African Women 
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| Title: | Where is the Foundation of African Gender? The Case of Malawi |
| Author: | Mwale, Pascal Newbourne |
| Year: | 2002 |
| Periodical: | Nordic Journal of African Studies |
| Volume: | 11 |
| Issue: | 1 |
| Pages: | 114-137 |
| Language: | English |
| Geographic term: | Malawi |
| Subjects: | sociology gender relations feminism Women's Issues Law, Human Rights and Violence Equality and Liberation Law, Legal Issues, and Human Rights |
| External link: | https://www.njas.fi/njas/article/view/367/350 |
| Abstract: | The conceptual framework of feminism, as a reactionary ideology, basically consists of 'power', 'woman', 'rights', and 'equality'. The same can be said of African feminism, which has on its priority list such goals as self-determination, which has economic overtones sewn on a materialistic metaphysic. African womanism, despite its pretensions to seeking cooperation or its advocacy for interdependency between men and women, uses a model of conscientization of women that is foreign to Africa, and runs the risk of obscurantism, vulgarism, inauthenticity, and irrelevance. This paper, reviewing literature on the question of gender and feminism in Malawi and elsewhere in Africa, argues that the lack of demarcation between gender and feminism leads to confusion of Western feminism with gender. By grounding itself in feminist ideology, gender finds its impetus and modes of expression in Western feminism, and inherits most of Western feminism's weaknesses and shortfalls. Africa needs to rethink a specific gender, which is appropriate to the African situation in this new millennium. Bibliogr., notes, ref., sum. |
