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Palabres, Revue d’Etudes Africaines, Vol. III, n°1, 2000.
situation for feminist luxury, because poverty and political evils in Africa, racial
discrimination and the question of class, for example, are more important problems
than the gender question. 20 On a continent which bears deep scars from colonial
tyranny, neo-colonial military dictatorships, civil wars, poverty and famines and which
is attempting to maintain itself against Western cultural imperialism, it is
understandable that reproaches like this carry weight. But this overlooks the fact that
the commitment to the innovation of gender relationships and the improvement of
women’s situation in life does anything but rule out the resistance against other social,
political, economic and cultural forms of oppression and discrimination.
Since these positions are, as a rule, not upheld by sympathizers and potential
representatives of feminism, they do not really threaten the existence of feminism in
Africa. It is very momentous for feminism, however, that African wo/men whose
weltanschauung corresponds to basic ideas of feminism more or less distance
themselves from it. They back this up primarily with three lines of argumentation. For
one, they uphold the view that Western feminists practice toward African women
exactly those mechanisms which they themselves characterize and criticize as
patriarchal oppression: ignorance and arrogance. Western feminists are accused either
of not being able to see beyond their own society, and hence ignoring or marginalizing
the specific problems of African women 21 - this accusation is, above all, directed at
and does justice to liberal feminists - or of going to the opposite extreme - and this
applies mainly to radical and Marxist feminists - and presuming to be able to speak in
the name of all women. 22 Patronizingly, thus the reproach, they instruct their «black
sisters», while basing their assessment of the situation and the emancipatory ideas of
African women and women’s movements on their own views and experiences, without
really being informed about the situation and the problem of women in African
countries. 23 Thus, Western feminism is in a way accused of cultural imperialism.
20 Cf.: Acholonu 1995: 103 - 104; 107 - 108.
21 The fact that African women raise these accusations is referred to in: Kolawole, Mary E. Modupe, Womanism
and African Consciousness, Trenton; Asmara, Africa World Press, 1997, 16 - 19; Mohanty, Chandra Talpade,
"Introduction: Cartographies of Struggle. Third World Women and the Politics of Feminism", in Id.; Ann Russo;
Lourdes Torres (ed.), Third World Women and the Politics of Feminism, Bloomington, Indianapolis, Indiana
University Press, 1991, 7. Books against which this accusation has been directed are, for example: Millet, Kate,
Sexual Politics, New York, Bantham Books, 1969; Firestone, Shulamith, Dialectic of Sex: The Case for Feminist
Revolution, New York, Bantham Books, 1970; Daley, Mary, Beyond God the Father: Toward a Philosophy of
Women’s Liberation, Boston, Beacon Press, 1973; Dinnerstein, Dorothy, The Mermaid and the Minotaur: Sexual
Arrangements and Human Malaise, New York, Harper and Row, 1977; Chodorow, Nancy, The Reproduction of
Mothering: Psychoanalysis and the Sociology of Gender, Berkeley, University of California Press, 1978.
22 Most African-American feminists, as well, tend to speak (often in a patronizing manner) in the name of their
"African sisters". I consider this problematic - above all because the "common skin color" alone is no guarantee
that the African-Americans with their largely different socio-economic and cultural background and problems
which differ in detail are better acquainted with the situation of women in African societies than are white
feminists. As a rule, they, too, are not really informed about "the problems" of "African women". The position of
the African-American feminists can be explained by the fact that they have common roots and ancestors, some
centuries of more or less common history and - because of racial discrimination - similar political experiences.
Interestingly, Ogunyemi is (up to now?) the only African activist of gender issues I know of who has thematized
this form of patronization at all (cf.: Ogunyemi, Chikwenye, Africa Wo/Man Palava. The Nigerian Novel by
Women, Chicago, London, The University of Chicago Press, 1996, 114).
23 These accusations are discussed and formulated in: Mohanty 1991: 7; French, Marilyn, Beyond Power. On
Women, Men, and Morals, New York, Summit Books, 1985, 463; Ogundipe-Leslie 1994b: 208; Kolawole 1997:
16 - 19.