Representation Of African Women Research Articles

Social Representation of Women in Buchi Emecheta’s The Joys of Motherhood and Flora Nwapa’s Efuru

An analysis of the African fiction in the South of the Sahara shows a bias in the depiction of male and female characters. The purpose of this article is to explore the social representation of African women in post-colonial Africa as hardworking and intrepid characters, man’s companion, support and shield, and eventually as educators. Contrary to the distorted social perception society has of women in Africa, female novelists like Buchi Emecheta in The Joys of Motherhood and Flora Nwapa through Efuru, have deconstructed the social established norms giving masculine roles to their female characters. Nnu Ego, Adaku and Efuru – characters in these novels – have reversed the roles by working hard, protecting their families and by educating children and societies. Through the use of post-colonial criticism as backdrop, this paper deconstructs the negative representations that patriarchal societies have of women highlighting the predominant roles that female characters play. A qualitative data analysis and feminism approaches have been used to better explore the social representation of women in African patriarchal settings in this work.

The Way She Looks: A History of Female Gazes in African Portraiture—Photographs from the Walther Collection

The Way She Looks: A History of Female Gazes in African Portraiture—Photographs from the Walther Collection

Mobility Trope: Travelling as a Signature of the Afropolitan Female Quest for Existential Subjectivity in Chika Unigwe’s On Black Sisters’ Street

Abstract The mobility trope is a key aesthetic feature in Afropolitan fiction and it crystalizes as the act of travelling which has become an important subject-matter in postnationalist African fictions by women such as Chimamanda Adichie, Noviolet Bulawayo or Chika Unigwe as a way of intervention on the debate of the Afropolitan female quest for existential subjectivity in 21st century African fiction. This is against the backdrop of negative essentialism and the exertions of patriarchy evident in the representation of African women’s in 20th century African fiction. Drawing from the foregoing, this paper interrogates Chika Unigwe’s On Black Sisters’ Street (Hence OBSS) to demonstrate how the writer deploys mobility trope which manifest as travelling as a signature of the Afropolitan female quest for existential subjectivity. I argue in this paper that, though existing studies on OBSS portray Efe, Sisi, Ama and Joyce as exported commodities in neoliberal sex market, their relocation however opens up a new vista to understanding their motivation and quest for new subjectivity, empowered fluid agency, individual autonomy and translation into Afropolitans. This is within Achille Mbembe’s phenomenological criticism of Afropolitanism and a methology that is based on qualitative content analysis of the text—OBSS. On the long run, the identity which travelling confers on the female characters is fluid, as they represent an African being in a globalized world and a strong sense of cultural mobility.

Corpos Fragmentados

O presente trabalho tem como objetivo analisar as imagens e os textos sobre como a raça e os corpos femininos das mulheres africanas estão sendo representados no periódico lusitano, Cadernos Coloniais, durante o período do Salazarista, o Estado Novo. E como a construção discursiva do corpo está intimamente relacionada as manobras e estratégias de poder em prol do projeto colonialista português. Despertando na pesquisa histórica não apenas a curiosidade, mas também a necessidade de se explorar o máximo possível as análises existentes pelo contato entre Portugal e África que está na revista. Dentro desse contexto as contribuições de Foucault (2014), Villen (2013), Certeau (2008). O corpo tem um papel primordial na elaboração da identidade social do indivíduo. É através do corpo que o sujeito tem contato com o mundo e por ele é afetado. O indivíduo ao ocupar um lugar no espaço social possui uma compreensão desse mundo, porque desde sua gênese foi exposto as suas influências. Nesse sentido, é subordinado e moldado pelas condições materiais e culturais de existência. O corpo posto no espaço social está sujeito a um processo de socialização, cujo produto é a própria individualização, a singularidade do “eu”, sendo forjada nas e pelas relações sociais. Sendo assim, é importante percebermos o papel assumido pelo periódico ao ser interlocutor de um discurso no momento de análise.

Re-thinking the feminist agenda in selected female authored Zimbabwean literature

This article investigates the feminist agenda in female authored Zimbabwean literature, with emphasis on the novel. It focuses largely on Virginia Phiri's Destiny and Highway Queen as well as Violet Masilo's The African Tea Cosy. The paper argues that Zimbabwean female authorship is flavoured with precepts of African feminism(s) in its representations of African women's agency in gender adversities. Framed within African feminism, women's agency derives from and gives meaning to an inescapable African-ness that needs to be accepted in the fight for emancipation. In light of this, the study analyses Zimbabwean women writers’ literary contributions to discourses on gender based violence and it explores how female characters have embraced the concept of agency to recreate their identities and to introduce a new gender ethos in the context of lives that are often shaped by severe restrictions and oppression. Although largely women focused, the African feminist text is concerned about the survival of both men and women.

A voice from the margins: Investigating the African Adventist rationale on the quest for female ordination

Discussions surrounding women�s ordination reached a peak with the 60th General Conference Session (GCS 2015) of the Seventh-day Adventist (SDA) Church. A report compiled by a section of delegates from the East-Central Africa Division � Biblical Research Committee indicated that this continent was not yet ready to ordain women as pastors. In light of the report, this article aims to investigate the rationale of such a stark decision. Firstly, the report shows that African Adventist women theologians were omitted from the discussions � a lack of good will from the church leadership towards the females as the majority of the membership. Secondly, the decision against ordination of women is suspect and biblically inconclusive. Through an overview of literature on a biblical missional design, the article postulates: Contextualisation and theologising are necessary for Africa, but the SDA Church must remember that globally both theology and culture are subject to the biblical guidelines, and thus to God�s missio Dei as well.Intradisciplinary and/or interdisciplinary implications: This article balances cultural contextualism and gender relations � challenging a cultural bias through a missional hermeneutic. This can lead to fairer representation of African women in Adventist church structures and reroute the equality discourse in light of the missio Dei. The study intersects with cultural theory, social analysis and biblical hermeneutics.�

Visions of Friendship and Equality: Representations of African Women in Missionary Propaganda in Interwar Britain

During the interwar years, British evangelical women began to promote African women as worthy of friendship and equality. These representations differed not only from Victorian images of African women, but also those popularized by interwar secular writers. This article argues that the two most prolific female missionary writers of the interwar period, Mabel Shaw and Cicely Hooper, promoted these positive images while working as educators of African women. As feminists, these evangelicals valued African women, and as adherents of fulfillment theology popularized in ecumenical missionary discourse, they admired features of African culture that they believed were divinely inspired. By the late 1920s, these missionary women generated even more favourable images of African women, as they feared Western materialism was disintegrating African home life. Thus, this article demonstrates the liminal position of missionary women tethered to audiences in Britain, Africa, and the growing ecumenical Church. It also points to the importance of the interwar years as a key period in which ideas about race, gender, and culture were being reworked. While these missionary women did not erase boundaries of difference between themselves and African women, they invited Britons to join them in building cross-cultural, cross-racial friendships.

Cosmopolitan cocoa farmers: refashioning Africa in Divine Chocolate advertisements

This article concerns a beguiling set of advertisements for Divine Chocolate that feature women cocoa farmers from Ghana, which recently appeared in British magazines and newspapers. In contrast to representations of African women as exotic icons of ‘traditional’ cultures or leaders of progressive development schemes, the Divine advertisements depict farmers as cosmopolitan consumers of luxury goods and owners of the chocolate company. By representing these Ghanaian women as glamorous business owners, the images invite viewers to see them as potent actors in transnational exchanges of cocoa and chocolate, and as beneficiaries of these exchanges, in contrast to analyses that focus on market exploitation by the nation state or corporate actors. The images pose a challenge to narratives that cast Africa as continually on the losing side of harmful binaries – primitive/civilized, traditional/modern – and in an eternal developmental lag. Instead, they offer an alluring female figure that envisions and promotes Africa's roles in industrial production and luxury consumption. Through a complex rendering of Ghanaian women farmers as attractive, socially mobile beneficiaries of their own development efforts, the adverts invite connections among people who grow, sell, and consume luxuries like chocolate, across a visual gulf that is often too vast to bridge.

“So distant and wild a scene”: language, domesticity and difference in Hannah Kilham's writing from West Africa, 1822-1832

Abstract Hannah Kilham (1774-1832), a Sheffield Quaker, was involved in philanthropic, educational and missionary work with women in Britain, Ireland and West Africa in the early nineteenth century. In this article the author focuses upon Hannah Kilham's. engagement in the religious and domestic education of African girls and women in the 1820s and 1830s. Through representations of African women as in need of her ‘civilising influence’, Kilham was able to construct a powerful role for herself, and for other white middle-class British women, in the colonial/missionary enterprise. The article explores the significance of notions of gender, domesticity and the Protestant family to the construction of ideas about Africa's ‘difference’ and, through this, British national identity.

“So distant and wild a scene”: language, domesticity and difference in hannah kilham's writing from west africa, 1822-1832

Abstract Hannah Kilham (1774-1832), a Sheffield Quaker, was involved in philanthropic, educational and missionary work with women in Britain, Ireland and West Africa in the early nineteenth century. In this article the author focuses upon Hannah Kilham's. engagement in the religious and domestic education of African girls and women in the 1820s and 1830s. Through representations of African women as in need of her ‘civilising influence’, Kilham was able to construct a powerful role for herself, and for other white middle-class British women, in the colonial/missionary enterprise. The article explores the significance of notions of gender, domesticity and the Protestant family to the construction of ideas about Africa's ‘difference’ and, through this, British national identity.