Philippine E-Journals

African Feminism: Some Critical Considerations

Adeolu Oluwaseyi Oyekan

Discipline: Social Science

 

Abstract:

Feminism has continued to advance and open new frontiers, maintaining a dominant status in the genre of issues in the political and academic arena over the last few decades. This growth in status has opened an array of perspectives from which the feminine condition can be more aptly appraised and improved. One such perspective is African feminism. In examining the idea of African feminism, this paper analyses the reasons advanced for its uniqueness. While it concedes that there are peculiar conditions in Africa which raise unique challenges for the feminine gender, it questions the basis for anchoring the idea of African feminism on them. The paper submits that if the peculiarity of experiences is the basis for demarcation, the heterogeneous nature of the continent renders such an idea a non-starter. It further tries to show that the challenges that differentiate the African female from her counterparts elsewhere are not gender-engendered, but are rather products of the totality of the peculiar African experience, especially in the postcolonial era.