Power, Gender and Social Change in AfricaGender plays a hugely significant and too often under-considered role in predicting how accessible resources such as education, wage-based employment, physical and mental health care, adequate nutrition and housing will be to an individual or community. According to a 2001 World Bank report titled Engendering Development—Through Gender Equality in Rights, Resources, and Voice, enormous disparities exist between men and women in terms of basic rights and the power to determine the future, both in Africa and around the globe. A better understanding of the links between gender, public policy and development outcomes would allow for more effective policy formulation and implementation at many levels. This book, through its discussion of the challenges, achievements and lessons learned in efforts to attain gender equality, sheds light on these important issues. The book contains chapters from an interdisciplinary group of scholars, including sociologists, economists, political scientists, scholars of law, anthropologists, historians and others. The work includes analysis of strategic gender initiatives, case studies, research, and policies as well as conceptual and theoretical pieces. With its format of ideas, resources and recorded experiences as well as theoretical models and best practices, the book is an important contribution to academic and political discourse on the intricate links between gender, power, and social change in Africa and around the world. |
From inside the book
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In Africa, there are historic strata: norms and practices that date back centuries; customary law reflecting interpretations and colonial laws; and, more recently, norms and laws promoted by multilateral and bilateral donors.
In many parts of Africa, the western colonial law did not reach beyond a limited geographic and demographic range—leaving the rest of the population to continue using and relying on customary law or other sources of reglementation.
This male European construction of the political was carried by colonialism to African societies through law and ... As many scholars and activists have were as argued, in African pre-colonial dual systems, women had their own CHAPTER ...
argued, in African pre-colonial dual systems, women had their own political sphere, and in patrilineal as well as in ... but these forms of female political authority tended to be suppressed by colonialism's “unification” of political ...
Also missing is discussion of the ways in which African women have deployed powerful links between the fertility of women and the fertility of the land to assert their own interests against colonial authorities.