Annually, Africa Day celebrations across the continent are filled with reminders of the promises of unity and solidarity for the continent. In South Africa, Africa Day is commemorated by a diversity of commemorative activities propagating this very idea of unity, started by the Organisation of African Unity (OAU), the precursor to the African Union (AU), on the 25th of May 1963.
Within the South African Higher Education milieu, the celebrations continued this year despite ongoing tensions of Afrophobia in the country, marking the relevance of universities as places of continued reflection in the context of conflict.
Some of the debates rightfully focused on trying to find solutions for continued African solidarity in the context of the continuing ‘scramble for Africa’, growing geopolitical conflicts, technological shifts and the opportunities offered by multipolarity. While the debates coming out of the celebrations are important for shifting the needle towards generic unity, what is not showing up is the position of women in this work to develop and unite the continent.
This is disturbing as African women, both adult women and young girls, make up fifty percent plus of the continent’s population. Thus, fifty percent of the population dividend that many proponents of Africa’s development emphasise, is made up of a group seldom centred in formal African development initiatives – adult women and young girls. Whilst we recognise that gender does not act the same everywhere, gender development research shows that women the world over experience development disproportionately. This is even more so for women on the African continent. This is because development is not neutral, it is just as gendered as it is raced.
The African Gender Development Index illustrates that women are underrepresented in education, economic participation and political participation. Whilst the numbers throughout the continent vary, what remains constant is that African women remain an addendum in African development programs, in its platforms and as beneficiaries of its projects; while they carry an unequal burden of the failures of this development. For example, according to the Food and Agriculture Organisation of the United Nations (UN), African women in Sub-Saharan Africa hold a disproportionate share of food production labour while they hold lower levels of land ownership and are less likely to inherit land.
While South Africa shows progress in terms of access to education for girls and women as compared to other African countries, this is not translated to access to jobs and leadership once women enter the workplace. What research argues is that this discrepancy is a result of the patriarchal dividend. It has become the norm that men defer to other men, even when women are more qualified, more experienced and even when they hold leadership positions. Similarly, powerful men will defer to other men, sometimes to the most junior and unqualified men in the room.
This patriarchal dividend leads to experiential contradictions for women leaders as they are then rewarded for self-erasure while simultaneously being treated as disposable. The architectures of patriarchal power works tirelessly to rattle and provoke women leaders, who then are forced to act in terms that the system will call ‘irrational.’ Feminist researchers like Bell Hooks have written extensively about these tactics and how they minimise women leaders’ achievements and impose respectability politics on them. For example, when these women leaders resist dehumanisation, this resistance is defined as aggression. Thus, women are often defined as angry, aggressive and difficult.
If African unity is to be achieved, African women and their interests should be centred. Their voice, presence and experiences are indispensable, otherwise the shared aspirations of the continent will remain a pipe dream.
Professor Grace Khunou is the Executive Director: Leadership and Transformation at the University of South Africa (Unisa).
