ABSTRACT
Since the 1980s, there has been a proliferation of women’s and gender research in Africa (Lewis 2002; Mama 1995, 1996; Manuh 2001; Nzomo 1998; Pereira 2002). This outgrowth of scholarship can be attributed to several factors, including (but not limited to) the global North women’s movement, “the influence of the [women and] development industry, national political [and economic] conditions, the crisis in African education and the emergence of state feminism” (Mama 1996: 4). Prior to this period, in the 1950s and 1960s, women’s activism was linked to nationalist struggles for independence. In addition, gender, race, and class relations were already integral to struggles African women were engaged in when compared to their counterparts in the global North, who only began to acknowledge the centrality of these issues in the 1980s (Lewis 2002: 1).
