This volume focuses on the intersections of gender and power in Africa, the historical roots of inequality as experienced by women and social institutions that reinforce social hierarchies and distribute power unevenly within the social, economic, religious and political spheres during the 19th and 20th centuries. Case studies address the complexities and state of gender relations, gender workings across disciplines, and, women’s labor, rights and responsibilities. Based on rich and wide-ranging research and data, the volume features both theoretical and empirical essays that explain the relevance of gender as a category of analysis. Contributors to this volume are from diverse academic disciplines and backgrounds, a diversity that lends a special uniqueness and creates a space for collaborative discussions. In some ways, the essays subvert conventional boundaries of scholarship about gender, which have tended to primarily focus on female spaces as separate from the larger social, political, and economic matrices.  The essays represent a cross section of intellectual thought, and cover a broad range of historical eras, disciplines, and topics, bringing new voices from Francophone and Lusophone Africa.  This volume will appeal to scholars, students, educators, policy makers, and the general public, especially the growing number of non-scholars who take an active interest in gender relations, women’s rights, and labor relations.

ABOUT THE EDITORS

TOYIN FALOLA teaches African history at the University of Texas at Austin, and he is the Mwalimu Julius Nyerere Chair of Modern African History-At-Large, Benue State University, Makurdi, Nigeria. He has written many books on women and gender, most recently The Women’s War of 1929 and Women’s Role in Sub-Saharan Africa.

BRIDGET A. TEBOH is an Associate Professor of History at the University of Massachusetts-Dartmouth. She has published scholarly articles and book chapters on African history, culture, and gender. She serves on the editorial board of Notes and Records: An International Journal of African and African Diaspora Studies. She is working on two books, Unruly Mothers, Combative Wives: Rituals, Women and Change in the Cameroon Grassfields c. 1889-1960; as well as Herstory: Biography of a Woman Politician, Religious Icon and Social Worker.” Sub-titled ‘Madame Maternity:’ Life and Times.

CATEGORY

History/AFRICA