Women's Activism in South Africa provides the most comprehensive collection of women's experiences within civil society since the 1994 transition. This book captures South African women's stories of collective activism and social change at a crucial point for the future of democracy in the country, if not the continent. Pulling together the voices of activists and scholars, South Africa's path to democracy and the assurance of gender rights emerge as a complex journey of both successes and challenges. The collection elucidates a new form of pragmatic feminism, building upon the elasticity between the state and civil society. What the cases demonstrate is that while the state itself may not be a panacea, it still represents a key source of power and the primary locus of vital resources, including the rights of citizenship, access to basic needs, and the promise of protection from gender-based violence - all central to women's particular needs in South Africa.

Throughout Africa, growing numbers of women are coming together and making their voices heard, mobilising around causes ranging from democracy and land rights to campaigns against domestic violence. In Tanzania and Tunisia, women have made major gains in their struggle for equal political rights, and in Sierra Leone and Liberia women have been at the forefront of efforts to promote peace and reconciliation. While some of these movements have been influenced by international feminism and external donors, increasingly it is African women who are shaping the global struggle for women’s rights. Bringing together African authors who themselves are part of the activist groups, this collection represents the only comprehensive and up-to-date overview of women’s movements in contemporary Africa. Drawing on case studies and fresh empirical material from across the continent, the authors challenge the prevailing assumption that notions of women’s rights have trickled down from the global north to the south, showing instead that these movements have been shaped by above all the unique experiences and concerns of the local women involved.

This book brings together conceptual debates on the impact of youth-hood and gender on state building in Africa. It offers contemporary and interdisciplinary analyses on the role of protests as an alternative route for citizens to challenge the ballot box as the only legitimate means of ensuring freedom. Drawing on case studies from seven African countries, the contributors focus on specific political moments in their respective countries to offer insights into how the state/society social contract is contested through informal channels, and how political power functions to counteract citizen’s voices. These contributions offer a different way of thinking about state-building and structural change that goes beyond the system-based approaches that dominate scholarship on democratization and political structures. In effect, it provides a basis for organizers and social movements to consider how to build solidarity beyond influencing government institutions. Chapters 3, 5, and 6 are available open access under a Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 International License via link.springer.com.

This book investigates women’s political activism and conflict in the struggle against apartheid in South Africa, using play texts, alongside interviews with female playwrights and women who worked within the theatre, to examine issues around domestic violence, racial abuse and women in detention without trial.

Winner, 2021 AERA Outstanding Book Award Winner, 2021 AERA Division F New Scholar's Book Award Winner, 2020 Mary Kelley Book Prize, given by the Society for Historians of the Early American Republic Winner, 2020 Outstanding Book Award, given by the History of Education Society Uncovers the hidden role of girls and women in the desegregation of American education The story of school desegregation in the United States often begins in the mid-twentieth-century South. Drawing on archival sources and genealogical records, Kabria Baumgartner uncovers the story’s origins in the nineteenth-century Northeast and identifies a previously overlooked group of activists: African American girls and women. In their quest for education, African American girls and women faced numerous obstacles—from threats and harassment to violence. For them, education was a daring undertaking that put them in harm’s way. Yet bold and brave young women such as Sarah Harris, Sarah Parker Remond, Rosetta Morrison, Susan Paul, and Sarah Mapps Douglass persisted. In Pursuit of Knowledge argues that African American girls and women strategized, organized, wrote, and protested for equal school rights—not just for themselves, but for all. Their activism gave rise to a new vision of womanhood: the purposeful woman, who was learned, active, resilient, and forward-thinking. Moreover, these young women set in motion equal-school-rights victories at the local and state level, and laid the groundwork for further action to democratize schools in twentieth-century America. In this thought-provoking book, Baumgartner demonstrates that the confluence of race and gender has shaped the long history of school desegregation in the United States right up to the present.

Provides a new perspective on the struggle against apartheid, and contributes to key debates in South African history, gender inequality, sexual violence, and the legacies of the liberation struggle.

This book examines women's movements and women's collective action in Africa. Steady begins her examination in pre-colonial times, moving through the colonial period to the present. She looks at the various arenas which collective action has and can influence, comparing the impact on economic growth, education, democratizations, family formation, and women's rights. Steady uses Sierra Leone as the focus of her inquiry, in order for a detailed story to illustrate larger themes, but in every area makes comparisons to different parts of Africa; the case study here guides a larger inquiry. Written as a text, the book carefully explains the theoretical ideas (e.g., all key terms are defined, and then there is a discussion of how they relate to African issues specifically) and the historical knowledge (e.g., all historical events are described, there is no assumption of knowledge of African history) necessary to understand the meaning of current women's groups. What results is a clear and comprehensive treatment of an issue which is increasingly central to understanding changes taking place on the African continent today.