at a research conference at Howard University organized by the Association of Black Women Historians (Terborg-Penn 1996, xix). This lecture provided the analytical scaffolding that would frame intellectual discussions about feminism in Africa for years to come. In the essay that grew out of this address, Steady (1996, 4) noted:

African feminism combines racial, sexual, class, and cultural dimensions of oppression to produce a more inclusive brand of feminism through which women are viewed first and foremost as human, rather than sexual, beings. It can be defined as that ideology which encompasses freedom from oppression based on the political, economic, social, and cultural manifestations of racial, cultural, sexual, and class biases. It is more inclusive than other forms of feminist ideologies and is largely a product of polarizations and conflicts that represent some of the worst and chronic forms of human suffering. . . . African feminism is, in short, humanistic feminism.

In the thirty years since this essay was originally published (i.e., 1987), scholarship on African feminisms has grown tremendously and is now being taught at universities across the world. In African countries such as Uganda, South Africa, Cameroon, Ghana, and Morocco, women’s and gender studies courses, as well as departments and even schools, have become relatively commonplace. Both guest editors are products of this momentum, having earned graduate degrees from African universities that specialize in African feminist thought.¹ Both of us now teach in the Department of Women’s, Gender, and Sexuality Studies at the Pennsylvania State University, and we are both deeply committed to the intellectual and activist work that Steady first described. As codirectors of the African Feminist Initiative, or AFI, we seek to promote the study of African feminist thought, as well as the history of African feminist activism, within the U.S. academy. In addition, we also strive to create equitable partnerships between scholars and practitioners of African feminism based in North America and Europe and those based on the African continent. This special issue of Meridians represents one such partnership.

Like the “true feminism” described by Steady in 1981, the African Feminist Initiative emerged out of struggle. It grew out of the recognition that African studies—at least within our university—was not a hospitable place to engage in feminist work, nor was women’s, gender, and sexuality studies attentive enough to scholarly issues concerning women on the African continent. Instead of trying to work within the confines of an existing set of structures, the two of us decided to forge a different path, to create a new space where we could promote the type of scholarship that had been so critical to our own intellectual development. Because we had the good fortune of working at a university with no fewer than seven scholars who shared similar academic interests, we had the critical mass to make such an initiative successful. In April 2015, with generous start-up funding from the College of the Liberal Arts at Penn State, we launched the AFI.

The African Feminist Initiative is an intellectual collective of sorts. In addition to the two codirectors, it has an internal steering committee and an external advisory board. The former comprises Penn State faculty members with an interest in the field, while the latter consists of leading African feminist scholars from around the world.² We also have a broad network of affiliates, both scholars and activists, who are involved in the work...