Boris, Eileen.  “Gender After Africa!”  Africa After Gender.  Ed. Catherine M. Cole, Takyiwaa Manuh, and Stephan F. Miescher.  Bloomington, IN : Indiana University Press, 2007.  191-204.

Eileen Boris opens her essay by turning a common question asked by Western gender academics on its head. Instead of asking “What impact has gender as a category of analysis had on the study of Africa,” which in itself assumes Western thinkers have already arrived at a correct framework for studying gender, the author argues that a much more appropriate question is “What can Africa do for gender?” She explains how Western gender theorists have, until recently, incorrectly proposed their own historical gender tradition to be universal. Instead, historical African social and gender structures need to be used to enlarge the framework for academic gender theory. Additionally, she explores the similarities and differences between gender and other social attributes such as age, lineage, kinship and wealth for determining social status. Finally, she shows how African gender is a source of power in post-colonial political struggles.

In many ways, this article reveals the Western bias in my original thesis for this research project (I actually still retained the same thesis, as it is a case in point for Eileen Boris’s and many other African gender scholars). My thesis assumes that gender and feminism thought in Africa need a Western savior-that African women have to find a balance between their “primitive” gender tradition and the “correct” or “modern” Western ideas of gender and liberation. It also makes me wonder what opinions about gender roles director Ousmane Sembène might have had in mind when he released Xala. Most of the Western analysis of the film describe women in the film as “masculine,” and the men as “feminine,” but Boris’s article suggests such reviews assume Western gender stereotypes are universal. Did Sembène have this in mind as well?