‘I can’t use this word feminism because I think it is too strong’: discourse and evaluative language on feminism in narratives of gender produced by Cape Verdean academics

Abstract

This article presents an investigation of the narratives of gender produced by a group of Cape Verdean female academics, focusing on their perspectives on current discourses on feminism. We analyzed the narrators’ lexical choices with the support of the Appraisal System, and the narratves representations were interpreted with Fairclough’s framework, in alignment with concepts from African Feminist Studies. The results show that the term ‘gender’ was used as a synonym for a balance between the sexes. This perspective allowed them to approach the discussion that unequal relations can disfavor both genders, despite acknowledging that women’s conditions were historically built in disadvantage in relation to men. The few usages of the words ‘feminist/feminism’ were related to attributive and evaluative meanings, implying that these terms carry a too strong meaning. ‘Feminism’ appears to refer to an agenda that is only concerned with women’s needs. To conclude, the participants’ evaluations in relation to the categories gender and feminism express the complexity of their local experiences, which sometimes are represented as contradictory.