The Power of Gender, the Gender of Power: Women's Labor, Rights and Responsibility in Africa

This volume focuses on the intersections of gender and power in Africa, the historical roots of inequality as experienced by women and social institutions that reinforce social hierarchies and distribute power unevenly within the social, economic, religious and political spheres during the 19th and 20th centuries. Case studies address the complexities and state of gender relations, gender workings across disciplines, and, women s labor, rights and responsibilities. Based on rich and wide-ranging research and data, the volume features both theoretical and empirical essays that explain the relevance of gender as a category of analysis. Contributors to this volume are from diverse academic disciplines and backgrounds, a diversity that lends a special uniqueness and creates a space for collaborative discussions. In some ways, the essays subvert conventional boundaries of scholarship about gender, which have tended to primarily focus on female spaces as separate from the larger social, political, and economic matrices. The essays represent a cross section of intellectual thought, and cover a broad range of historical eras, disciplines, and topics, bringing new voices from Francophone and Lusophone Africa. This volume will appeal to scholars, students, educators, policy makers, and the general public, especially the growing number of non-scholars who take an active interest in gender relations, women s rights, and labor relations.