Jenda: A Journal of Culture and African Women Studies (2002) ISSN: 1530-5686 AFRICAN WOMEN IN THE ACADEMY AND BEYOND: REVIEW ESSAY

Godwin Rapando Murunga

Cassandra Rachel Veney and Paul Tiyambe Zeleza, (eds.), Women in African Studies Scholarly Publishing, Trenton, NJ: Africa World Press, 2001, ix +170pp, Paperback, ISBN 0-86543-923-0. Price: US$ 21.95

Ebrima Sall (ed.), Women in Academia: Gender and Academic Freedom in Africa, Dakar: CODESRIA, 2000, xix + 154pp, Paperback, ISBN 2-86978-078-8. Price: US$30

Berida Ndambuki & Claire C. Robertson, We Only Come Here to Struggle: Stories from Berida’s Life, Bloomington: Indiana University Press, 2000, 240pp, Paperback, ISBN: 0253213665. Price: US$15.95.

Publishing stands at the tail end of one academic process and at the start of another. On the one hand, it represents a culmination of a research process, a process that begins with conceptualizing a topic, setting research instruments, collecting data, analyzing it and writing up the findings into a coherent text. This is a process whose very nature is woven with the trails and travails of the academy and academic work. These involve, among other things, power and power relations within and beyond the academy. The academy reflects the culture, values and power situation of the wider society. It, in turn, reproduces these relations in its administrative and management cadres, in its curriculum and knowledge producing and imparting organs and processes. The nature of power in the wider society is also mirrored in the student admission processes, the faculty recruitment procedures, and in the academy’s overall goals and the way these goals are identified, structured, processed and articulated. Power relations in the wider society, as in the academy, are structured along class, gender, religious, ideological and racial lines. These also have a bearing on the mechanisms of inclusion and exclusion, mechanisms that determine who belongs and who does not. These lines demarcate member as opposed to non-members, insiders as opposed to outsiders, and therefore have a direct bearing on access to the academy and its resources, on equity in administrative and managerial representation.

On the other hand, the post-research and writing stage connects the researcher to society through various links. These are dictated by the need for universities to disseminate their findings and knowledge to society. There are several dissemination procedures and channels. They include publications, conferences, workshops and seminars. Thus, no university is an island by itself, cut off from the rest of the society. The critiques that have been leveled against ‘ivory tower’ mentality, especially in the developing world, are indicators of the inextricable connection between the academy and the wider society. Though the actual practical realization that the academy is part of the wider society may have come belatedly in Africa as Mamdani argues, it has become clear that society authorizes and legitimizes academic work. ¹ Society provides the field of study, the resources and wherewithal for academic undertaking and influences the capacity for success or failure. Where certain university functions cannot be undertaken within, private non-state and non-university institutions step in to vouchsafe the specific needs of the academy through grants and scholarships, publications and equipment. In many other cases, like in the case of publishing, private non-university initiatives have played a significant role in boasting the channels of knowledge dissemination within society. However, these very institutions also reproduce the power relations within society and therefore participate in perpetuating rather than inhibiting the reproduction of exclusion and marginalization along gender, class, religious, racial and ideological lines in the academy.

The three books under review consider the place of women, as individuals and as a gender category, in the academy and beyond. The studies tackle specific gender aspects of the process of teaching, research and publication in the Southern and Northern academy. They illuminate the difficulties that gender, class, race, ideology and religion makers impose on women both as researchers, teachers and authors. Written from African (racial) and ‘feminist’ (gender) and worker (class) perspectives, the studies consider and critique questions of representation, equity and access to knowledge, and the institutions and infrastructures relevant to authoring, teaching and representing women. They put the academy - as a workplace - and publishers - as dissemination channels - to task, challenging old societal assumptions about women and gender. Specifically, chapters in these volumes implicitly question the feminist claim to a universal sisterhood among women, a claim that has bundled together all women without recognizing their diversity or that merely pays lip-service attention to this diversity and its different, varied and at times, conflictual demands. The studies admonish researchers to investigate and understand “diversity not just for its own sake, but also for its strategic importance to feminist politics.” The studies correctly identify both class and racial inequalities within the common fold of women and argue that there are forms of subordination and marginalization other than patriarchy and sexism that need equal attention. The chapters show that western feminism has attacked sexism and patriarchy but has not done well in understanding social struggles against western and racial hegemony. In many ways, these authors concur with Ruth Frankenberg that “white people are “raced,” just as men are “gendered.”” ² The studies also bring into focus, and intelligibly address, the question of experience as it relates to women’s representation of themselves both in the publishing industry and in the university. With a few exceptions, they do this with admirable clarity, vigor and rigor.

Women in African Studies Scholarly Publishing is a collection of five essays initially commissioned by the Bellagio Studies in Publishing Series but rejected upon completion of the manuscript. They discuss the challenges and difficulties that women scholars face in their effort to generate and disseminate scholarly knowledge. The second study, Women in Academia constitutes a set of eight essays compiled under the CODESRIA program on Academic Freedom to discuss the relations between men, women and academia. The last study, We Only Come Here to Struggle, departs substantially from the first two studies. It is used in this review to illustrate some of the arguments contained in the previous two books. We Only Come Here to Struggle is a narrative of the life of one woman who has lived through the harsh realities of life as a wife and trader in Kenya. From her village in Machakos District to Nairobi, Berida ekes out a living on the meager resources she earns from her petty trade. Her story as recorded by Claire Robertson demonstrates how one western author engages an African reality. In different ways, each of these studies tackles a theme that centers on women experience within or out of the academy and forms instructive material to read.

The five essays in Veney and Zeleza were designed to examine the experience of women in African Studies scholarly publishing in the North and South. The chapters range in interest from a critique of feminist knowledge in African studies to the cultural connections between Africa, through the Black Atlantic, to its Diaspora; from the politics of women scholarly publishing in Africa and the North to an analysis of the gate keeping functions of different outlets for African scholarly productions. All the chapters concur that the tag ‘women’ as it has been deployed by western feminism to imply universal unity and similarity of female experience is misleading. The authors insist that diversity must be accorded due attention. Basically, most of the authors in this volume would concur with Fouche that “what females in one society learn about how to think, act and live can differ enormously from what females in another society learn; in fact… there can be very significant differences within a given society.” ³ They, therefore, focus on the experience of women as they are differentiated by location, religion, race and class. In the process, some of the authors rightly shed light on the stereotype of universal sisterhood. The chapters argue that though western feminism has achieved remarkable strides in dealing with patriarchy and sexism, it has failed to transcend its own internal forms of exclusion along racial and class lines. There should be no doubt about the relation between race and class because “whiteness is a location of structural advantage, of racial privilege.” ⁴ As a result, differences along class and racial lines have been perpetuated and reinforced even when western feminists seek support for their political agenda on the basis of a unified gender category of biological females.

Nkiru Nzegwu’s chapter is most vociferous in challenging the notions of universal gender category of women who are subordinate, marginalized and disempowered by men. ⁵ Unlike Sylvia Tamale and Joe Oloka-Onyango who emphasize “the general balance of traffic” of sexual harassment that favors men in the African academy, ⁶ Nzegwu pays more attention to the nuances in this traffic as a way of challenging the universalizing creed of western feminism. Quoting Oyeronke Oyewumi’s study on the Invention of Women, ⁷ Nzegwu argues that in both Igbo and Yoruba societies, women were not always biologically perceived. ⁸ She identifies the situation of ‘female-husbands’ to demonstrate its importance in directly challenging the assumption in most western studies that define women biologically. ⁹ She asserts that “no Igbo female is simply a wife.” The term ‘husband’, she adds, “is not equivalent to male, it is a relational term that mainly identifies members of the family into which a female is married.” ¹⁰ She further convincingly argues that the perception of women in western discourse stems from an imperialistic projection and reading of non-western societies. For Nzegwu, women were not always powerless and subordinate in all African societies. A more accurate reading of their experience would show that “provisions were made for females to negotiate their way out of unfavorable situations.” ¹¹

Take the example of motherhood. Most western feminism perceives mothering as complicit to patriarchal subjugation and therefore anti-feminist. Yet mothering means different things to different societies. Mothering is not always a domestic affair, as most western feminism would suppose. It certainly is not a confirmation of the givenness of patriarchy. In any case, the dichotomy between public and private, official and domestic spheres is false, at least going by the Igbo (African) scheme. Nzegwu argues that “a dichotomy that construes domestic and private as female sphere and the official and public as male spheres derives from the researcher’s own cultural scheme, not the Igbo conceptual scheme.” ¹² Using specific texts to illustrate her argument, Nzegwu is emphatic that such western imperialistic reading of African societies can and ought to be rectified. More studies of women in Africa should begin by presenting the positive contributions of women, rather than the present discourse that focus on “overly negative themes of poverty, prostitution, economic and cultural disadvantages, social domination, and political and social disempowerment.” ¹³ She cites the damning discussion of Female Genital Mutilation as an example. Nzegwu correctly notes that “even if the thesis of subordination is true, we ought to realize that histories and social structures are different, and that women are not subjugated in the same way, thus no uniform models exists, and no set of prescriptions can be universalized.” In relation to Igbo society, she concludes that “there is no fixed permanent location of subordination.” ¹⁴

Nzegwu’s chapter clarifies some of the issues raised by Veney and Zeleza in chapter one. In particular, Veney and Zeleza identify some gate keeping functions in African Studies that have worked in favor of white men and isolated and excluded women in scholarly publishing. The exclusion is, however, not generalized for all women, rather it also follows ideological, racial and class lines. In cases where women have been included, these have most often been white women. The reasons for inclusion change on the basis of marriage and academic networks. Thus, married women or those with access to white men are most likely to be better published than unmarried ones. ¹⁵ This trend masks the fact that given unrestricted access to research funding and publication channels, unmarried and non-western women are equally hardworking and prolific. The balance of access, they show, is in favor of white men and white women. One reason for the inequity is that networking has become a critical component for academic writing and publishing. Access to a network depends on access to senior scholars and members of their networks. Since such networking often goes along gender, racial, ideological and class lines, and male dominance is already an established reality, those who can easily be accepted within a network are favored. These are mainly white male writers and researchers.

Further, the authors discuss gate keeping functions like the peer review procedure. For them, peer review cannot be understood outside the politics of the academy and across geographical spaces. Peer review must be seen in the context of the ‘publish or perish’ syndrome that guides the determination of academic excellence, promotion and recognition within specific fields. Veney and Zeleza are cynical of this syndrome. They argue that “it has resulted in an inflation of publications, not in the expansion of knowledge, in which quantity matters more than quality, and mountains of papers are cannibalized from dissertations and research projects and churned out to be listed and indexed rather than read.” ¹⁶ The result is an emphasis to publish without a concomitant emphasis on intellectual ethics and relevance. A critical analysis of most publications, they argue, shows the increasing distance between authorship and the very people being studied leading to what Oscar Wilde lamented as “an art for its own sake.” According to Veney and Zeleza, this growing irrelevance is partly because manuscripts are “written more with the reviewer than the reader in mind.” ¹⁷

Veney and Zeleza discuss the question of access, fairness and high academic standards in relation to peer review processes. ¹⁸ For them, peer review is a process “often fraught with deceit, suspicion, and recrimination.” They correctly argue that peer review is at times neither blind nor conducted by peers. Often junior scholars are paired with senior scholars. Also, the editors are the final decision-makers in determining who reviews which manuscript. Some of the editors may even know the subjective preferences of the reviewers but proceed to use them. ¹⁹ Together, all the above factors work to eliminate or reduce the level of women contribution to the understanding of themselves and their own societies. Using results from a survey they conducted, Veney and Zeleza demonstrate that women’s access to publishing infrastructure is limited and the constraints have been reinforced by a tendency to devalue women’s publishing and to deride gender as a valid area of research. Examples of male scholars who denigrate gender as a valid area of research are legion both in the North and the South. Fashina’s chapter in the Sall’s volume below documents one such instance of an established scholar at Obafemi Awolowo University advising a female colleague to proceed onto more serious themes of study since her promotion had been based solely on publication on women’s issues. ²⁰

Veney and Zeleza correctly correlate male domination in the publishing industry with the low number of women scholarly production in African studies. By invoking the issue of originality, many publishers have ended up rejecting manuscripts submitted by women and those they ideologically disagree with. The authors add that the concept of originality is essentially empty of meaning. ²¹ In many cases, they argue, rejection based on originality may be motivated by gender or ideological excuse, an excuse that largely depends on the predilections and biases of the reviewer, editor and publisher. For those male publishers who do not consider gender issues to be of any value, such ideological biases inform their idea of originality. This argument is useful to Rebecca Clarke’s analysis of women publishers in Africa and the North. ²²

Clarke demonstrates that women publishers are few compared to male publishers. In Africa, she shows that women are under-represented in publishing. Part of this under-representation is connected to a colonial legacy and the dominance of large multinational publishing firms on the continent. Part of the problem also lies in the fact that editors of books, especially literary texts, are men who fail to appreciate the contributions of women in the literary world. Clarke documents the struggles of women in the publishing sector in Africa. She writes about Serah Mwangi’s Focus Publishers in Kenya, Mary Asirifi’s Allgoodbooks Ltd. in Ghana, and Jane Katjavii of New Namibia Books (NNB) in Namibia. ²³ Clarke extends her analysis of publishers to the North, especially the United Kingdom which offers some promising signs though the picture is not very different from Africa. This is especially depressing because publishing is better established in the North than in the South and the required technology and resources abound in the North than in the South. Even in the case of women publishing through North-South linked projects, women do not have prominent positions. Through an analysis Heinemann’s African Writers Series, and the co-operation between Heinemann and NNB, Clarke argues that women representation even at the level of editorship is minimal. She concludes that “the fact that all the editors of the African Writers Series have been men, as mentioned earlier, means that women’s voices and writings may not have received the prominence they deserve.” ²⁴

Though tenable, the insinuation that women’s voices can only be represented by women editors is more complicated than Clarke is willing to explain. She takes this assumption to be true; a given that does not require explanation. Given that one of the editors of this book is male, one might wonder exactly what makes a gender-conscious male editor fail to represent female voices. Let us take the analogy of minority groups in the US to make this explanation. In the US, integration of minorities or the marginalized groups has taken place without confronting the basic structure of oppression and marginalization. Tessiu Liu insists that the diversity debates in the US, with their emphasis on multiculturalism, tried to integrate the racial minorities and empower women without necessarily eliminating the structure that promote marginalization. While some achievements have been attained as a result of the emphasis on diversity of cultures, multicultural curriculum only adds color to a white background without challenging this very background. Consequently, the idea that white is the norm from which others deviate remains intact or is further perpetuated.

Quoting her own class experiences in the US, Liu writes that even though students operating under a multicultural curriculum learn to sympathize with the poor, racial minorities and women, they still consider poverty, racism and sexism other people’s problems. “They condemn racism, which they believe is a problem out there between racists and the people they attack.” Analogously, she adds, “many male students accept the reality of sexism, feel bad about it for women, but think that they are not touched by it.” ²⁵ This suggests that there are gender-conscious men who are however detached from actual social struggles against sexism. Clarke should have investigated the possibility of gender conscious male editors who consider sexism a problem that is out there between sexists and women and who believe there is nothing they can do but merely sympathize. Such editors remain aloof and disconnected from the active promotion of women’s writings and from the wider social struggles for empowerment. Conversely, given that race is a gendered social category, examples of feminists who think that race is a problem between racists and the so-called women of color whom racists abuse adds to this argument. The examples are not hard to come by even within US feminism, for instance. Ruth Frankenberg writes of her own shock when so-called women of color accused white feminists for being racists. Feminism, she thought, was meant to empower all women by fighting their structural oppression by men. Like many of her socialist oriented white feminist friends, Frankenberg had never realized her position of structural advantage as a white woman. She writes:

As a white feminists, I knew that I had not previously known I was “being racist” and that I had never set out to “be racist”. I also knew that these desires and intentions had had little effect on outcomes. I, as a coauthor, in however modest a way, of feminist agendas and discourse, was at best failing to challenge racism and, at worst, aiding and abetting it. ²⁶

For the study under review, Liu and Frankenberg’s explanations are helpful in several ways. First, they bridge a gap evident in some of the essays in this study. These authors explain and challenge a dubious correlation especially evident in Clarke’s chapter where male editors are equaled to male publication and female editors are equaled to female publication. Secondly, it draws attention to a failure in Clarke’s chapter to effectively problematize the positions of women in their respective societies to illustrate the variations in experience, thoughts and perceptions. Clarke is content to conclude that “the state of women’s scholarly publishing in African and Northern countries is firmly tied to the positions of women in their respective societies,” but she does not show what positions women have.

Further, it is worth noting that many of Clarke’s examples are drawn mainly from literary studies. A review of women scholarly publishing in the non-literary fields would have been helpful for the overall study so as to have a wider field of illustrations. This way, the discussion of literary and cultural production would have been reserved for Tuzyline Jita Allan’s chapter which discusses feminist scholarship in Africa. Allan’s chapter is valuable because it recognizes feminism for what is it, a political project. Allan talks about ‘feminisms’ in recognition of the varieties of feminism and the contests within them that have led some scholars and activists, especially among black women in the US and South Africa, to insist on its context-specific meanings. Allan demonstrates the significance of class and race in US and South African discussions of women issues. Quoting Cheryl De La Rey, she asserts that “racism is alive and continuing in many feminist groupings in South Africa.” ²⁷ Allan examines existing historiography to illustrate the unending tensions between the internationalism of western, and predominantly white, feminism on the one hand and womanism on the other hand. The former overlooks the differences and variations within feminism and among women all in the name of advancing feminist politics. The latter is as interested in black sexual power tussles as with the world power structure that subjugates blacks. ²⁸ Discussing the historiography on womanism, Allan shows that while feminism adopts an anti-male position, womanism is as much concerned about women as it is about men. Further, she shows that non-western feminists are also concerned about racism and power, power that has been deployed on a world scale with negative consequences of exploitation against the poor and minorities and with a double consequence for poor and minority women.

It has to be mentioned that black women in the US are products of a history of exploitation through slavery. Cheryl Johnson-Odim examines their experience by an analysis of how the literature on the Black Atlantic has grown to appreciate gendered dimensions of the Black Atlantic and the cultural connections with Africa. The Black Atlantic produced only a physical separation of the African race, but this has led to cultural breaks and innovations. The study of these innovations remains a vigorous field and Johnson-Odim tackles the cultural aspects of this historiography. Her intention is to identify and discuss changes and continuities, retention and syncretism. She insists that to be black and female “renders a certain common identity.” Of all the identities relevant to her analysis like race, gender, ethnicity, religion and class, only race and sex are less mutable. Women cannot do anything to change their gender just like blacks can do nothing to change their racial pigmentation. The commonality of this identity imposes certain specific concerns that a universal feminism fails to comprehend.

However, Johnson-Odim does not ignore the differences within. Rather she uses the racial commonalities only to demonstrate that the production of knowledge on African and black experience within and out of Africa, especially in the North, has to confront problems of communication across the Atlantic. Johnson-Odim is concerned about the way questions about women are posed, what the important pivots for posing gender questions are and generally, the need to be sensitive to differing perceptions. She is concerned that much of the scholarly productions on Africa are done in North America and Western Europe, mainly by westerners or Africans resident in the North. This has allowed research and writing to proceed with little reference to Africa, African women and African voices. By reference to personal experience, she suggests several possible ways of ensuring that the African voices on the continent are heard. Johnson-Odim rightly calls for better modes of networking with African scholars resident on the continent.

There is no doubt that this is a useful and informative collection of writings on women scholarly publishing in African studies. It does not take anything for granted neither does it shy from provoking our thinking in new directions. It confronts the academic and male mainstream and invites a new look at women and Africa and their relationship to the North. It is not a surprise that a mainstream book publishing series whose stated objectives focus on “book development and publishing in the Third World” rejected the manuscript for this study. The study is a living testimony of what publishing is all about; power, ideology and subjectivity. Should we not, therefore, applaud Africa World Press for rescuing this useful and informative manuscript?

Women in Academia stands on several solid grounds. First, it belongs to a series purposely designed and launched in 1994 by CODESRIA (Council for the development of Social Science Research in Africa) to monitor academic freedom and human rights in Africa. The editor, Ebrima Sall, was until recently, also the officer in charge of the CODESRIA program on Academic Freedom. This affords the study a level of connection and consistency that is not always part of many other publications on the question of academic freedom and human rights in Africa. In introducing this study, Sall writes that this volume is the first in forthcoming thematic and sectoral studies “meant to highlight specific aspects of academic life and issues related to academic freedom, human rights and intellectual citizenship.” ²⁹ Indeed, the second solid ground for this study is the choice of theme and authorship. The theme is apt. This aptness is reinforced by the fact that most of the chapters are authored or co-authored by African women, many of them resident on the continent. As will become clear presently, many of the authors write from experience, both personal and from acquaintances, students or colleagues. This gives the study a touch that other analyses of Africa by non-African authors lack. Thus, the book implicitly reinforces the arguments contained in Cheryl Johnson-Odim’s chapter above that

African scholars (or scholars permanently based in Africa), because they are ‘on the ground’ so to speak, are more likely to be aware of the indigenous perspective on particular issues and to generate theses and theoretical propositions that are informed by what is actually happening. ³⁰

Indeed, the strength of Women in the Academia is that it allows a look into the lives of women researchers and scholars, taking one through the harassment, double burden and the problems women face in their struggle to be recognized as scholars in their own right, not as women scholars. As Tamale and Oloku-Onyango and Saida Yahya-Othman show, female university students and intellectuals are perceived mainly “through lenses tainted by their sexuality.” ³¹

Thus, this study is more specific and focused than the previous one. Though the authors recognize the significant external influences to issues of gender bias and harassment in Africa, they are content to discuss internal aspects of gender and sexual harassment in the academy and how these reinforce discrimination in access to research, funding, teaching and publishing. Sall eloquently introduces the study, but Tamale and Oloku-Onyango set the pace for subsequent analyses. The remarkable contribution of this particular chapter is its eye-opening critique of existing instruments of struggle for academic freedom in Africa. Taking the example of the Kampala and Dar es Salaam Declarations on Intellectual Freedom, the authors accuse the charters for adopting a gender-neutral language. ³² These documents assume that the formal acquisition of a right is enough to solve the problem. ³³ Ironically, Fashina’s chapter in this very volume is written as if to confirm this assumption. But as Tamale and Oloku-Onyango caution, the assumption omits the fact that the genders in question are far from equal and the power imbricated in their socialization deserve more comprehensive political and legislative actions than the mere adoption of a gender-neutral language cares to admit.

The validity of Tamale and Oloku-Onyango’s critique is reinforced by the recognition that the roots of “patriarchal oppression lie in the smallest unit of societal organization, the family, and attention on the state alone can only achieve limited reform.” ³⁴ The authors admonish against reform measures that focus on the academy alone arguing that the academy reflects the wider society. But the authors do not adequately discuss how gender discrimination in the family connects with gender discrimination in the academy. Also, because Tamale and Oloku-Onyango operate at the level of generalities, it is difficult to zero down on the culture and family being discussed in this chapter. Such knowledge is important in order to develop an understanding of the societal context within which their concept of family and their notion of academic freedom refers. There is not universally acceptable idea of academic freedom. This varies between societies, regions, cultures and over time. This makes it difficult to understand why they disagree with Florence Etta’s argument “that women are themselves the chief agents of this socialization which confers inequality on their kind.” ³⁵ Thus, they correctly point to the family as the root of women marginalization but fail to demonstrate how socialization from the family affects women even at the height of their achievement. Further, the family has never been a stable unchanging unit of analysis; it is not immune to social influences from within and without. The authors do not grapple with this fact of social transformation to show how different families in different African contexts deal with female siblings. If indeed the family is the root of women marginalization, it would have helped for the chapter to identify a particular context and shed light on how influences in one culture operate to influence women and how these differ from numerous other contexts in Africa. The idea here is that there is no one overarching way in which women are socialized in the family unit and it is misleading to peg problems of academic freedom on a decontextualized family. Even if there is, this has changed over time. The authors suggest that the struggle for “academic freedom for women” ought to proceed in tandem with broader societal struggles for democracy and human freedoms. Further they suggest the promulgation of an edict on gender and academic freedom to supplement and fortify the existing Dar and Kampala documents. This is suggested even when the authors recognize that the Dar and Kampala edict lack legal binding force. ³⁶

In what is perhaps the best chapter of this volume, Saida Yahya-Othman examines engendering academic freedom in Tanzania. The chapter is a broad analysis of academic freedom within and beyond the university. It examines both subtle and covert practices that blatantly and consistently violate academic freedom. Yahya-Othman identifies an ironic position in Tanzania where during Julius Nyerere’s era emphasis was on primary and basic education as opposed to higher education. This is the position that the World Bank adopted in the 1990’s. ³⁷ A notable negative consequence of this was the emphasis on basic education at the expense of higher education. Yahya-Othman traces the impact of this policy in Tanzania on higher education in general and on women access to education in particular. The chapter establishes the connection between basic and higher education, a connection that is often taken for granted. In Tanzania, emphasis on basic education translated into low resource input in higher education. Fewer women also managed to access basic education, and due to higher attrition rates, each successive education level witnessed limited access for women. As a result, Tanzania has the lowest number of student entering university in sub-Saharan Africa. Of those who enroll in first year of primary, only 0.3 per cent finally enter university. ³⁸ The same case is established in this volume for Senegal and Cameroon.

Tanzania has three universities and a dwindling budget for higher education. Though Yahya-Othman uses statistics, she focuses on their social import to show that the emphasis on basic education led to fierce competition for university education and access to resources. This is compounded by Structural Adjustments that place a strain on resources especially as they call for an end to state subsidy in the social sector. SAPs eroded the profitability of those sectors like agriculture where women gained earnings to educate their children almost at the same time when they promoted private education. ³⁹ The impact on women has been negative even from the wider societal perspective. Within the university, academic violations have intensified amidst reduced state and donor expenditure on higher education. In a context that sees bright and intelligent women as an anomaly, there has intensified in the University of Dar es Salaam pathological identification and harassment of women leading, at times, to rape and death. The case of Ravina Mukassa is cited as one example. ⁴⁰

Penda Mbow’s chapter on Senegal in many ways complements Yahya-Othman’s though the religious aspects resonates more with Helmi Sharawy’s chapter on Egypt. ⁴¹ This shows how aspects of gender inequality and academic freedom are reproduced across the continent. For instance, in terms of women representation within the structures of university teaching and management, Senegal, Tanzania and Cameroon show marked similarities. Here women are poorly represented at the professorial and assistant professorial levels. At the University of Dakar, women made up only 7.3 per cent in 1985. Of the total 449 teaching staff, only 11.1 per cent were women. ⁴² At the University of Dar es Salaam, only 62 women stand against 539 men, with 42 of these women being lecturers and senior lecturers. At the level of student enrollment, the figures are not better for Cameroon where the “number of women in pursuit of knowledge decreases at each successive level of education, so that only 0.5 per cent of all women reach the level of higher education.” ⁴³ Mbow has no figures for women in high academic positions in the university academic staff. But such an unequal marching affects the articulation of women concerns.

Like Fashina, Mbow critiques the gender biases that overwork women and predispose some of them to perform less than their abilities in professional undertakings. The societal gender division of labor makes women responsible for reproductive roles and domestic work and organization, plus numerous other social duties which their male counterparts do not undertake. This extra-workload is often ignored in discussion on academic freedom and social responsibilities of intellectuals. Further, those women who manage to get into academia are exposed to frustrating societal sanction and mores in the university. In Islamic societies, some women have consequently been ‘convinced’ that involvement in women issues will further marginalize them. Using the example of female students who shun attending meetings on women issues, Mbow argues that the university has at times turned against women. The absence of women’s magazines, seminars or updates on gender issues only validate this sorry state of affairs at the University of Dakar. In part, religion explains this rather lukewarm situation. Male students, she writes, tend to be hostile to or misconstrue critical lectures on religion as heretical further driving female lecturers into positions that male lecturers hardly get into. Her chapter, in some ways, provides interesting preparation on the personal experience detailed in Isabel Apawo Phiri chapter.

The structure of authoritarianism and intolerance in Malawi, as in many other countries, connects the university, civil society and the state in interesting ways. A couple of years ago, Zeleza persuasively and adeptly analyzed the nature of censorship in Kamuzi Banda’s Malawi. ⁴⁴ He showed that the texture of authoritarianism did not end with Banda. Tragically, Zeleza showed, authoritarianism had spread beyond the state to the wider civil society in which the culture of fear and despondency was evident even in realms where the state had little effect. Phiri’s personal experience at the hands of intolerant students and inept administration is reminiscent of this culture of authoritarianism in society, a story that would be familiar to academics resident in Africa and especially on African university campuses. Phiri’s story is compelling. It is about the harassment she encountered because she researched, wrote, presented and aired on the media the extent of harassment and rape directed against women at Chancellors College campus. She tells of personal harassment and injury through misguided and misplaced student activism, of administrative complicity in such harassment, of mediocre journalistic (mis)reporting that perpetuated falsehoods to the wider public and the consequences of these even at her church. What is remarkable about her narrative is the level of collegial solidarity, especially her department which not only came to her defense against the students and the administration, but, in fact, took responsibility for the research paper she had written and defended her to the hilt. As Phiri notes, many people, including men expressed sympathy and supported her within and out of the university.

Phiri’s picture contrast in certain respects with Fashina’s who also recounts instances of harassment and bias against women in Obafemi Awolowo University, Ile-Ife. Fashina’s chapter has the most potential that is least exploited. Its strength, like other chapters in the volume, is in the use of personal experiences and observations to document cases of intolerance, harassment and derision against female academics in the university. But this is the shortest, least conceptualized and least referenced chapter dealing with women issues in the volume (note that chapter six on Mauritania does not discuss women issues). As Phiri’s chapter shows, personal experience can be reconstructed from memory and other supporting evidence including oral communication, letters, memorandum, newspaper reports, staff minutes etc. In writing her chapter, Fashina relies on oral communication and observation only. These enable her to document internal cases of neglect, derision and patronage from men in relation to women issues. Fashina should have known better than to rely on UN and related declarations on rights and equality between men and women. In any case, rarely have UN declarations and resolutions been fervently pursued to their logical end when they touch on issues related to exploitation in the Third World in general and Africa in particular. Seen in the context of Tamale and Oluko-Onyango’s chapter, the unproblematised appeal to the Kampala declaration on academic freedom does not make a difference either. These authors accuse the declaration of adopting a gender-neutral language that is not very helpful in confronting the basic structure of gender inequality. Fashina should have paid attention to this issue. Like Clarke’s essay above, Fashina fails to explore the reasons why men, “even when they recognize that women have certain rights as human beings, still deny them such rights.” ⁴⁵ Tessie Liu is helpful here in reminding us that it is not just men, but men who think that sexism is a problem out there between sexists and the women they attack. This brings us to a problem of conceptualizing gender.

The problem of researching, writing and teaching gender issues as women issues is very real in this volume. Some essays in this volume treat gender and women as synonyms and proceed to discuss women issues as if they are peculiarly gender issues. Thus, some chapters are intolerant to nuance and variation on the theme of discrimination against women. The only redeeming essay is Nobert Ouendji’s nuanced presentation on Cameroon. Ouendji looks at the general structure of power in Cameroon and how this has affected the university. He locates the problem in the wider contexts of global inequalities that generate poverty, want and misery even in regions that are well endowed with resources. He cites cases of generalized state harassment of academics and students and associates this to state intolerance to criticism and freedom of speech. This has unleashed student resistance to harassment. Ouendji discusses forms of abuse by university rectors against students and female students in particular. Arguing that women representation in various sectors including student leadership remain low, Ouendji insists that this is because of the overall social status of women in Cameroon.

Though Ouendji is emphatic that women are marginalized, he cautions that no generalized judgements should be made on these. For instance, Ouendji examines the state of academic crisis, collapse and near anarchy in the universities and argues that such a situation has had deleterious consequences to all, men and women. Like Ihonvbere’s study of Nigeria, Ouendji accuses university administrators for corruption, malfeasance and mismanagement, but he does not spare academic and non-academic staff and students. These groups prefer to position themselves on the oppressed end of the divide though in reality some among them have been responsible for the problems afflicting universities. ⁴⁶

On the question of sexual harassment between the male academic staff and female students, Ouendji understands it within the crisis of the university in Cameroon and the consequences on academic standards. He has a two-pronged assessment. On the one hand are cases of female students who are coerced into sexual relations with male lecturers mainly because of the relations of power between the two. Lecturers are then able to impose compliance and silence with the threat of failing female students who dare report them. Students who refuse to yield to such coercion face reprisal like earning low marks or outright failing in such courses. The situation is worse for women students at the graduate level who have, as their advisors, male professors. It is surprising that none of the writers in this volume discusses the case of female graduate students. Contributors to this volume extensively discuss the male/professor-female/student aspect of sexual harassment.

Tamale and Oluko-Onyango are evidently intolerant to any other perspective that suggests female culpability. They set this tone by expelling from their discussion any other aspect of sexual relations between male lecturers and female students by simply noting that “while it is clear that there are women who harass men, the balance of the traffic is in the opposite direction.” ⁴⁷ Ouendji would agree with them to that extent, but the reality of STG (Sexually Transmitted Grades) compels him to admit, quoting a female student, “that the professors are not the only instigators of sexual harassment. There are also some students who are really hung up and who count on sex to get good marks.” ⁴⁸ Ouendji concludes that it is difficult to support “the theory of academic discrimination or exclusion of the so-called weaker sex.” ⁴⁹ Indeed, this is a redeeming argument because in the concern to right the wrongs of sexism, researchers have tended to overlook the wider context of poverty and ethical decay, both being problems that are gender blind. This has allowed the grading system in the universities to become a transaction between students and professors on the basis of financial and sexual favors. Ihonvbere calls this ‘sexploitation.’ He argues that some “female students in Nigerian universities are simply objects of sex,” and there exists gangs of lecturers whose job is to exchange sex for grades. ⁵⁰ The motivating factors are many and complicated. They range from simple problems of laziness and ethical decay to more complicated aspects of poverty and want. The withdrawal of state subsidy on education and the introduction of student fees can also easily account for the fact that students are forced into exchanging sex for money.

A consideration of the above critique would have given a fuller picture to this text without compromising the basic fact that women are marginalized and harassed within the African academy. The aim here is not to gainsay the fact that women face specific problems that deserve urgent attention. However, that these problems vary, and reflect much more than a male versus female dichotomy is a plausible field of investigation that makes sexual harassment more, not less, intelligible. Studies have noted rising social pathologies in our societies whose sources relate to the changing economic and social situation. Unfortunately, this very important issue is minimally considered when research on the concept of gender is driven by feminism. ⁵¹ These pathologies include poverty, want, misery, and hopelessness. These have generated other vices like indiscipline, violence and harassment. Similar anger is also vented against children and juniors in families and schools. Those who are powerless or weak become easy targets leading to increased number of victims. For example, the transformation of the Dar based student newspaper, Punch, from a student mouthpiece critiquing the state into a sexist instrument may in fact reflect much more than male chauvinism. In other places reports of devil worship and mysterious deaths have proliferated in our institutions of learning precisely at the time when African economies are at their lowest ebb and when external pressure to downsize is high. Notable examples of unexplained deaths abound in Nigerian universities while devil worship and mass killing of female students is reported in Kenyan schools. These all point beyond the male/female dichotomy to more serious structural problems in our societies.

In general, however, Ebrima Sall’s edited collection is a refreshing contribution in the CODESRIA program on academic freedom. Perhaps, some of the questions raised in this review will be tackled in forthcoming sectoral and thematic studies. As usual, studies issued by CODESRIA have maintained a certain consistency in speaking for the African people and one looks forward to other releases. Further, CODESRIA has always allowed voices on the continent to be heard, and this volume is no exception. By refusing to go by the fads prevalent in the mainstream academia, this study, and many others from CODESRIA, stick to the local agenda and respond to internal issues with more consistency and connection. For those researchers and scholars who never have enough time to observe the African campus, this study provides a good view of the intricate politics between the African academies and women scholars and researchers.

It should be evident so far that the two studies reviewed above set terms and raise debatable issues in relation to Africanist production and knowledge about Africa. Most of the studies are wary about knowledge on Africa produced in the west. In particular, some studies in Women in African Studies Scholarly Publishing point to the problems of translation, perception and communication between the North and the South. Claire Robertson’s name features severally in Nkiru Nzegwu’s chapter, for instance. Thus, the choice to review her co-authored study was motivated, among other reasons, by the recurrence of her works in Women in African Studies Scholarly Publishing. A further compelling reason for looking at her study is the issue of experience which is present in the two studies already reviewed. Indeed, Claire Robertson is not unaware of the concerns raised by Nzegwu and others. In retelling the life story of Berida Ndambuki, Robertson acknowledges some of the problems Nzegwu highlights including those of translation and perception. In reviewing We Only Come Here to Struggle one is naturally interested in how some of the issues raised above are tackled and resolved.

What is significant about this study is that Berida’s story is not unique, neither is it exceptional. On the contrary, it is a story many ordinary African women, including my mothers and grandmothers, will tell. Like many ordinary African women, Berida belongs to “a transitional generation.” According to Robertson, this is a generation that “accepted the goals and values concerning marriage of those older than themselves … but also presaged changes that involved those younger than themselves….” ⁵² Berida’s story is worth retelling not because it is located between “tradition” and “modernity,” but because she has lived through a certain axis of continuity and change diverse aspects of Kenyan history.

The study is interesting in the variety of themes it tackles simply by reconstructing Berida’s life. It looks at continuities and change in the contexts of colonialism and independence, from rural to urban, from poverty to prosperity, and from marriage to ‘separation.’ Also, Robertson does not pretend to give an untainted narrative of Berida. Rather, she acknowledges her own predilections and eccentricities; things that always follow ones account of the past. For instance, Robertson is conscious of her feminist convictions, some of which were “deeply offended” by Berida’s and other project members’ views and perceptions. ⁵³ Robertson gives the impression that she tried, with a high level of success, to surmount some of these challenges. But since this is a co-authored study in which Robertson as a western educated author is displaced, it is debatable who really succeeds in surmounting these problems; Berida or Kalaya (Berida pronounced Claire as kalaya)? Overall, Berida’s life story “rescues itself from being a recounting of yet another sad patriarchal epic, just as it is not merely a saga of women subjected to puberty rites that included excision of the clitoris.” ⁵⁴ Perhaps, Robertson’s main contribution to the historiography on gender lies in deciding to celebrate Berida’s triumphs. Berida’s story reads like “a triumph of sorts over male dominance.” She is not “an uncontested victim, an unblemished survivor, or a triumphant empowered victor.” ⁵⁵

Divided into five main chapters, the story of Berida begins in 1936 in Masii, her birthplace. From here she moved to Mwala and later Kathonzweni in 1950 upon getting married to Kiatine Ndambuki. All these was in Machakos District before she moved to Nairobi as a trader doing business mainly at Gikomba market. Berida gave birth to sixteen children in total, six of whom died as babies. She tells of the joys and sorrows of motherhood, of poverty in marriage and how she worked to surmount it, of the aspirations and unmet hopes of marriage, and of politics and the plight of petty traders in the volatile Kenyan political economy. Though Berida had a pre-arranged marriage, she successfully resisted it preferring to choose her husband. She was attracted to Ndambuki because of his smart dressing. But she captions the story of her marriage with the words “no woman can know what will happen to her in marriage.” This introduces the reader to the nature of her marital problems that involve an alcoholic husband. Reading through her story one realizes just how much the western canons of historical writing mystify issues that would otherwise be presented in a simple, clear and understandable manner if told free of fads.

Three areas where Berida’s story is a useful correction to previous presentations will be highlighted in the remainder of this review. First, is the story of her early life that touches on the experience of circumcision and pre-arranged marriage. Second is the experience of marriage to Ndambuki that introduces the theme of abusive marriage. Finally is her business engagement that demonstrates her ability to survive harsh marital and economic realities. As can easily be gleaned from existing literature, female circumcision, otherwise baptized as female genital mutilation (FGM) has been a thorny issue in recent feminist scholarship and western discussions. For some, FGM represents part of the age-old exploitative patriarchal structure whose main aim is to control women, their sexuality and their bodies. This theorizing has generated enormous literature and controversy part of which is done by people without credible cultural knowledge of the practice. The consequence has been sensationalism and misinformation. As a result, the privacy of African women has been violated since, in Nzegwu’s word, “the vulva is acutely needed for theorizing.” ⁵⁶

For Berida, the practice of excision of the clitoris “should continue.” ⁵⁷ To her, this practice deters immorality. “Excision does not guarantee virginity; it only assures that one does not sleep with everybody, maybe only with one friend, not moving from one man to man.” ⁵⁸ Some would dismiss Berida as ignorant. Others will see this as evidence of her socialization under patriarchal rule. But that misses the larger explanation which Berida offers. There were two types of initiation among the Kamba of Eastern Kenya: nzaiko nini (the small initiation) that involved excision and nzaiko nene (the big initiation) that involved a mark on the pubic area. Excision was not just about the cut which recent scholarship has reduced it to. It was broadly about education. This may explain why the excision of the clitoris was referred to as small initiation- nzaiko nini. What the merchants of voyeurism miss in their discussion of circumcision is the educational value of the practice. Berida explains:

With nzaiko nene a lot of advice was given and information passed along to the initiates. After it the whole group would be sleeping outside on the verandah chaperoned by another woman … . During the nzaiko nene you had advisors who were referred to as hatchers [awikii], as with eggs. Our hatchers told us the bad things we should not do. They were like our mothers and were paid only, say, thirty cents for doing it. It wasn’t a career but a status you inherited. ⁵⁹

Berida blames the death of this practice on whites and Christianity and that is the reason why only one of her daughters is circumcised. One can conclude from this that activism has little contribution in dealing with female circumcision if it proceeds without understanding the cultural/educational component of the practice.

Apart from having abandoned circumcision for her daughters, Berida also rejected a pre-arranged marriage to a man she did not care for. By rejecting a pre-arranged marriage, Berida ably challenged an age-old tradition of her society. Yet there is nothing novel in this because though pre-arranged marriage was practiced in Kenya, it was not such an absolutist institution. On the contrary, the very fact that Berida rejected it without social chaos is an indication that rejection was possible and many other people did reject pre-arranged marriages. Instead, she opted for one she loved. However, life in marriage has not measured up to her expectations. It has largely been a life of poverty and want coupled with a husband who gradually became an alcoholic and abusive. Rather than simply resist his many failures, Berida adjusted to, and found ways out of the problems generated by her marriage. It is at this point that Berida does not conform to western expectations. To any casual observer, especially those schooled in western feminism, the solution to an abusive marriage is separation, even divorce. On the contrary, Berida treats marriages as a lifetime relationship, a journey full of ups and downs. She recounts numerous instances of abuse including wife beating as her husband degenerated into a drunkard. Rather than divorce him, Berida saw in this an opportunity to make a claim to her life as a married woman, to resist such violence and find innovative ways of surviving poverty. Thus, an alcoholic husband, rather than being a deterrent, has in fact spurred Berida into hard work as a businesswoman. It has given her an opportunity to reconcile herself with reality and proceed in life. She remains married to Ndambuki though economically independent. What Berida shows in this is that poverty and abuse regularly reinforce each other and are at times inextricable.

Driven by an urge to avoid poverty and fed by her daring energy, Berida got into business selling cereals and related items. She did this with the blessings of Ndambuki. She lives as his wife though she spends a large part of the year in Nairobi away from her husband where she rents a house. They are still married. On the contrary, Berida has often used her earning from business to ensure that her husband is smartly dressed (something that Berida obsessively believes in) and to educate her children. Funds from her business also built a family house and she continues to feed everyone including her grandchildren. Occasionally she uses her earnings for ceremonies like her sons wedding. Though Berida wishes she had fewer children, she continues to do all in her ability to support them. She knows that Ndambuki is a liability but still accords him status, however nominal, as a head of the household. She insists, for example, that her children cannot be referred to as the children of Berida. They are Ndambuki’s children. ⁶⁰

It is important to remember that Berida told this story to Robertson who in turn recorded and transcribed it. The recorded story fulfils the relevant canons of historical writing, of periodization and ‘objectivity.’ This is done with ease because the subject of analysis, Berida, tells it from experience without bothering about theoretical frameworks or related concerns that mystify knowledge all in the name of being scientific. However, and to her credit, Robertson allows a notable and important displacement to take place in this text. Berida takes center stage in the text and yields to the west only in terms of language of communication. The authority of other authors is consigned to the footnotes where they are allowed very little interference. As a result, the narrative flows in the direction of Berida’s story. Whether Berida’s story fits in western expectations is not an issue for this text. Berida remains the norm for this text from which the west deviates.

But though the author largely succeeds in displacing the western mode of producing Africa, some footnote citations do not. Most footnotes are meant to provide a context of understanding Akamba history, Kamba being Berida’s ethnic group. But a few end up privileging the perceptions of colonial and amateur anthropologists. For instance, footnote 5 on page 24, 16 on page 34, and 15 on page 80 all provide information that could be stated without reference to secondary citations. Indeed, some of these citations are broad generalizations that eventually compromise the specificity of the case in question. In footnote 16 on page 34, for instance, Robertson quotes in order to elaborate on Ndambuki’s alcoholism. She approvingly quotes that “‘beer drinking is the favorite occupation of old men…,’ who got old before their time because of it.” Such a quotation simply panders on a colonial stereotype of the Kamba written into colonial annual reports of Ukambani Province by administrators who doubled up as producers of ‘reliable’ information on colonial ‘tribes.’ We know however that the perceived habitual drunkard of the colonial administrator was not the norm but the exception. In colonial days, time for drinking competed with labor time which is why the administrators raised complains about the Kamba. Certainly beer drinking was regular but it was not the favorite occupation of all old men. Beer drinking had its time and rules. Therefore, a footnote to this effect perpetuates a stereotype rather than help one understand the context of beer drinking in Ukambani. Neither does it explicate Ndambuki’ habit and should be treated with enough suspicion.

Overall, the story of Berida like the experiences of women highlighted in the other texts under review is worth reading. Its contribution lies in its ordinariness and the simplicity of presentation. For those who prefer to theorize gender issues in Africa, this story shows the limits of theory. Theory almost always privileges a western reading of African realities. This often ends up with a gloomy picture of misery, hopelessness, abuse, mutilation, prostitution and disease. Robertson and Berida bring to life not just the concerns, joys and sorrows of one African woman but of many others whose experiences remain untold. The dominant motif in the text is poverty and survival. Berida, like many other ordinary women of Africa, is a survivor of poverty. Abuse is less of a concern to her. Questions of female circumcision do not worry her so much. Adopting a positive attitude, she sees any challenge as part of a life to be lived and survived. Berida portrays the intricacies of this survival. In all, the three texts under review demonstrate the struggles of African women in the academy and beyond and deserve everyone’s close attention.

References

Amadiume, Ifi. Male Daughters, Female Husbands: Gender and Sex in an African Society, (New Jersey: Zed Books, 1987)

Buchert, Lene and Kenneth King (eds.) Learning from Experience: Policy and Practice in Aid to Higher Education, The Hague: Centre for the Study of Education in Developing Countries, 1995

Cherly Johnson-Odim, “From Both Sides Now: Gendering the Black Atlantic,” in Veney and Zeleza, (eds.), Women in African Studies Scholarly Publishing, p.107

Etta, Florence. “Gender Issues in Contemporary African Education, in Africa Development, XIX, No. 4, 1994,

Fouche, Fidela. “Overcoming the Sisterhood Myth,” in Transformation, Vol. 23, 1994, p. 79

Frankenberg, Ruth. White Women, Race Matters: The Social Construction of Whiteness, Minneapolis: University of Minnesota Press, 1993, p. 1

Higher Education, The Lessons of Experience, Washington D. C.: The World Bank, 1994.

Ihonvbere, Julius. “The State and Academic Freedom in Africa: How African Academics Subvert Academic Freedom,” in Journal of Third World Studies, Vol. X, no. 2, 1993, p. 58

Liu, Tessie. “Teaching the Differences among Women from a Historical Perspective: Rethinking Race and Gender as Social Categories,” Women’s Studies International Forum, Vol. 14 No. 4, 1991, p. 266

Mahmood Mamdani and Mamadou Diouf, (eds.) Academic Freedom in Africa, Dakar: CODESRIA Book Series, 1994.

------------. “University Crisis and University Reform: A Reflection on the African Experience,” in CODESRIA Bulletin, No. 3, 1993, pp. 13-14

Ndambuki, Berida & Claire C. Robertson, We Only Come Here to Struggle: Stories from Berida’s Life, Bloomington: Indiana University Press, 2000.

Oyèrónké Oyewùmí, The Invention of Women: Making an African Sense of Western Gender Discourses, (Minneapolis: University of Minnesota Press, 1997).

Steeves, H. Leslie. Gender Violence and the Press: The St. Kizito Story, Athens: Ohio University Center for International Studies Monographs in International Studies African Series No. 67, 1997

Zeleza, Paul Tiyambe. “The Politics of Historical and Social Science Research in Africa,” in Journal of Southern African Studies, Vol. 28, No. 1, 2002, pp. 9-24.

----------. Manufacturing African Studies and Crises, Dakar: CODESRIA Book Series, 1997, pp.390-404.

Copyright 2002 Africa Resource Center, Inc.

Citation Format

Murunga, Godwin Rapando (2002). AFRICAN WOMEN IN THE ACADEMY AND BEYOND: REVIEW ESSAY. Jenda: A Journal of Culture and African Women Studies: 2, 1.