MyWeku

Article submitted by Adwoa Serwa

According to Amina Mama of Feminstafrica.org “In African contexts, feminism has emerged out of women’s deep engagement with and commitment to national liberation, so it is hardly surprising that African women’s movements today feature in the disparate struggles and social movements characterising post-colonial life. African women are mobilising at local, regional and international levels, and deploying various strategies and forms”.

At Ms Afropolitan in a rather insighful post that touched on how feminism affects life choices, On being an African feminist, feminism is described as ”not simply about being an independent or successful woman. It is about recognizing and taking a critical engagement with structures that may oppress women such as the ‘institution’ of marriage or elements of religious doctrine or music videos. More than anything feminism is a lifestyle”

This increasing popularity and role of feminsim was recently brought to the fore by an interesting article written by Teresa Wiltz, a senior editor at the The Root who traveled to Liberia on an IRP Gatekeeper Editors trip organized by the International Reporting Project. In her article,  Feminism’s Vital Role in Rebuilding Liberia, Tereza Wiltz writes “If you’ve seen the award-winning 2008 documentary Pray the Devil Back to Hell, then this will be a familiar story: How a group of Liberian women — Muslims and Christians, young and not so young, long grown weary from the terrors of war — conspired to wage peace in their country. How they staged sit-ins outside the Presidential Palace, stalked stalled peace talks in Ghana, and withheld sex until their husbands saw the light and pledged to wage peace, too.

Then there is the not-so-familiar story: how these women — in particular, the foot soldiers of the peace movement — struggle to keep the momentum going seven years after the end of the nation’s most recent war, now that treaties have been signed, the dead have been buried and an “Iron Lady” has been elected president. How do you keep going in the aftermath, when jobs are scarce, the country remains bombed out and there are so many rape victims to tend to? How do you keep hope alive? Is there room for feminism in a country that’s struggling mightily to rebuild itself? And how do you engage the young ones, convince them that feminism has a place in their lives?”

It is not a surprise though that feminism has its critics. Renee Martin a critical anti-racist, feminist blogger and freelancer who blogs at  Womanist Musings wrote in a post published in the Guardian,  “I’m not a feminist (and there is no but)”, about her misgivings and skeptisms about feminism. The Evils of Feminism, an article by a MyWeku contributor (and what motivated me to submit my article), went a notch higher by making bold claims about the so called “negatives” of feminism. However, as with most “contentious” subjects discussions and debates which aim to increase understanding and help in debunking myths is often what is needed. Feminists SA a website created by Jennifer Thorpe does just that. As Jeniffer states ”women can explore what it is about feminism that does, or doesn’t fit their needs”. The site, however, goes much further by exploring what men also think about feminism.

I am all for meaningful dialogue with “naysayers”, however, it baffles me that the same men (and some women) who have a problem with feminism tend to be the very ones who have and continue to fail in finding solutions to pressing issues that typically affect the African woman or indeed women elsewhere. To those men I ask: What have you done about forced marriage? Aren’t you the same myopic men that prevent your daughters from fulfilling thier potential in school for fear they’ll begin to point out your “wrongs” to you?

Regardless of what labels one might ascribe to the capacity of women to help raise issues that pertain more to them, it is imperative to highlight certain issues. If like the group of Liberian women that Tereza Witz referes to in her article,  African women lead in concentrating attention on issues such as forced marriage and corrective rape then so much for the better.

These are issues that the vastly male domintaed societies across Africa have failed to address. Perhaps a resurgence of Yaa Asantewaa type leadership is what is needed to tackle these issues head on by those most affected by them.

As Groucho Max once said “Only one man in a thousand is a leader of men — the other 999 follow women”.

Image: BeltwayRL.org