Altering Politics, Contesting Gender

Click to increase image sizeClick to decrease image size Notes 1 A.M. Tripp notes that from 1960 to 2000 Africa 'exhibited the world's fastest rate of growth in female representation'. Tripp, 'The New Political Activism in Africa', Journal of Democracy, 12, 3 (July 2001), p. 142. South Africa and Uganda have been particularly impressive. See A.M. Goetz and S. Hassim (eds), No Shortcuts to Power: African Women in Politics and Policy Making (London, Zed Books, 2003). 2 For a discussion of gender as a process, see K. Beckwith, 'The Concept of Gender: Research Implications for Political Science', Politics and Gender, 1, 1 (March 2005), pp. 128–36. 3 G.S. Spivak, 'Can the Subaltern Speak?', in C. Nelson and L. Grossberg (eds), Marxism and the Interpretation of Culture (Urbana IL, University of Illinois Press, 1988), pp. 271–313. 4 A. Burton, ' "States of Injury": Josephine Butler on Slavery, Citizenship and the Boer War', and P. Scully, 'White Maternity and Black Infancy: The Rhetoric of Race in the South African Women's Suffrage Movement', in C. Fletcher, L.E. Nym Mayhall and P. Levine (eds), Women's Suffrage in the British Empire: Citizenship, Nation and Race (London, Routledge, 2000), pp. 68–84. 5 A. Burton, Burdens of History: British Feminists, Indian Women and Imperial Culture, 1865–1915 (Chapel Hill, NC, North Carolina University Press, 1994). 6 Male nationalists reinscribed sati in India as a long-standing tradition of Indian culture and invoked widow's self-immolation as a sign of both the fortitude of Indian women and as a symbol of the movement's commitment to 'traditional' values. On Algeria see F. Fanon, A Dying Colonialism (New York, Grove Press, 1965); on India, see L. Mani, Contentious Traditions: The Debate on Sati in Colonial India (Berkeley, CA, University of California Press, 1998). In the 1820s and 1830s, abolitionists concentrated on slave women's whipping at the hands of slaveholder men to call for the ending of slavery and the restoration of a 'proper' gender order in which freedmen would be heads of patriarchal nuclear families and thus protect their wives from the abuse of men not their husbands. P. Scully, Liberating the Family? Gender and British Slave Emancipation in the Rural Western Cape, South Africa, 1823–1853 (Portsmouth, NH, Heinemann Press, 1997). 7 W. Woodhull, 'Unveiling Algeria', in R. Lewis and S. Mills (eds), Feminist Postcolonial Theory: A Reader (New York, Routledge, 2003), p. 571. 8 L. Thomas, The Politics of the Womb: Women, Reproduction, and the State in Kenya (Berkeley, CA, University of California Press, 2003). 9 C.A. Presley, Kikuyu Women, the Mau Mau Rebellion, and Social Change in Kenya (Boulder, CO, Westview Press, 1992). 10 M. Lovett, 'Gender Relations, Class Formation and the Colonial State in Africa', in J. Parpart and K. Staudt (eds), Women and the State in Africa (Boulder, CO, Lynn Reiner, 1989), p. 27. 11 C. Walker, 'Gender and the Development of the Migrant Labour System c.1850–1930', in C. Walker (ed.), Women and Gender in Southern Africa to 1945 (Cape Town, David Philip, 1990), pp. 168–96. 12 Lovett, 'Gender Relations', pp. 26–31. 13 J.L. Parpart, 'Women and the State in Africa', in D. Rothchild and N. Chazan (eds), The Precarious Balance: State and Society in Africa, (Boulder, CO, Westview, 1988) pp. 211–12; Lovett, 'Gender Relations' and M. Mbilinyi, '"This is an Unforgettable Business": Colonial State Intervention in Urban Tanzania', in Parpart and Staudt, pp. 111–29. For one example of the contradictory nature of colonial regulation of women see T. Barnes, 'The Fight for the Control of African Women's Mobility in Colonial Zimbabwe', Signs: Journal of Women in Culture and Society, 17, 3 (1992), pp. 586–608. 14 Lovett, 'Gender Relations'; G. Waylen, Gender in Third World Politics (Boulder, CO, Lynn Reiner, 1996); E. Schmidt, Peasants, Traders, and Wives: Shona Women in the History of Colonial Zimbabwe (Portsmouth, NH, Heinemann, 1992); C. Walker, Women and Resistance in South Africa (London, Onnyx Press, 1982); I. Berger, Threads of Solidarity: Women in South African Industry, 1900–1980 (Bloomington, IN, Indiana University Press, 1992). 15 K. Okonjo, 'The Dual Sex Political System in Operation: Igbo Women and Community Politics in Midwestern Nigeria', in N.J. Hafkin and E.G. Bay (eds), Women in Africa: Studies in Social and Economic Change (Stanford, CA, Stanford University Press, 1976), pp. 45–58. 16 J. Van Allen '"Sitting on a Man": Colonialism and the Lost Political Institutions of Igbo Women', Canadian Journal of African Studies, 6, 2 (1972), pp. 165–81 and '"Aba Riots" or Igbo "Women's War"? Ideology, Stratification, and the Invisibility of Women', in Hafkin and Bay (eds), Women in Africa, pp. 100–106. 17 Those courts were the result of negotiations between indigenous male elders and colonial magistrates intent upon codifying customary law to their mutual advantage. M. Chanock, Law, Custom and Social Order: The Colonial Experience in Malawi and Zambia (Cambridge, Cambridge University Press, 1985). 18 Waylen, Gender in Third World Politics, pp. 63–5; Parpart, 'Women and the State in Africa', p. 213. For examples of popular resistance see Mbilinyi, 'This is an Unforgettable Business' and N. Mba, Nigerian Women Mobilized: Women's Political Activities in Southern Nigeria, 1900–1950 (Berkeley, CA, Institute of International Studies, University of California, 1982). 19 In his analysis of the African state, Fatton argued that women opted out of the state and mainstream politics to prevent co-optation by unconsolidated ruling classes. Waylen agrees that women 'disengaged' from the state, but that the vast majority of African women also lacked the capacity to effectively engage in politics. Tripp argues that the state excluded women or co-opted them, leaving the majority 'to their own organizations'. She claims those organisations were the foundation for women's dramatic entry into politics in the 1980s and 1990s. R. Fatton Jr., 'Gender, Class and State in Africa', in Parpart and Staudt, Women and the State in Africa, pp. 47–66; Waylen, Gender in Third World Politics, p. 121; A.M. Tripp, Women and Politics in Uganda (Madison, Wisconsin, University of Wisconsin Press, 2000), p. 7. See also Geisler in this issue. 20 G. Geisler, Women and the Remaking of Politics in Southern Africa: Negotiating Autonomy, Incorporation and Representation (Uppsala, Nordiska Afrikainstitutet, 2004), p. 55. 21 For example, see S. Urdang, Fighting Two Colonialisms: Women in Guinea-Bissau (New York, Monthly Review Press, 1979), and M.J. Arthur, 'Mozambique: Women in the Armed Struggle', in R. Meena (ed.), Gender in Southern Africa: Conceptual and Theoretical Issues (Harare, Southern Africa Printing and Publishing House, 1992), pp. 67–82. 22 Too often, feminism was 'seen as a bourgeois diversion distracting from the class struggle', Waylen, Gender in Third World Politics, p. 79. See also R. Gaidzanwa, 'Bourgeois Theories of Gender and Feminism and Their Shortcomings with Reference to Southern African Countries', in Meena (ed.), Gender in Southern Africa, pp. 92–125. On women's movements in South Africa, see S. Hassim, Women's Organizations and Democracy in South Africa: Contesting Authority (Madison, WI, University of Wisconsin Press, 2005). 23 Accounts of women's role in liberation movements include Walker, Women and Resistance; D. Russell, Lives of Courage: Women for a New South Africa (New York, Basic Books, 1989); I. Staunton, Mothers of the Revolution (Harare, Baobab Books, 1990) and M. Munachonga, 'Women and the State: Zambia's Development Policies and Their Impact on Women', in Parpart and Staudt, pp. 130–42; Parpart, 'Women and the State in Africa', and Waylen, Gender in Third World Politics. 24 Geisler, Women and the Remaking of Politics in Southern Africa, p. 24. 25 Parpart, 'Women and the State', pp. 222–3. Geisler notes that despite the inadequacies of the national machinery advocated by the UN, it did provide a platform for women in and out of the state to build relationships. Geisler, Women and the Remaking of Politics, p. 27. For a critique of the western bias of the international women's movement see C.T. Mohanty, 'Under Western Eyes: Feminist Scholarship and Colonial Discourses', in C.T. Mohanty, A. Russo, L. Torres (eds), Third World Women and the Politics of Feminism (Bloomington, IN, Indiana University Press, 1991), pp. 51–80. For a critique of sisterhood from an African perspective see O. Oyewumi (ed.), African Women and Feminism: Reflecting on the Politics of Sisterhood (Asmara Eritrea, Africa World Press, Inc., 2003). 26 African women's divided political objectives have long been noted. For example, see S. Ranchod-Nilsson, '"This Too, Is a Way of Fighting", Rural Women's Participation in Zimbabwe's Liberation War', in M.A. Tetreault (ed.), Women and Revolution in Africa, Asia, and the New World (Columbia, SC, University of South Carolina Press, 1994), pp. 62–88. Amadiume notes the emergence of class conflicts and the competition that emerged among women's organisations in Nigeria during this period. I. Amadiume, Daughters of the Goddess, Daughters of Imperialism: African Women Struggle for Culture, Power and Democracy (London, Zed Books, 2000). For a recent discussion on the problem by South African activists and scholars, see the special issue of Agenda, 'African Feminisms, Two', 54 (2002). 27 A. Basu, The Challenge of Local Feminisms: Women's Movements in Global Perspective (Boulder, CO, Westview Press, 1995); T. Kaplan, Crazy for Democracy: Women in Grassroots Movements (New York, Routledge, 1997) and J.W. Scott, C. Kaplan, D. Keates, Transitions, Environments, Translations (New York, Routledge, 1997), pp. 226–49. 28 For a discussion of women's participation in and during liberation struggles during the 1970s and 1980s see Tetreault (ed.), Women and Revolution in Africa, Asia, and the New World; R.E. Lapchick and S. Urdang (eds), Oppression and Resistance: The Struggle of Women in Southern Africa (Westport, C, Greenwood Press, 1982) and Arthur, 'Mozambique', pp. 67–82. 29 See G. Mikell, 'African Feminism: Towards a New Politics of Representation', Feminist Studies, 21, 2 (1995), pp. 405–24; Tripp, 'The New Political Activism in Africa'; Geisler, Women and the Remaking of Politics. In established democracies like Botswana, women were inspired to enter formal politics and to organise more vigorously in civil society during the 1990s. 30 In contrast to Geisler, who argues that conservative rural women lost the minimal political representation they had with the decline of women's wings and the rise of women MPs and national women's movements, we contend that better, if still limited opportunities for marginalised women's activism are now available. See Becker, Fish and Britton in this issue. Geisler, Women and the Remaking of Politics, p. 209. 31 S. Huntington, The Third Wave: Democratization in the Late Twentieth Century (Norman, OK, University of Oklahoma Press, 1991). 32 J.S. Jacquette, 'Regional Differences and Contrasting Views', Journal of Democracy, 12, 3 (July 2001), p. 111. 33 For an overview of women's entry into politics in Africa during the 1990s, including a global comparison of the percentage of women in national parliaments, see Tripp, 'The New Political Activism in Africa'. For a discussion of women in national politics in southern Africa see Geisler, Women and the Remaking of Politics. 34 K. Beckwith, 'The Comparative Politics of Women's Movements', Perspectives on Politics, 3, 3 (September 2005), p. 587. 35 As Mala Htun notes, 'women's presence in decision making is no guarantee of liberal policy. Not all women are liberals'. M. Htun, Sex and the State: Abortion, Divorce, and the Family Under Latin American Dictatorships and Democracies (Cambridge, Cambridge University Press, 2003), p. 173. 36 The limitations of women's wings on women's political activism has long been recognised. For early analyses of women's wings on the African continent, see G. Geisler, 'Sisters Under the Skin: Women and the Women's League in Zambia', Journal of Modern African Studies, 25, 1 (1987), pp. 43–66; Parpart, 'Women and the State' and F. Steady, Female Power in African Politics: The National Congress of Sierra Leone Women (Pasadena, NM, Munger Africana Library, California Institute of Technology, 1975). 37 For two recent accounts on South African gender machinery see G.W. Seidman, 'Institutional Dilemmas: Representation versus Mobilization in the South African Gender Commission', Feminist Studies, 29, 3 (Fall 2003), pp. 541–63 and S. Hassim, 'The Gender Pact and Democratic Consolidation: Institutionalizing Gender Equality in the South African State', pp. 505–28 in the same issue. 38 Analyses of women's movements in Africa have been numerous and include H. Becker, Namibian Women's Movement, 1980 to 1992: From Anti-Colonial Resistance to Reconstruction (Frankfurt, IKO-Verlag für Interkulturelle Kommunikation, 1995); J. Cock, 'Women in South Africa's Transition to Democracy', in Scott et al., Transitions, Environments, Translations; A. Kemp, N. Madlala, A. Moodley and E. Salo, 'The Dawn of a New Day: Redefining South African Feminism', in Basu, The Challenge of Local Feminisms; Tripp, Women in Politics in Uganda. For African women in the formal political sector see S. Tamale, When Hens Begin to Crow: Gender and Parliamentary Politics in Uganda (Boulder, CO, Westview Press, 1999) and H. Britton, Women in the South African Parliament; From Resistance to Governance (Urbana, IL, University of Illinois Press, 2005). For comparative studies see D. Connell, 'Strategies for Change: Women and Politics in Eritrea and South Africa', Review of African Political Economy, 25, 76 (1998), pp. 189–205; Hassim and Goetz, No Shortcuts to Power and Geisler, Women and the Remaking of Politics. 39 C.T. Mohanty, Feminism without Borders: Decolonizing Theory, Practicing Solidarity (Durham, NC, Duke University Press, 2003), p. 231.

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