ABSTRACT
One of the biggest challenges for International Relations (IR) theorisation is how to deal with the hybrid and intersected character of African feminisms. African feminisms acknowledge their connections with international feminism, but demarcate a specific African feminism with specific needs and goals arising out of the concrete realities of African women's lives. African feminisms are frequently discussed in relation to culture, mainly as a result of the impact of feminist anthropological studies focusing on the family, marriage, motherhood and kinship often depicted as essentialised identity categories. Kimberle Crenshaw's structural, political and representational categories of intersectionality therefore help to expose hegemonic asymmetries and omissions at a variety of levels of analysis. Due to a lack of convergence between the agenda of key gender and security agents, namely feminist security studies scholars, civil society and gender activists, as well as policy makers, increased activity in this area has not had a substantive effect on the lives of ordinary men and women.
