OYERONKE OYEWUMI is Associate Professor of Sociology, State University of New York, Stony Brook, USA. She is author of The Invention of Women: Making Sense of Gender Discourses (University of Minnesota Press, 1997).

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PART I: INTRODUCTION - CONCEPTUALIZING GENDER: DECOLONIZING FEMINISM White Women's Burden; O.Oyewumi Women's Roles and Existential Identities; I.Kopytoff The 'Status of Women' in Indigenous African Societies - Implications for the Study of African American Women's Roles; N.Sudarkasa Feminism and Difference: The Perils of Writing as a Woman on Women in Algeria; M.Lazreg PART II: CONSTRUCTING KINSHIP: FAMILY TIES AND THE 'DOMESTIC' Down to the Fundamentals: Women-Centered Hearth-holds in Rural West Africa; F. Ekejiuba African Bride Wealth and Women's Status; J. Ogbu Home-Made Hegemony: Modernity, Domesticity, and Colonialism in South Africa; J. Comaroff & J. Comaroff Colonial and Missionary Education: Women and Domesticity in Uganda, 1900-1945; N.Musisi Crisis and Reconstruction and the Mobilization of Labor; K.Atkins PART III: MAKING HISTORY/DOING GENDER Making History, Creating Gender: Some Methodological and Interpretive Questions in the Writing of Oyo Oral Traditions; O.Oyewumi What's So Feminist About Doing Women's Oral History?; S.Geiger Spirituality, Gender, and Power in Asante History; E.Akyeampong & [...] PART IV: JUDICIAL DISCOURSES Wives, Children, and Interstate Sucession in Ghana; [...] Narratives of Power: Women's Experience of the World of Familial Relationships and Legal Discourse in Botswana; A.Griffiths Concepts of Equality in Cases of Discrimination Against Women: Examples From Africa; [...] PART V: WRITING WOMEN - READING GENDER Gender, Feminist Theory and Post-Colonial (Women's) Writing; J. Makuchi Nfah Abbenyi The Female Writer and Her Commitment; M.Ogundipe-Leslie Posessing the Voice of the Other; [...] PART VI: NECESSARY DIALOGUES: QUESTIONS OF POWER AND KNOWLEDGE Epilogue: In My Father's House; K.A.Appiah Questions of Identity and Inheritance: A Critical Review of Kwame Anthony Appiah's In My Father's Hourse ; N.Nkegwu Reinventing Africa; I.Amadiume Chasing Shadows: The Misplaced Search for Matriarchy; N.Nzegwu PART VII: DEVELOPMENT ORSOCIAL TRANSFORMATION Definitions of Women and Development: An African Perspective; [...] Research Methodology and Investigative Framework for Social Change: The Case for African Women; F.Steady Recovering Igbo Traditions: A Case for Indigenous Women's Organizations in Development; N. Nzegwu PART VIII: TOWARDS DEMOCRATIC FUTURES - MODELS OF ACTIVISM Bitu: Facilitator of Women's Educational Opportunities; [...] Funlayo Ransome-kuti: A True Citizen; C.Johnson-Odim & [...] Sheroes and Villains: Conceptualizing Colonial and Contemporary Violence Against Women in Africa; [...]