Introduction: women's sport and gender in sub-Saharan Africa

Abstract

Through the unifying theme of sportswomen from sub-Saharan Africa, this volume breaks new ground within the study of women and gender. The collection also widens the canon of scholarship on sports, in which African women have long been on the periphery of methodological, theoretical and empirical discussion. This introduction has three parts. First, it sets forth the motivation for studying African sportswomen. Second, trajectories within scholarship on women and gender are traced from the second wave of Western feminist writing to debates about the category of ‘gender’ in Africa. This interdisciplinary review serves as the backdrop for the accompanying essays, a description of which comprise the final section of this introduction. The essays within this collection contribute new perspectives to studies of gender, sport and Africa, and African sportswomen offer a promising new approach for studying sport in society.