ABSTRACT
In precolonial Africa, where women’s role was paramount in the predominantly agriculture-based labor pool, the dismantling of indigenous socioeconomic formations had an adverse impact on households’ financial well-being. This chapter presents examples from Nigeria, Kenya, and the Arab world which prove women’s involvement in productive economic activities and their participation in insurgent movements. The examples also show that male-dominant ideological constructions of gender run through precolonial, colonial, postcolonial socioeconomic formations. They underscore the fact that, in spite of their contributions to economic production or liberation movements, women are coerced to remain doubly in the shadow. The chapter also focuses on female protagonists in a few African works of fiction to prove that point. These works include La Vie et Demie, A Sister to Scheherazade, and The Forbidden Woman. Central to the study are the ways in which those protagonists respond to silencing strategies.
