By Rita Okoye

Foremost African female scholars, administrators and other stakeholders have increased the tempo of advocacy for the rights and interests of women when they stated that increased funding and academic valuation would boost research efforts in the promotion of African women’s rights. 

These renowned women academics made this known during the last Toyin Falola Interview Series held on Sunday across various social media and online platforms. The theme of the session was: ‘Celebrating African Women’s Research, Knowledge Production and Activism within Africa and in the Diaspora.’

The virtual gathering is usually hosted by Professor Toyin Falola, a globally celebrated African historian at the University of Texas at Austin, United States of America. The series puts together seasoned individuals in discussing Africa and its Diasporic extensions.

The panel, which was moderated by Professor Ousseina Alidou, had accomplished female academics, university administrators, among others including Professor Marame Gueye, a scholar-activist at the East Carolina University in Greenville, North Carolina; Professor Fatima Sadiqi from University of Fez, Morocco; Professor Simone A. J. Alexander from Seton Hall University; Dr. Zeinabou Hadari, a scholar and feminist from Niger; Professor Lidwien Kapteijns from Wellesley College; Professor Wunpini Fatimata Mohammed from the University of Georgia; and Professor Lilian Atanga from the University of Free State in South Africa.

While speaking on the contributions of women in preserving culture, Professor Kapteijns made a passionate appeal for improved funding on research that would further the cause of African women’s rights. According to her, “One of my major books was Women’s voices in a Man’s World. It presented and analyzed Somali texts of three kinds: first were late 19th and 20th century texts that had been collected and published by colonial linguists and ethnographers from which I asked what they could tell us about women’s agency and this turned out actually to be a lot because women talked back even indirectly in these texts. They also gave ample evidence about women’s resistance against patriarchal rules. These were colonially-mediated texts. I think old texts are mediated and complex but the colonially collected ones were particularly mediated. The second kind of texts in that book was about women’s work songs and religious songs. The third kind of texts was about Somali popular songs of the 1950s to 1970s that dealt very explicitly with gender issues and were sung by women who informally co-created by them. These songs often took the form of debates between men and women with women usually speaking for women’s rights. Women were also expected, as is also common with nationalistic contests, to bear the burden of authenticity and morality especially with their presence in public space and also their sexuality. Now these songs are all over YouTube and it is amazing how Somalis, even in the diaspora, have preserved these songs.

“African historical texts in African languages, however connected to wider networks and geographies in contents, are very local in form: in this case, the language of only one town. And therefore, they do not get a wide reading about which publishers really care. Moreover, they are not as valued as monographs in university tenures and promotion procedures. I have one more action item to think about and this is how we might find ways to increase funding and academic valuation of source publications.”

Professor Hadari saluted the courage and innovative spirit of Muslim women who have blended the tenets of Islam with the immense possibilities which technology provides into modern education. “In Niger, we have the lowest rates of female education and actually on all grounds I decided to look at the reasons this was happening. When I was going on with my research, I found out that in terms of formal education, this was what was happening and also that there were people in society who were more inclined to go for Islamic or Quranic education based on different factors and justifications. I found out that there were discrepancies in that field, that it was not as one piece as seen. I decided to dig into it and came to find out that actually there are women who are using their leadership to promote themselves and other women’s rights. I found out that this was well located in one religious community. I came up with the total women education model. I discovered that this religious community was using their own agency and they did not quit the fundamentals of Islam but they were able to promote themselves and women’s rights; they were able to capture a lot of opportunities to empower themselves. They established a Quranic-based education creatively but they also domesticated the internet and information technologies. They also operated other formal and non-formal, local and global springs that were available not only to enrich their curricular but to integrate all those assets into various strategies for women. The findings of this research convinced me about the relevance of the contributions of Muslim women to the functioning of their societies by the way they reinvent and shape historical processes in innovative ways. Of course, related to this production of knowledge is that these women are also producers of knowledge and their pedagogies,” she revealed.

Professor Alexander, while tracing the feminist movement in the Caribbean noted that partnerships among women must be encouraged. For her, “The 1980s for the Caribbean writer witnessed the end of an era of male-domination in Caribbean literature, and henceforth Caribbean feminist thinkers, right across the region, generated a surge of publications that showcased both their creative as well as critical talents. During this period, impressive literary texts like anthologies were published by these women that made very serious critical interventions which brought significant transitions dislodging the androcentric sentiments and also raising the profile of Caribbean feminist thinkers. These publications also marked the emergence of Caribbean feminist criticism as a mode of theoretical challenge that centred women’s lived experiences but also forced transnationalizing dialogues and partnerships among women.”

For Dr Atanga, women must seek participatory inclusion by all means in all spheres of relevance in society. “Discourse is a social practice and how does language become a practice? How does what I say become what I do? This took me into parliament and I began to ask why there are few women in parliament, when nothing constitutionally stops them from being in the parliament. Discourses around women have used terminologies like ‘empowerment’, ‘mainstreaming’, ‘substantive representation’, ‘numerical representation’, and ‘inclusion’. Women always fall on the object position and the subject position is always undefined and when it is defined, it is either men or institutions. These institutions are predominantly male,” she argued.