IngentaConnect Researching African Women and Gender Studies: New Social Science ...

Authors: Adomako Ampofo, Akosua¹; Beoku-Betts, Josephine²; Osirim, Mary Johnson³

Source: African and Asian Studies, Volume 7, Number 4, 2008 , pp. 327-341(15)

Publisher: BRILL

Abstract:

Research on African women and gender studies has grown substantially to a position where African-centered gender theories and praxis contribute to theorizing on global feminist scholarship. Africanist scholars in this field have explored new areas such as transnational and multiracial feminisms, both of which address the complex and interlocking conditions that impact women's lives and produce oppression, opportunity and privilege. In addition, emergent African-centered research on women and gender explores those critical areas of research frequently addressed in the global North which have historically been ignored or marginalized in the African context such as family, work, social and political movements, sexuality, health, technology, migration, and popular culture. This article examines these developments in African gender studies scholarship and highlights the contributions that new research on understudied linguistic populations, masculinity, migration, political development and social movements and the virtual world are making to global feminist discourse.

Keywords: FEMINISM; INTERSECTIONALITY; TRANSNATIONALISM; TRANSNATIONAL FEMINISM; MASCULINITY; MIGRATION; SOCIAL MOVEMENTS; LINGUISTIC REGIONS; VIRTUAL MIGRATION

Document Type: Research article

DOI: 10.1163/156921008X359560

Affiliations: 1: Institute of African Studies, University of Ghana, P.O. Box LG-73, Legon, Ghana 2: Women's Studies, Florida Atlantic University, 777 Glades Road, Boca Raton, Florida 33481, USA 3: Department of Sociology, Bryn Mawr College, 101 North Merion Avenue, Bryn Mawr, PA 19010-2899, USA

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Researching African Women and Gender Studies: New Social Science Perspectives