Download or read book Female and Male in West Africa written by Christine Oppong and published by Taylor & Francis. This book was released on 2023-03-31 with total page 404 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: In the 1970s and early 1980s, there was a lack of contemporary, readily available studies of the informal relationships between the sexes; their day to day activities and expectations and how these were altering; especially in contexts in which there were radical demographic, political and economic changes taking place. Originally published in 1983, this volume documents the complexities and subtleties of the modes of interaction between women and men in one region of Africa. It seeks to provide insights and understanding of changing social contexts and relationships based upon ethnographic field work carried out in the previous decade. There are five sections. The first is comparative; presenting and analysing statistical data from the countries of the region; including demographic profiles of fertility, migration, mortality, as well as census and survey evidence on work patterns and education. It provides the broad framework within which the individual case studies are located. The theme of the first set of case studies is the traditional separation and interconnectedness apparent in the worlds of women and men in several culture areas in the spheres of arts and crafts, music, political roles, language, symbolism, ritual, domestic organization and resources and sexuality. The second set focuses on the theme of domestic cooperation and conflict, in production and consumption – in particular the conflicting claims and expectations of men and women, as spouses and kin. The third set of essays is concerned with the relative resources and opportunities of females and males in schools and employment contexts, in sexual encounters and in national community and domestic decision-making processes. The subjects of the final section include individualism, autonomy and dependence of the members of one sex upon the other. The increased individualism, resulting from migration and the scattering of kin, and the breakdown of cooperative work patterns between spouses and relatives is seen as leading to instances of both increased dependence on the one hand, especially of women on men, and increased opportunities for economic autonomy on the other. The case studies span a wide range of socio-economic conditions including studies of farmers, traders, fishermen and fishmongers, factory and office workers, the relatively rich and the relatively poor, from many different ethnic groups and six countries. The book was expected to be of interest to a wide range of readers in social science disciplines as well as to planners and administrators. It should still prove to be particularly relevant to the needs of university students in the fields of women’s studies, African studies, Black studies, sex roles, family relations, sociology and anthropology.
Download or read book Boy Wives and Female Husbands written by Stephen O. Murray and published by State University of New York Press. This book was released on 2021-04-01 with total page 283 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Among the many myths created about Africa, the claim that homosexuality and gender diversity are absent or incidental is one of the oldest and most enduring. Historians, anthropologists, and many contemporary Africans alike have denied or overlooked African same-sex patterns or claimed that such patterns were introduced by Europeans or Arabs. In fact, same-sex love and nonbinary genders were and are widespread in Africa. Boy-Wives and Female Husbands documents the presence of this diversity in some fifty societies in every region of the continent south of the Sahara. Essays by scholars from a variety of disciplines explore institutionalized marriages between women, same-sex relations between men and boys in colonial work settings, mixed gender roles in east and west Africa, and the emergence of LGBTQ activism in South Africa, which became the first nation in the world to constitutionally ban discrimination based on sexual orientation. Also included are oral histories, folklore, and translations of early ethnographic reports by German and French observers. Boy-Wives and Female Husbands was the first serious study of same-sex sexuality and gender diversity in Africa, and this edition includes a new foreword by Marc Epprecht that underscores the significance of the book for a new generation of African scholars, as well as reflections on the book's genesis by the late Stephen O. Murray. This book is freely available in an open access edition thanks to the generous support of the Murray Hong Family Trust. Access the book online at the SUNY Open Access Repository at http://hdl.handle.net/20.500.12648/1714.
Download or read book The Invention of Women written by Oyèrónkẹ́ Oyěwùmí and published by U of Minnesota Press. This book was released on 1997-10 with total page 257 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: The "woman question", this book asserts, is a Western one, and not a proper lens for viewing African society. A work that rethinks gender as a Western contruction, The Invention of Women offers a new way of understanding both Yoruban and Western cultures. Oyewumi traces the misapplication of Western, body-oriented concepts of gender through the history of gender discourses in Yoruba studies. Her analysis shows the paradoxical nature of two fundamental assumptions of feminist theory: that gender is socially constructed in old Yoruba society, and that social organization was determined by relative age.
Download or read book Readings in Gender in Africa written by Andrea Cornwall and published by Indiana University Press. This book was released on 2005 with total page 264 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: This is a comprehensive overview on the existing literature on gender in Africa. It covers areas such as Western perceptions, colonial morality, religion and politics.
Download or read book Male Daughters Female Husbands written by Professor Ifi Amadiume and published by Zed Books Ltd.. This book was released on 2015-03-12 with total page 296 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: In 1987, more than a decade before the dawn of queer theory, Ifi Amadiume wrote Male Daughters, Female Husbands, to critical acclaim. This compelling and highly original book frees the subject position of 'husband' from its affiliation with men, and goes on to do the same for other masculine attributes, dislocating sex, gender and sexual orientation. Boldly arguing that the notion of gender, as constructed in Western feminist discourse, did not exist in Africa before the colonial imposition of a dichotomous understanding of sexual difference, Male Daughters, Female Husbands examines the structures in African society that enabled people to achieve power, showing that roles were not rigidly masculinized nor feminized. At a time when gender and queer theory are viewed by some as being stuck in an identity-politics rut, this outstanding study not only warns against the danger of projecting a very specific, Western notion of difference onto other cultures, but calls us to question the very concept of gender itself.
Download or read book Women s Songs from West Africa written by Thomas A. Hale and published by Indiana University Press. This book was released on 2013-12-02 with total page 352 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Exploring the origins, organization, subject matter, and performance contexts of singers and singing, Women's Songs from West Africa expands our understanding of the world of women in West Africa and their complex and subtle roles as verbal artists. Covering Côte d'Ivoire, the Gambia, Mali, Niger, Nigeria, Senegal, and beyond, the essays attest to the importance of women's contributions to the most widespread form of verbal art in Africa.
Download or read book Women and Law in West Africa written by Akua Kuenyehia and published by Walwa. This book was released on 2003 with total page 244 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: A study of legal issues affecting women in West Africa, looking at how women cope.
Download or read book Writing African Women written by Stephanie Newell and published by Zed Books Ltd.. This book was released on 2017-06-15 with total page 286 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: How does our understanding of Africa shift when we begin from the perspective of women? What can the African perspective offer theories of culture and of gender difference? This work, as unique and insightful today as when it was first published, brings together a wide variety of African academics and other researchers to explore the links between literature, popular culture and theories of gender. Beginning with a ground-breaking overview of African gender theory, the book goes on to analyse women's writing, uncovering the ways different writers have approached issues of female creativity and colonial history, as well as the ways in which they have subverted popular stereotypes around African women. The contributors also explore the related gender dynamics of mask performance and oral story-telling. This major analysis of gender in popular and postcolonial cultural production remains essential reading for students and academics in women's studies, cultural studies and literature.
Download or read book Holding the World Together written by Nwando Achebe and published by University of Wisconsin Press. This book was released on 2019-04-16 with total page 393 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Featuring contributions from some of the most accomplished scholars on the topic, Holding the World Together explores the rich and varied ways in which women have wielded power across the African continent, from the precolonial period to the present. Suitable for classroom use, this comprehensive volume considers such topics as the representation of African women, their role in national liberation movements, their experiences of religious fundamentalism (both Christian and Muslim), their incorporation into the world economy, changing family and marriage systems, impacts of the world economy on their lives and livelihoods, and the unique challenges they face in the areas of health and disease. Contributors: Nwando Achebe, Ousseina Alidou, Signe Arnfred, Andrea L. Arrington-Sirois, Henryatta Ballah, Teresa Barnes, Josephine Beoku-Betts, Emily Burril, Abena P. A. Busia, Gracia Clark, Alicia Decker, Karen Flint, December Green, Cajetan Iheka, Rachel Jean-Baptiste, Elizabeth M. Perego, Claire Robertson, Kathleen Sheldon, Aili Mari Tripp, Cassandra Veney
Download or read book Women in African Colonial Histories written by Jean Allman and published by Indiana University Press. This book was released on 2002-04-01 with total page 356 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: How did African women negotiate the complex political, economic, and social forces of colonialism in their daily lives? How did they make meaningful lives for themselves in a world that challenged fundamental notions of work, sexuality, marriage, motherhood, and family? By considering the lives of ordinary African women -- farmers, queen mothers, midwives, urban dwellers, migrants, and political leaders -- in the context of particular colonial conditions at specific places and times, Women in African Colonial Histories challenges the notion of a homogeneous "African women's experience." While recognizing the inherent violence and brutality of the colonial encounter, the essays in this lively volume show that African women were not simply the hapless victims of European political rule. Innovative use of primary sources, including life histories, oral narratives, court cases, newspapers, colonial archives, and physical evidence, attests that African women's experiences defy static representation. Readers at all levels will find this an important contribution to ongoing debates in African women's history and African colonial history.
Download or read book Women Education and Modernization of the Family in West Africa written by Helen Ruth Elizabeth Ware and published by . This book was released on 1981 with total page 244 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Collection of studies on the social implications of the education of women for the traditional culture of the West African family - discusses male and female attitudes to working mothers and the woman worker, and the relationship between educational level, fertility and polygamy. Bibliography, references and statistical tables.
Download or read book Women and Leadership in West Africa written by F. Steady and published by Palgrave Macmillan. This book was released on 2011-12-06 with total page 0 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: This book examines women and leadership in West Africa, with a special focus on Guinea, Liberia, and Sierra Leone—the Mano River Union countries. These countries have traditions of indigenous female leadership in executive positions in varying degrees, and all three have a tradition of organizations that form important power bases for women.
Download or read book Male female Birth Ratio of Europeans in West Africa written by and published by . This book was released on 1957 with total page 3 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt:
Download or read book The Palgrave Handbook of African Women s Studies written by Olajumoke Yacob-Haliso and published by Palgrave Macmillan. This book was released on 2021-10-29 with total page 0 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: This definitive handbook is the first reference of its kind bringing together knowledge, scholarship, and debates on themes and issues concerning African women everywhere. It unearths, critiques, reviews, analyses, theorizes, synthesizes and evaluates African women’s historical, social, political, economic, local and global lives and experiences with a view to decolonizing the corpus. This Handbook questions the gendered roles and positions of African women and the structures, institutions, and processes of policy, politics, and knowledge production that continually construct, deconstruct, and reconstruct African women and the study of them. Contributors offer a consistent emphasis on debunking erroneous and misleading myths about African women's roles and positions, bringing their previously marginalized stories to relief, and ultimately re-writing their histories. Thus, this Handbook enlarges the scope of the field, challenges its orthodoxies, and engenders new subjects, theories, and approaches. This reference work includes, to the greatest extent possible, the voices of African women themselves as writers of their own stories. The detailed, rigorous and up-to-date analyses in the work represent a variety of theoretical, methodological, and transdisciplinary approaches. This reference work will prove vital in charting new directions for the study of African women, and will reverberate in future studies, generating new debates and engendering further interest.
Download or read book Africa After Gender written by Catherine M. Cole and published by Indiana University Press. This book was released on 2007-02-07 with total page 690 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Gender is one of the most productive, dynamic, and vibrant areas of Africanist research today. This volume looks at Africa now that gender has come into play to consider how the continent, its people, and the term itself have changed.
Download or read book Our New Husbands Are Here written by Emily Lynn Osborn and published by Ohio University Press. This book was released on 2011-10-10 with total page 289 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: In Our New Husbands Are Here, Emily Lynn Osborn investigates a central puzzle of power and politics in West African history: Why do women figure frequently in the political narratives of the precolonial period, and then vanish altogether with colonization? Osborn addresses this question by exploring the relationship of the household to the state. By analyzing the history of statecraft in the interior savannas of West Africa (in present-day Guinea-Conakry), Osborn shows that the household, and women within it, played a critical role in the pacifist Islamic state of Kankan-Baté, enabling it to endure the predations of the transatlantic slave trade and become a major trading center in the nineteenth century. But French colonization introduced a radical new method of statecraft to the region, one that separated the household from the state and depoliticized women’s domestic roles. This book will be of interest to scholars of politics, gender, the household, slavery, and Islam in African history.
Download or read book West Africa s Women of God written by Robert M. Baum and published by Indiana University Press. This book was released on 2015-11-09 with total page 316 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: West Africa's Women of God examines the history of direct revelation from Emitai, the Supreme Being, which has been central to the Diola religion from before European colonization to the present day. Robert M. Baum charts the evolution of this movement from its origins as an exclusively male tradition to one that is largely female. He traces the response of Diola to the distinct challenges presented by conquest, colonial rule, and the post-colonial era. Looking specifically at the work of the most famous Diola woman prophet, Alinesitoué, Baum addresses the history of prophecy in West Africa and its impact on colonialism, the development of local religious traditions, and the role of women in religious communities.
