Introduction: The Study of Women and Gender in Africa
Part I: African Women in History
1 Women in Precolonial Africa
2 Colonialism and Women in Africa
3 Women and Apartheid in South Africa
4 The Status of Women in Contemporary Africa
5 African Feminisms and Women’s Movements Through History
Part II: Social Lives and Livelihoods
6 Changing Conceptions of Motherhood in Africa
7 Marriage, Polygamy, and the African Woman
8 African Women and Education
9 African Women’s Economic Activities
10 African Women in Science and Technology
11 Racism, Gender and African Women
12 African Women and Religion
13 Women and Popular Culture in Africa
Part III: Bodies and Being
14 African Women and Gendered Sexualities
15 Women’s Health in Africa
16 Women and Sex Work in Africa
17 Gender-Based Violence in Africa
Part IV: Political and Social Agency
18 African Women and Politics
19 African Women, Conflict and Peacebuilding
20 African Women Writers: Agency, Impact, and Current Directions
21 African Women, Agency, and Social Media
22 African Women and Migration
Biography
Toyin Falola is the Jacob and Frances Sanger Mossiker Chair in the Humanities and Distinguished Teaching Professor at the University of Texas at Austin, USA. Falola has published over a hundred books and is the recipient of 20 honorary doctorates as well as several lifetime achievement awards.
Olajumoke Yacob-Haliso is Associate Professor of African and African American Studies at Brandeis University, USA, Vice-President of the International Studies Association (ISA, 2024–2025), and Research Fellow at the University of the Free State. She is the co-editor of the three-volume Palgrave Handbook of African Women’s Studies (2021) and has published 11 other books on African politics, women, gender, refugees, and knowledge production in Africa.
"A groundbreaking and much awaited book, Women in Africa is comprehensive in coverage, interdisciplinary in content, and profound in study. The authors celebrate the women of Africa through a careful insider exploration of the rich and powerful religious, historical, sociological and political agency of these women. In so doing, they weave a unique link between the past and the present in the status and lives of these women and open the study on the future of women’s studies. A remarkable achievement that grabs the reader’s attention throughout the book and centers the complex facets of African women’s lives in the issues that matter in African and global studies."
Fatima Sadiqi, Professor of Linguistics and Gender Studies, Sidi Mohamed Ben Abdellah University, Fes, Morocco.
"All-encompassing and compelling exposition about Women in Africa, justifying their study, the way they should be studied and perceived, from precolonial period to contemporary times; fascinatingly, covering the struggles of women over different countries, cultures, spheres of activity and proffering imaginative ideas on bridging the gender gap in Africa."
Antonia Taiye Simbine, Research Professor and Director-General, Nigerian Institute of Social and Economic Research (NISER), Nigeria.
"Women in Africa is an indispensable resource for students of Africa. This volume offers a comprehensive exploration of African women's lives, experiences, and contributions in shaping African history, politics, and society."
Aili Mari Tripp, Vilas Research Professor of Political Science, University of Wisconsin-Madison, USA.
