Who is an African woman?
When people ask me what I do, and I respond that I’m a blogger, and that I blog about topics that primarily concern African women, quite often they proceed to either tell me about an humanitarian or developmental cause they are involved with or have read about. Sometimes they ask me how my blog reaches women in African villages.
They’re not ‘wrong’ to ask these questions and I do address women’s lives in rural Africa at times. However, these reactions imply that too often, the term “African woman” conjures a poor woman in rural Africa that automatically needs helping. The pitiable African woman. The one that mainstream media doesn’t tire of depicting. The one who indeed exists – although she has more agency often than allowed in depictions of her – who furthermore is a sister to other African women,and not this “Other” that we ‘inauthentic’ African women are saving.
It seems obvious that an African woman is equally the farmer who lives in a village in Ghana or one who has a high-flying office job in Kinshasa. She is the Togolese woman in a refugee camp in Israel. Or the Ethiopian woman in a luxury home in London’s Chelsea. She is the Namibian/German woman on social welfare in Berlin. She is – from a pan-African cross-continental stance which this blog has – the Dominican woman, the Brazilian woman, the African descendant in any part of the world who vests a part of her identity in the African continent.
I’m tired of people immediately assuming that to blog about African women is to blog about charity work. I’m tired of this idea that African women can only be objects of pity. I’m tired of the notion that African women can or should only interact on select topics. African women bloggers should and do write about social media, sex, literature, art, pop culture, love, philosophy, fashion, food, hiphop and more. I’m sick and tired of the single narrative of African womanhood having such impenetrable power.
What do you say? Have you had similar or dissimilar experiences?
For me, i got tired of it long time.. or actually bemused by it.. and trying to rectify it and took it as what it also is – a chance to be a “thought leader” in a specific channel or area.. and make the change from within. Change how people see that specific area.. through your demenour, nuances.. how you think, how you write, etc – coz they identify YOU as being one of “them.”
Its going to be a slow process -but the fact that many people are on it all talking about different things..will break that mold.. sooner than later! I promise you!! Just watching
)
Thanks for sharing @MumBi. I guess for me I don’t necessarily aspire to be changing the view from one set thing to another. In other words, it’s not that rural women shouldn’t be a representation of African womanhood, but that they shouldn’t be ‘The” representation. Our identities as African women overlap but are not homogeneous. There must be a focus on solidarity but respect for diversity. You know what I mean?
i cant agree with u more!
Thanks for reading
I have had similar experiences, but thankfully I think perceptions of ‘Africans’ are evolving for the better as African culture is being embraced more into the mainstream.
I hope so, I truly do.
Um, not an easy question. Is it correct to ask ‘who is an African woman’ rather than ‘what makes an African woman’? Who does ever asks this question for the European woman in the first place? It goes as obvious in some sort of way. She is recognizable. The problem does not subsist for the time being. What is it that in the African case makes an African woman herself be considered un-African or in no way different than any other European woman? or ‘American’ woman? Cases often categorized under the case: ‘White man in Black body’. I think nothing other than culture makes an African woman African in contrast to, for instance, sisters that have moved abroad. Culture. Values. We are all the same only cultures differ. Beliefs, ways of seeing, doing, practicing, reacting, understanding… It seems to me that above personality, what makes identity is a culture of belonging. The difficult problem with Africa and its people is the history. African cultures have been and are systematically denied and cancelled by western cultural imperialism, and its obsessive rhetoric of development. There is barely anything African left. As if to ‘develop’ or ‘progress’ Africans’ had to modernize and needed to delete their cultures of origin. But that is exactly it! Africans have to school and transform up to complete assimilation. Then they will be ‘developed’! All that is African is denigrated by the West as irrational, savage, uncivilized, useless, and whatever. It is degraded and humiliated. It is not accepted. It is denied of value. Therefore since colonization up as of today African cultures and people are undergoing massive continuous perpetrated annulation of their personalities, cultures, systems of thought… This under the name of ‘development’ or ‘mission civilisatrice’. Everything is ‘seen’ under the western eye worldview. The ethnologist’s eye. Everything measured according to it. The projections of the viewer. Africa as of today is left invisible. It has been described as the ‘dark continent’, or the continent of darkness because of the so considered ‘savagery of its people’ reflected in the color of their skin, whereas what was really been told was the projections of the Conrads’ fears and phantasms. Today Africa is still invisible because instead of willing to know it and accept it, describe it and see it for what it is, there is this only one ruling obsession: the parameter of development. The only lens. Change needs new glasses. The blindest is what is not seen. And the problem subsists in that increasingly Africans most of the time try to fit into the parameters of the West and even surpass in imitation and perfection the adherence to the model. Instead of living cultures there is denial of cultures, instead of adopting cultures there is rush to westernization. It’s the ‘bleaching phenomenon’. This is comprehensible and understandable. But it’s a loss. And it’s even more so when the younger generations don’t even know who they are and where do they come from and what their cultures were about, and reason in a completely globalized assimilated manner, nourished by western periphery rubbish violence or nourished preponderantly by western culture. So the point is how can someone be African if s/he has not lived, assimilated its own culture? Or rejects it, or doesn’t even know it? For instance African languages. The problem is that even when Africans’ describe the culture often, and increasingly so, the culture described is apprehended through western lens that judges it in function of western criteria . FGM example. Without going into this which is complicated, the point is not to judge but to understand and try to see what is not seen but dismissed at start as worthless, negative. To deconstruct assimilation and the categories that structure it in the mind and in the language, in the media, arts, politics, institutions, everywhere, is a major task. The problem of which being that the cultural resources to build the alternative are lacking or have been destroyed. The problem being that we do not know about African cultures in their specific unless to a great extent what has been described and made known to us by the ‘colonizers’ biased interpretation. But fortunately African cultures have not been completely exterminated and it is still possible to acknowledge them in the expression of their authenticity, and not to please the western viewer, still in many parts of Africa. They still exist and can speak for themselves. Who is the African woman? As Mona Eltahawy would say: yalla!
We need more African women voices at center stage to see and listen to and then we will know better. Or otherwise said it’s a very difficult question that needs much more in depth thinking and cannot be ruled out simply. Nosce te ipsum. Man know thyself! For the modern African woman or diasporan African woman although different I think her contribution depends to the extent in which she reaches to enrich the West with African touch and values bringing about change in western mindsets and sensibility rather than African cultures breaking down the rigidity of western categories. But this is just one thought of what is complex and delicate and requires more elaboration and I wouldn’t want to be offensive in any way or make it too simplistic…
Thanks for the comment. Yalla, indeed, we continue to build on an intercontinental African women’s raising consciousness movement.
I have often explored this, I did once ask over at africa on the blog, “who is African” not just on African women per se. I profusely apologise for placing the link in your comments, but I just think when people ask about Africans, they are really asking about black people. I have come to realise over the years that, yes, although majority of Africa is black, African women are white, many of which live in rural areas too, on farms,white, like Kirsty Coventry who recently made headlines when her father asked for bride price, indian, lebanese, even chinese. They are African too. Or are they still foreigners? http://www.africaontheblog.com/who-is-african/
Hi Freedes, I imagine a white-African woman may feel frustrated too with the rigid categorization. However, for the shared racial background it’s more likely to affect black African women.
I think of White-Africans as White-Africans in the same way as African-Americans are hyphenated.
Minna, as a black woman in the U.S. of African descent and a follower of Pan-Africanism since 1965; I can truly identify with your article.
Black women in the U.S.in my humble opinion are viewed as hapless, the other if you will–with exceptions. Stereotyped moreso than any other ethnic female group and when we achieve in arts, sciences, literature, etc.; we are viewed as rare or remarkable. After awhile when you have so many exceptions it’s no longer the norm. The latter, somehow never seems to pertain to us. I long for the day when we no longer will have these discussions about women of color wherever they are in the diaspora. Until then we must adhere to a Deborah Prothrow-Stith quote: “We cannot silence the voices that we do not like hearing. We can, however, do everything in our power to make certain that other voices are heard.”
You are one of many who are doing so!
Peace…..
Thanks Carolyn, I love that quote. A new mantra!
This means there’s a lot of work ahead of you fight the oversimplified stereotypes. I hope you will be able to increase the awareness of the Western world with respect to women in Africa in the next years. Looking forward to that and all the best.
Hi Magda, I hope so too..
If a person’s view of an African woman is limited, best believe, I too, I’m limited in conversation! If a Caucasoid woman, can be everything, then that vein of thinking certainly applies to ME, to US-the African women. To be honest, I just do not entertain nonsensical states of mind! THAT is one of them.
Hey African Mami
True dat. Although I sometimes get these types of comments from other Africans. Especially menfolk. That’s another post!
Too true. To often we African women are cornered into being the rural woman with the kid on her back fetching water at the river. The urban cosmopolitan African woman seems to not exist and is not represented as much in main stream media. It is a shame, like the African woman should not grow or should day rural and always rely on handouts a woman that should be pitied. This view means that te we are not given a chance o grow an prove ourselves.
The rural woman with the kid on her back needs the may versions of her story out there too. Thanks for your comment.
It is not about African women being cornered into being the rural poor or cosmopolitan urban – the soul of the woman is the same reflection of her unique spiritual being … Forget the media harboring only to perpetuate the poverty of rural women comparing their traditional and cultural world with the desire to sell newsy worthy stories – always showing themselves – the writer/editor – as better citizens. I am fed up of their multimedia comparisons – always focusing on the powerless dignity of the woman … whom the male has kept subdued and submissive.
Let us all – each and every one of us… unite the image of women in whatever culture and rever her socially for keeping the traditons and dignity of her life style .. respect her for who she is … and assist her in the way she needs – not the way – we think she should represent herself …. What does she really feel about her life ? Let her move forward within her own dignified wholeness as a woman …
Was this a response to @Ndu? Either way, this is a beautiful reflection. Thanks. It’s all about wholeness. The full prism being allowed to exist.
Great post! So true. The thing I hate the most is when people talk about that African woman thinking oh it’s fine to talk in condescending, misinformed, myopic and sometimes prejudiced and/ or racist way in front of me because I don’t fit the stereotype, therefore I’m not like them, therefore I’m not African which naturally means I’m like the person talking who in reality is nothing like me coz I would not talk like that. Thankfully all my close friends who come from all corners of the earth are like me: They realise we have our similarities and our differences and every culture, place and continent has a spectrum of identities
Well said!I will definitely be reading more of your blogs in future.
I totally agree with you. I hate being seen as stupid, poor and uneducated. I get things like “Do you have a safari in your backyard?” “Do you have lions as pets” or “Your English is very good”. I speak about this in my blog about what being African means hope you can check it out http://somethingweafricansgot.blogspot.com.au/2012/12/being-african-equals.html
I wanted to a choreographer as a child and I remember my parents saying have you heard of an African choreographer. Forget it and be a doctor or a nurse and honestly that crushed me so I agree with you. Great post.
I’ve changed my blog name, I still would like to know what you think about it
http://themodernafrican.blogspot.com.au/2012/12/being-african-equals.html