African Women and Development Panel
AfrICANDO 2007
The conference’s panel explored the role culture plays in the plight of contemporary African women. Its focal point was how African women’s progress and development are closely linked. New cultural realities continue to emerge in contemporary African societies, yet women still make progress. Specifically, the panelists presented a broad array of case studies that addressed several challenges African women face due to globalization. The presentations covered a variety of literary, social work and sociological perspectives and addressed African women’s issues in contemporary East and West Africa.
Dr. Ba-Curry analyzed Ama Ata Aidoo’s award-winning 1991 novel Changes: A Love Story (1991). She debunked the often stereotypical images of African women as powerless, weak and passive. Through the study of Aidoo’s novel, her paper revealed that modern Ghanaian women living in an urban environment experience a series of personal dilemmas in their conjugal and professional lives but seem to be able to mediate the freedom and mobility of city life as well as the political, cultural and gender realities of post-independence Ghana.
Dr. Patience Togo presented a thought-provoking account of the causes and effects of prostitution on contemporary Ghanaian women as well as the challenges to normative political theory of prostitution in Ghana. She showed that women are still the victims of sexual exploitation due to a series of causes such as globalization and the resulting transformations that occurred in the cultural, social and economic spheres of today’s Ghana. One salient point in her presentation was that the developing tourist industry increased African women’s sexual victimization in an era of HIV/AIDS. Dr. Togo stressed the grim reality Ghanaian female prostitutes face in order to survive.
Finally, Dr. Fortunata Songora Makene analyzed the impact of globalization on girls’ education in contemporary Tanzania. Her paper highlighted the recent shifts in spatial and temporal experiences related to female children and their access to education. Through the use of interviews and archives, she showed how a series of political factors such as power structures underlying the school system, alliances across class and their social implications impact female children’s rights in urban and rural Tanzania. Specifically, she addressed new ways to enhance theoretically grounded research on the concept of decoupling in today’s Tanzania.
Overall, these three innovative scholarly presentations triggered many questions from the audience and initiated a new conceptualization of approaches that may help African women find future viable solutions to their many challenges in our changing world.
Thanks to the AfriCANDO 2007 Committee and the African New World Studies Program at Florida International University, Dr. Ba-Curry from the FIU English Department, Dr. Togo from the Department of Social Work at St. Cloud State University, Minnesota and Dr. Songora Makene from the Sociology Department at Worcester State College, Massachusetts could share their views on women and development in contemporary Africa.
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