Decolonizing the curriculum on african women and gender studies

Abstract

The current patterns of inequalities in the production of knowledge which legitimizes knowledge produced in the global north, the politics of citation which makes reference to Western authors and research conducted by these authors on Africa, and the misrepresentation of African women and men point to the continued effects of Western hegemony on gender studies which fails to take into account knowledge outside its context. It also points to the reach of the colonial library and the extent to which research in the global north continue to be unaffected by research from Africa and indeed the global south. This suggests an urgent need for an approach to gender studies research that reflects the complexities of African gender research and the necessity for a decolonized gender studies curriculum both within and outside Africa. This chapter draws on extant literature on gender research in Africa and research on curriculum decolonization to understand what it means to decolonize the curriculum on African women and gender studies. It addresses questions of hegemonic knowledge production, representation, power and normalization within gender studies research, and curriculum while recognizing the nuances of identity, positionality, culture, and ethnicity in the quest to decolonize the discipline. It then advocates a historical, intersectional, and contextually diverse approach to teaching and research that enables gender and women studies to be a site for the realization of epistemic and cognitive justice in Africa. In so doing, it addresses a gap in the literature on the role played by gender studies in the decolonization process and the process of decolonizing the gender studies curriculum.