143181 KU African Women in Politics: Past and Present (2020S)

African political history has been told from an essentially male perspective, which tended to overlook women’s political roles. The invisibility, or visibility, of women in African history has been, since the 1960s and the first wave of independence in African countries, continuously debated. Scholars documented women’s resistance during the colonization and decolonization processes, and critically reflected on women’s loss of political and economic power after independence.

This course surveys women’s political roles from the colonial period up to today and offers critical reflection on how to document and write a history that still largely remains to be written. On the one hand, the course will show how women engaged with, confronted and negotiated patriarchal power. More complex aspects of the relationship between gender and power will be explored, questioning, in particular whether female politicians always act in the interest of women. On the other hand, the course will introduce students to historians’ work and encourage them to reflect on where to find a historical source and how to use it.

The selected readings will provide historical and conceptual background to understand key issues in women in African politics while providing ground for a critical and creative discussion.

Outline of the course:
1. Introduction
2. What are we talking about?
3. The struggle for African women’s history
4. Colonization or the struggle to dominate women? .
5. Documenting women’s anticolonial struggles
6. Women organize! Nationalism and the decolonization struggle
7. What did independence mean for women?
8. Women in the postcolony (I): general introduction
9. Women in the postcolony (II): Femocracy and the First Lady Syndrome
10. Women, politics and the media: critical perspectives
11. Doing Gender?
12. Methodology session and discussion of the student’s research questions.
13. Talking about women and politics: confronting historical and contemporary perspectives (possibility of having a guest speaker)
14. Open session (student's preferred theme)

Objectives of the course

Thinking and writing about African women’s political history
• Provide students with a broad understanding of the place of women in colonial and postcolonial African politics and history. Introduce a rich and complex historiography dedicated to women, politics and power in African countries.
• Challenge preconceived ideas about and stereotypical representations of women and their roles in politics in African countries.
• Introduce students to African approaches to gender.
• Define and discuss key concepts of African political history: gender/women; colonization; decolonization; independence; power; femocracy.

Methodology (oral and written)
• How to read an academic text; how to discuss newspaper articles; how to contextualize and historicize a primary source.
• How to summarize and discuss the author’s argument(s).
• How to build an historiography to write an essay.
• How to articulate your own arguments.

Objectives of the essay
• Express awareness to the categories of analysis you use (“women”; “Africa”; “power”; “independence”; “historical narratives”).
• Apply a gendered lens to African political history / political analysis.
• Select; introduce; contextualize examples.
• Distinguish between a primary and secondary source; find historical evidence and discussing it.
• Creating your own bibliography.
• Articulate and substantiate your own ideas.