Obviously the Christian influence on the ways in which sexuality in Africa has been/is seen is decisive. Furthermore, as has been the case for something like a century now, in many parts of Africa, Christianity is no longer just determining the ways in which gender relations are perceived from the outside; Christianity is also influencing […]

egy for women’s empowerment! Previously, before the Jola adopted Islam and fe­male circumcision from their Mandinka neighbours, it was only through mar — riage/motherhood that women could achieve ritual status. But now, with a new form of female secret society connected to Islam and to female circumcision, women are no longer dependent on their relations […]

rican women should use their existing, often uncharted power base and build on that instead of following the Western lead of ‘trying to be like men’. In GAD lines of thinking, ‘tradition’ and ‘African culture’ are detrimental to women, being posed in opposition to gender equity and modernity. Even if this construction of tradition/modernity as […]

idence, in feminist theory and elsewhere, regarding ‘patriarchy’ itself being many different things,[10] and in spite of the work of prominent African feminists like Ifi Amadiume and Oyeronke Oyewumi, who—based on their own empirical work in Nigeria—show that talking of ‘female subordination’ is far too simple and off the mark. Amadiume and Oyewumi explicitly critizise […]

One of the areas where, surprisingly, colonial continuities are still alive and kicking is in gender-and-development discourse. In gender-and-development (GAD) dis­course ‘world wide patriarchy’ and ‘universal female subordination’ look like pri­mordial facts of nature (cf. Becker, this volume). This in spite of thinking and ev- Arnfred Page 12 Wednesday, March 3, 2004 2:38 PM