Africa After Gender?

Introduction: When Was Gender?

Introduction: When Was Gender? Stephan F. Miescher, Takyiwaa Manuh, and Catherine M. Cole In scholarship—as in real estate—location matters. This is especially true in the ¤eld of African gender studies. During the past two decades, the relationship between gender studies scholars based in Africa and those based in North America and Europe has been strained, even explosive. This is due in part to differences in political environments and experiences of racism, as well as interpretations of feminist ideologies and different political alliances and coalitions . North-South tensions erupted at a historic women’s studies conference in Nigeria in 1992, the ¤rst international conference on Women in Africa and the African Diaspora (WAAD). Convener Obioma Nnaemeka was driven by a concern about the commodi¤cation of African women in women’s studies and feminist scholarship and “their marginalization in the process of gathering, articulation , and disseminating knowledge” (1998a, 354). Nnaemeka brought together scholars and activists from inside and outside Africa. On the ¤rst day, three unanticipated controversies exploded: 1) a demand for the exclusion of white participants, 2) an objection to the presence of men, and 3) an ideological¤ght over different currents of feminism, such as (Northern/white) feminism, womanism, and Africana womanism. This episode serves as a revealing entry point into the themes and objectives of Africa After Gender? At the WAAD conference, identity politics drove much of the controversy: African-American and British-African participants¤rst raised the possibility of excluding the handful of whites who attended. Their concerns illustrated, as Nnaemeka describes it, “the complexity and heterogeneity of the category ‘woman’/‘black woman’”(1998a, 369). Most African participants, especially the Nigerian hosts, as well as some Diaspora Africans rejected the exclusion of whites. Participants from Southern Africa were, as one might expect,divided.The controversy revealed the powerful violence of racism that has affected people of African descent anywhere, from the Western hemisphere to Cape Town. However, as Nnaemeka argues, it also showed that in order for protests to be “strategically relevant,” they must be well chosen in terms of location and moment. Dialogues should not be abandoned for insurgency, “unless we have proven the inef¤cacy of the former” (ibid.). When, in her keynote address, Ama Ata Aidoo embraced the label “feminist,”she was urged by an African American to abandon the term and instead endorse “Africana woman- ism” (Aidoo 1998; Nnaemeka 1998a, 370). Generally, African participants were less interested in semantics, and they prioritized actions over the rhetoric of naming their struggles. Some foreign participants objected to the participation of male presenters. However, many African women responded that they had successfully collaborated with male scholars and activists in their joint endeavors for societal change. These divergent views on participation at the conference demonstrated how much location matters in the constitution of women’s studies and feminist scholarship. Sex-based and race-based exclusionary practices in the United States and Europe, such as the all-female classroom or the all-black organization, have a different meaning in most African settings. While separate gendered spaces including schools have a long history, political demands focus less on such gender divisions. Rather, activists struggle for improved health and education for African women. These were for many participants the main priority of the conference.1 The controversies that emerged at the WAAD conference provide an interesting case study that highlights the dif¤culty of forming coalitions around women’s and gender issues. One can see the arti¤ciality of any blanket statements about “women” in Africa which earlier generations of scholars were tempted to make in the face of an African studies discipline that had been overwhelmingly masculinist.2 Yet the WAAD conference also showed the strength of these alliances, for activists, bureaucrats, and scholars from all over the continent and, indeed, the world, attended the conference in droves. Their participation , however fraught, provided tangible evidence that something dramatic and palpable was happening with women’s and gender issues in Africa. Gender is one of the most dynamic areas of Africanist research today, as is evident by a host of new journals, articles, and books dedicated to the topic. Interest in gender is not just academic: the subject has gained widespread currency among the general populace in Africa, from taxi drivers and market traders to policymakers. Aided by nongovernmental organizations (NGOs) and foreign assistance programs that claim the concept in their mission statements, gender has come to mean something in Africa, even if there is little agreement about...