Within academic circles, there is a longstanding issue concerning the portrayal and understanding of African womanhood. Frequently, these narratives are crafted by outsiders, predominantly Western scholars, often distorting the lived experiences and unique perspectives of African women. This has led to a skewed and sometimes negative perception of African women, reinforcing stereotypes, and sidelining their voices in critical discussions. Moreover, this misrepresentation has real-world consequences, as it impacts social justice initiatives and development projects that rely on misguided narratives rather than the authentic voices of African women. African Womanhood and the Feminist Agenda emerges as an essential solution to the misrepresentation of African women. This comprehensive and meticulously researched book offers an alternative narrative, one that is rooted in African perspectives and experiences. It addresses the historical, cultural, and political dimensions of African womanhood, providing a rich and nuanced understanding of this multifaceted topic.

This book argues that African women's lived experiences are often spoken about authoritatively by people who are not included within this demographic, relegating these women to the role of spectators in their own stories. The dominant narratives of African womanhood, legitimized by intellectual discourse, are neither written by African women nor Africans in general. This book seeks to place feminism in Africa into its historical context by revisiting the experiences, practices, vision, and theories of feminism and gender in Africa. It is intended to serve as a comprehensive introduction to the field and provide a starting point for further and more advanced study of the nexus of feminism, gender, and development in Africa. Women Empowerment and the Feminist Agenda in Africa is designed to initiate post-graduate research and studies in the social sciences for directed and critical inquiry into the nature of feminist and gender politics and power relations in Africa. It is written for researchers, academics, and advanced tertiary studies, although professional gender and feminist organizations, especially those in Africa or focusing on Africa, will also find a wealth of information. The book is recommended for university libraries, post-graduate students and staff, the non-governmental community in Africa, women movement organizations in Africa, independent researchers and academics, and the African community at large.

In the global South there is potential for politics to marginalize the diverse perspectives of subaltern communities. Exploring ongoing and new feminist dialogues in the global South, this book examines the ways in which dominant epistemologies are challenged, unique identities formed, and the implications for the global feminist agenda.

This book will present three main themes of African women: African feminism, women and work, and women and politics, to inform readers of the current debates, to encourage new thinking on these issues, and to indicate areas for needed research.

This volume, which gathers prominent scholars, feminists, womanists, and creative writers from Africa and the African Diaspora, engages with candor and vigor issues and conflicts in feminism and black women studies - feminism and womanism debates, sisterhood and power struggles, research and documentation questions, elite and grassroots women relationship, urban and rural dichotomy, African and the African Diaspora relationship. Focusing on the pluralism of feminisms, these essays address the conflict between indigenous African feminisms and the radicalism of variants of Western feminism with their emphasis on sexuality and seeming oppositions to motherhood. They collectively argue that the African environment specifically should provide the context for any meaningful analysis of feminisms on the continent. The volume weaves theoretical questions, personal and collective engagements into a complex tapestry that spans Africa and the African Diaspora - from women organizing for change in South Africa and women's insurgency against colonialism in Nigeria to the problems of doing research on women in Uganda and building of a sisterhood in Memphis, Tennessee.

Heated debates about and insurgencies against female circumcision are symptoms of a disease emanating from a mindset that produced hierarchies of humans, conquered colonies, and built empires. The loss of colonies and empires does not in any way mitigate the ideological underpinnings of empire-building and the knowledge construction that subtends it. The mindset finds its articulation at points of coalescence. Female circumcision provided a point of coalescence and impetus for this articulation. Insisting that the hierarchy on which the imperialist project rests is not bipolar but multi-layered and more complex, the contributions in this volume demonstrate how imperialist discourses complicate issues of gender, race, and history. Nnaemeka gives voice to the silenced and marginalized, and creates space for them to participate in knowledge construction and theory making. The authors in this volume trace the travels of imperial and colonial discourses from antecedents in anthropology, travel writings, and missionary discourse, to modern configurations in films, literature, and popular culture. The contributors interrogate foreign, or Western, modus operandi and interventions in the so-called Third World and show how the resistance they generate can impede development work and undermine the true collaboration and partnership necessary to promote a transnational feminist agenda. With great clarity and in simple, accessible language, the contributors present complex ideas and arguments which hold significant implications for transnational feminism and development.