Introduction: African Women in Cultural, Political and Public Spaces

Abstract

The social system in place in many African societies is patriarchy, a system empowers the male sex at the detriment of the female sex, and in the process, puts in place structures and institutions to ensure the status quo remains. To this end, space becomes a contested gendered terrain, another social tool used to the advantage of a particular group over another. While gender is usually regarded as the social relationship between the sexes, it is fraught with a struggle over resources; it is a power struggle that propels patriarchy to devise means and strategies to keep a particular sex away from the resources (Tamale, 2004). One of these means is the entrenchment of the public/private dichotomy, reflecting the wheel of contrast patriarchy revolves on — good and bad; weak and strong; soft and hard; positive and negative; to mention a few. The public/private axis divides space along gender lines, and attaches particular qualities and variables to each. The private space is reserved for the woman — it is hidden; away from the public glare; disempowering; limited, and enrobed in a cloak of domesticity. The man dictates what goes on in there, however. The public space is the opposite — it is an open field of opportunities, possibilities, resources, empowerment, freedom, growth, privilege, and power. It is a space for the man, the progenitor of patriarchy, and it is he who limits the woman’s access into that space, through the institutions of education, religion, law, and culture. The man curtails the woman’s access into the public space out of fear that if allowed in there, she would take the staff of office from him. The myth of domesticity is, therefore, propagated to legalise women’s space as private. Interestingly, the man is also in control of the woman in the private space. This way, the woman’s personhood is made subservient to the man’s. The woman is thus domesticated, unable to access resources and opportunities that would expand her political, economic, social, and legal space. For the few who have managed to hold their own in the public space, they are constantly reminded that their space is restricted to the private, and they are regarded as the ‘other’, unwelcomed visitors in the terrain of the men.