Experiences Of African Women Research Articles

Discursive scaling of solidarity through difference: Experiences of African women in the African diaspora

Abstract Drawing on data generated from a two-year ethnographic observation with a group of multiethnic Black women, this investigation delves into the ways they employ discursive and linguistic strategies, namely solidarity through difference and distinction, solidarity through denaturalizing difference, and solidarity through shared struggles and learning in deictically anchored interactions. The study presents a moment-by-moment analysis of culturally and socially situated conversations. These conversations allow us to see how the social actors enact different stance-taking and scaling practices to construct meanings about race that intersect with gender/transnational identities. Discursive practices show that when we closely attend to race, transnationalism, and gender, specifically considering the particularity of Black womanhood, new and more complex ways of understanding transnational identity formation emerge. Participants’ constructions indicate that women co-construct a unique brand of Black feminist solidarity that is not based on similarity but meaningfully created through differentiation and distinction. (Black immigrant women, solidarity, stance-taking, scaling and deixis difference, African diaspora, intersectionality)*

Experiences of African women and their descendants: health, reproduction and motherhood

Experiences of African women and their descendants: health, reproduction and motherhood

Therapeutic mobility and breast cancer in France: Experiences of African women

While breast cancer is the most common cancer globally, not all women have access to quality care. Long considered a disease of high-income countries, low- and middle-income countries are now facing a major public health issue regarding cancer. This is the case in sub-Saharan Africa, where access to quality breast cancer treatment is often lacking. This context leads some women to travel abroad, particularly to France, hoping to save their lives. This article aims to examine the experiences, the social cost and the perceptions associated with therapeutic mobility for breast cancer in France. To this end, this study uses a qualitative method based on nineteen biographical interviews with women from sub-Saharan Africa with breast cancer who have migrated to France seeking for treatment. It shows that these women often face significant difficulties throughout their care and life paths in France. Main issues lay in accessing care, housing insecurity, loneliness, and administrative instability. This reflects how the double biographical disruption, caused by cancer and migration, impact entire disease trajectories, from entry to care to post-breast cancer period. With this research, we suggest extending the concept of social death to the issue of women who have undergone therapeutic mobility for their breast cancer in France. Highlighting the experiences of women who remain almost invisible in the public arena, this article analyses poorly heard realities and shows how social inequalities in health can be found even in reconstructing oneself after breast cancer.

Exploring Black African women's experiences of vulnerability and adaptation to flood impacts in the eThekwini metropolitan municipality, KwaZulu-Natal, South Africa

This article explores the experiences of local Black African women in adapting to flood impacts within the Durban metropolitan area. The article is premised on the realisation that women and men experience climate change differently, as persisting gendered inequities affect women's adaptive capacity to climate change impacts. The study adopted a qualitative approach to research. Twenty-five local Black African women from four localities in Durban and five key informants from eThekwini municipality participated in the study through semi-structured interviews and focus group discussions. A qualitative content analysis approach was employed to elicit analytical themes and interpretations from the interview manuscripts in light of the research questions and the study's contexts. Findings from the study show that despite the experiences of poverty, lack of access to information, and persistent gender inequity in the study's contexts, the women's situated knowledge and agency have transformed lives and livelihoods and increased climate resilience and overall well-being. We conclude that a much more appropriate and intentional approach to local Black women's adaptation needs can yield much more effective, successful, equitable, and long-term climate change adaptation.

Decoloniality and the (im)possibility of an African feminist philosophy

This article offers a prolegomenon for an African feminist philosophy. The prompt for this as an interrogation of Oluwele’s claim that an African feminist philosophy cannot develop until identifiable African worldviews that guide the relationship between men and women have been established. She argues that until there is general agreement about the nature of African philosophy itself, African feminist philosophy will remain impoverished. I critique this claim, unpacking Oluwele’s argument, and examine the contested nature of both African and Western philosophy. Drawing from the work of Mignolo and decolonial thinking, I then argue for the possibility of “epistemic disobedience” concerning the emergence of an African feminist philosophy. Engaging with precolonial African examples which disrupt modern normative gender assumptions and looking at the project of decoloniality, I issue a call for an African feminist philosophy unfettered by the falsely universal claims of modernity/coloniality. My call is for an African feminist philosophy from African loci of enunciation, rooted in the epistemes and experiences of African women. “Most thought-provoking in our thought-provoking time is that we are still not thinking” (Heidegger 1968, 6).

Examining Black African Women's Experiences of Vulnerability and Adaptation to Flood Impacts in the Ethekwini Metropolitan Municipality, Kwazulu-Natal, South Africa

Examining Black African Women's Experiences of Vulnerability and Adaptation to Flood Impacts in the Ethekwini Metropolitan Municipality, Kwazulu-Natal, South Africa

Gender gap in science in Africa: experience of African women in mathematics association

Abstract This paper deals with gender gap in Mathematics across Africa. Reducing the gender gap in Mathematics in Africa, is the major aim of African Women in Mathematics Association (AWMA) through various activities. Using macrodata from two international surveys and microdata from two African universities (Joseph Ki-Zerbo of Burkina Faso and Monastir in Tunisia), differences in favor to men in the participation of female teachers and teacher-researchers in Mathematics, Physics, Chemistry and Computer Sciences are highlighted. Some practices, considered by AWMA, aiming to reduce the Gender Gap are also evoked.

Contested narratives of belonging: Zimbabwean women migrants in Britain

There is extensive research on gender and migration, however, Uwakweh (2014) notes that there is limited research on first generation black African women's experiences in the global North. Consequently, their voices are often ignored and/or undermined within social policy. This paper is based on a phenomenological study that employed African Feminist Standpoint Theory with an intersectional approach exploring black Zimbabwean women migrants' experiences in Britain. The aims of this paper are firstly, to explore how gender intersects with other factors in black Zimbabwean women's reconstruction of their cultural identities and sense of belonging in Britain. Secondly, to examine how these cultural identities are established in spaces that socially position the women in multiply differentiated ways. Five focus group interviews, participant observations and nine semi-structured interviews were conducted with Zimbabwean women based in Reading, Manchester, Sheffield, Birmingham, Northampton,Coventry, London and Wolverhampton. Interpretative Phenomenological Analysis was utilised to analyse the narrations. The findings show that the women's cultural identities are ascribed by their cultures and mainly based on gendered roles. In Britain, these identities are fragmented, and the women then respond in divergent ways, based on the intersection of gender with race, age, culture, and prior experiences in Zimbabwe. The study contributes to gender and migration scholarship by demonstrating the everyday practises, mechanisms that migrant women employ in redefining their gendered cultural identities.

Women's experiences of advanced breast cancer in a resource-limited Arab context: A Stakian multi-case study.

Breast cancer is the most common cancer for women, globally. Women are more likely to present with more advanced cancer and palliative care needs in low-resource contexts. There is limited research on Arab, Muslim and African women's experiences of advanced breast cancer. The aim of this study was to explore and understand the experiences of advanced breast cancer in the Islamic Republic of Mauritania. Using a constructivist Stakian multi-case study approach, eight cases were constructed with women with advanced breast cancer (n=8), family members (n=10) and health professionals (n=9). Data were collected longitudinally (up to nine months per case) and included semi-structured interviews and audio-journals. Data from 58 interviews and 31 journal entries were thematically analysed. Three key themes were identified: 1. Destiny: Maure women appreciate that Allah is all powerful and maintains control over their destinies and their breast cancer. 2. Patience& Acceptance: a fear of causing offence to Allah influences how women express their experiences of breast cancer and its treatments. 3. Journeying in search of a cure: Maure women have limitled access to information around their cancer and its treatments. Women use their own observations and interpretations to understand their breast cancer and guide their pursuit of treatment and a cure. Maure women feel reassured that life and cure remain possible because of Allah's sustenance; but are aware that the gift of life is fragile. They experience restricted power over how they express negative experiences, access to information, and healthcare decisions.

Passive, Victims or Unintended Misrepresentation?

Sustainable development efforts to mitigate the challenges that women face in the midst of land grabbing could be significantly undermined or they could fail to address the concerns of rural African women if they are not driven by the everyday lived experiences of rural African women. Evidence suggests that current accounts of how rural African women experience land grabbing oversimplify the homogeneity of their experiences, depicting them as entirely passive and victims who lack the agency to react to the loss of their land. Addressing this gap in our appreciation of the impact of land grabbing on rural African women is significant to ensure equal access to land and secure tenure rights for women actually work. To this end, there are some in the literature that have, and continue to challenge the depiction of rural African women as entirely passive and victims, lacking agency. This paper builds on those studies to expand the parameter of inquiry by bringing fresh perspectives to the debate from Senjeh District in Liberia. Utilising data collected through qualitative semi-structured interviews in the district over a period of four months, this paper argues that there is a divergence between the well held notions by the literature and experts on the one hand and, women in Senjeh on the other hand. The paper also argues that rural women in Senjeh District exhibited various agency in multiple ways against the loss of their land to Sime Darby.

Mine decline and women: Reflections from the Free State Goldfields

The formal mining industry has marginalised women and created masculine and patriarchal societies. But research on the industry's effect on women is minimal and mostly atheoretical. The finite nature of mining and its volatility makes mining societies vulnerable. The gender issue is under-recognised, particularly the way mine closure affects women. Most of the mine closure research focuses on the mines’ environmental liabilities. This paper assesses African women's experience of mine decline and closure in South Africa's Free State Goldfields. The transition to democracy brought equal economic and political rights (formal equality) to African women in 1994, but mine decline has reinforced gender inequalities since the early 1990s. Substantive equality remains elusive. Women were historically excluded from work in the mining industry and very few were employed in the formal mining sector. Closure of a mine makes it even more difficult for them to participate. It reinforces masculine dominance and women's household roles while also placing pressure on them to support their households financially.

An Overview of Female Genital Mutilation in Africa: Are the Women Beneficiaries or Victims?

Female Genital Mutilation (FGM) is a social phenomenon that is deeply rooted in African socio-cultural and religious facets. It covers a sequence of procedures carried out on the genitals of females of different ages, including total or partial removal of the female external genitalia or other injuries to the female genital organs for non-medical reasons. Several studies have shown beyond a reasonable doubt that FGM is more of a detriment than benefit to the mutilated women. Hence, this review comprehensively presents the narratives and experience of African women about FGM with a focus on whether they are beneficiaries or victims of the practice.The method adopted involved searching for relevant studies through PubMed and Google Scholar databases coupled with some prominent internet materials. This method was done majorly to identify and utilize the best quality published studies on FGM in Africa.Having lent due credence to the relevant studies pooled together, it was established that the practice of FGM in the African continent is highly undesirable. It creates numerous health complications coupled with psychosocial, psychological, and psychosexual issues for the mutilated women. Prominent among these repercussions are infection, the formation of scarring and keloid, monthly menstrual difficulties, urinary symptoms, infertility, obstetric complications during pregnancy and labor, depression, anxiety, and post-traumatic stress disorder. Despite these complications, it was revealed that FGM is still extant in many African countries. However, the fear of becoming a social outcast is the biggest hindrance facing anti-FGM campaigners.FGM is unequivocally a cankerworm that has eaten the freedom and wellbeing of African women, making them choiceless victims. Therefore, it is quite pertinent for governments and community leaders to provide medical support to the victims and fight the prevalence of FGM in their jurisdictions. This can be achieved through increased awareness about its adverse effects, women's education, and community shunning of the practice coupled with appropriate sanctioning of the erring members.

“NEGÓCIO AFRICANO”: OCUPAÇÕES, ARRANJOS DE TRABALHO E PATRIMÔNIO DE MULHERES E HOMENS LIBERTOS DA COSTA NO RECIFE, SÉC. XIX

The purpose of this article is to present some aspects about the experiences of African women and men, their strategies for “live on themselves” and ensure their survival spaces in the urban center in the city of Recife in the mid-19th century. What occupations did they and they perform when they were captives and continued to exercise or not after being released? What mechanisms have they devised to move away from the stigmas imposed by slavery? To answer the questions, I followed the tracks of a small group of 33 Africans from the Coast d'África from a range of different sources (wills, post-mortem inventories, notary books, newspapers, parish records), to compare the material conditions, and, above all, the work arrangements that these individuals organized throughout their lives, wich guaranteed them a certain financial autonomy, providing a break with the lordships.

Navigating complex realities: Barriers to health care access for undocumented African immigrant women in the United States

Undocumented immigrants encounter a myriad of complex barriers to health care access, negatively impacting their health outcomes. In this qualitative study we aimed to understand the barriers to health care for undocumented African immigrant women in the United States as well as how women navigate these barriers. Semi-structured interviews were conducted with 24 undocumented African immigrant women. Our findings indicate that undocumented African women experience complex barriers to care which they attempted to navigate. In this study we provide information that healthcare professionals can employ in attending to the health needs of undocumented women and creating safe spaces for them to seek care.

The 2030 Agenda from a feminist perspective: No meaningful gains without greater accountability for Africa’s women

abstractIt is two years since the United Nations 2030 Agenda for Sustainable Development was adopted by world leaders following three years of intense consultations, negotiations and advocacy. Women’s rights organisations (WROs) and feminists groups, including African Women's Development and Communications Network (FEMNET), followed this process closely and put forward clear demands related to achieving women’s rights and gender equality. Today, FEMNET and other WROs celebrate the gains made and continue to be at the forefront of implementing the 2030 Agenda for Sustainable Development in order to sustain and monitor the realisation of the gains made. Although this Agenda has been hailed as transformative and one that has potential to transform the lives of girls and women everywhere if fully implemented, its potential for transformation by itself is largely dependent on a number of factors, particularly in Africa and the Global South to address both its limitations and to push forward its gains. The major limitations include its nature of being voluntary and non-binding, the current international political environment, including growing religious fundamentalism, corporate power and its involvement in the 2030 agenda, limited resourcing especially for WROs in the Global South and the failure of the 2030 Agenda to address structural barriers to gender equality and equality between countries in the Global South and North. For example, illicit financial flows, inequalities in international trade and the entire macro-economic policies architecture remain obstacles in the way of achieving gender equality in Africa. This article will share a feminist perspective of the 2030 Agenda and its implementation by highlighting its gains and missed opportunities. It will further offer recommendations on how the highlighted limitations can be addressed to advance the achievement of gender equality, women’s and girls’ human rights and empowerment of girls and women in Africa. It will draw from my experience of African women’s engagement in various processes, both regionally and globally, leading to the adoption of the 2030 Agenda and the follow up mechanisms after adoption.

Experiences of African women who migrate to a developed country and encounter domestic violence: a systematic review protocol of qualitative evidence.

The objective of this systematic review is to identify, critically appraise and synthesize the literature regarding the experiences of African women who have migrated to a developed country and have encountered domestic violence.

Zambian Women in South Africa: Insights Into Health Experiences of Labia Elongation

Labia minora elongation consists in the manual stretching of the inner lips of the external genitalia. This practice is documented in east and southern Africa. The experiences of African women in the diaspora practicing elongation are not thoroughly understood. The purpose of this qualitative study was to explore the health harms and benefits associated with this practice of Zambian women who have migrated to Cape Town, South Africa. Twenty women and seventeen men participated in this study. Between December 2013 and May 2014, in-depth interviews and natural group discussions were conducted with the participants. The focus of this article is to report on the emic of the women related to notions of health, hygiene, and well-being. Labial elongation is perceived as a practice involving minor, short-term adverse effects that can be prevented by following some basic hygiene. Overall, personal and social value is placed on this practice because of its reported benefits for the sexual health of men and women, and for women's femininity and self-image. Further research is necessary on how female genital modifications influence Zambians’ sexual preferences to inform the development of culturally appropriate health promotion interventions.

Social assistance and dignity: South African women's experiences of the child support grant

Many women interact with the South African social security system in relation to the Child Support Grant (CSG), which is social assistance payable for children living with low-income caregivers. This paper explores women's accounts of how the CSG serves to protect and respect dignity, a foundational value in the South African Constitution. Drawing from focus groups and in-depth interviews with female CSG recipients of working age, it is argued that whilst the experience of using the CSG does protect dignity in certain important respects, other aspects including the application process, the small amount of the grant and negative discourses associated with the status of being a CSG recipient were experienced by many as erosive of dignity.

Embroidery as narrative: Black South African women's experiences of suffering and healing

abstractThere are stories that many people who have experienced a traumatic and oppressive past carry with them, stories that continue to remain untold. In a country such as South Africa, where ‘empowerment’ and ‘equality’ are the order of the day, it becomes crucial to acknowledge people's lived experiences and how these relate to the changes taking place. Drawing from an empirical study I conducted in Gauteng, South Africa, this article interrogates how Black women's private memories of the conflict/apartheid period influence how they make sense of their new-found freedom. It explores how these women use artistic forms such as embroideries to re-stitch their lives, create personal life stories, and make connections between the past and the present.I highlight how the women's narratives demonstrate the importance of acknowledging the intersection of gender, history, and politics when talking about people's experiences. I point to the significance of revisiting history in order to make sense of the present, and show how freedom should be understood within its historical context. The interweaving of the women's experiences highlights the collectiveness of suffering, and their narratives may be perceived as echoes of both collective and individual suffering, and healing. The embroideries they produced externalise their embodied experience, and allow for the weaving in of multiple life experiences. I conclude by discussing how through creating personal embroideries the women draw attention to the inequalities they continuously have to contend with in their everyday lives.

‘It depends on how the relationship was before you became ill’: Black South African women's experiences of life partner support through the trajectory of cervical cancer

Spouses are the primary source of support for married patients and patients suffering from gynaecological cancers and play a major role in the positive, or negative, management of the disease and treatment. The purpose of the study was to explore the experiences of life partner support among hospitalised women receiving treatment for cervical cancer at an academic hospital in Tshwane, South Africa. An exploratory, qualitative study was conducted using a convenience sampling method. Seventeen (n = 17) women were interviewed. The data were analysed using open coding and a template analysis style. The support women treated for cervical cancer received from their life partner varied. Some were fully supported while others received limited support and some were even abandoned. Both the women and their life partners were challenged in terms of giving and receiving support. How the support they received from their life partners influenced their quality of life is not known and should be the next exploratory step before designing and testing a support intervention to maximise the outcomes for these patients.