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WOMEN AND GENDER STUDIES IN EAST AFRICAN UNIVERSITIES AND THE NEED FOR A TRANSFORMATIVE PEDAGOGY: ISSUES AND CHALLENGES

Oanda I Ogachi*

Abstract

African universities are increasingly embracing gender analysis as a critical Social Science methodology. Women and gender studies, in equal measure, are being introduced as part of the disciplines and as a strategy to gender academic discourse and the cultural life of the institutions. These developments represent a great leap in the quest for women’s empowerment and those of feminist scholarship for visibility in academic knowledge. The developments have, however, not been easy to come by and the pace with which institutions are embracing the methods and the discipline remain apparently tokenist. This article reviews some of the issues that the new discipline needs to engage with and the challenges it is likely to confront.

Introduction

Women and gender studies in African universities are marking a new phase in the quest for women’s empowerment and gender equity. As in the western world, the developments in African universities represent efforts at streamlining of the women’s movement and the need to acknowledge the feminist agency in academic discourse. Academic discourses that seek to transform often take recourse to intellectual traditions that create the potential to subvert among the oppressed. Transformative pedagogies are based on critical teaching methodologies and discursive intellectual practices. Hence, women and gender studies in Africa, given their mandate and context, need to embrace such critical pedagogies. The direction the studies are taking in terms of epistemological orientations that guide teaching and research need, therefore, to be part of the broad concern, much as has been the need for their introduction in the institutions. This article reflects on what is happening in east African universities in that regard and its potential to contribute to the vision of an African feminist perspective in the academic disciplines.

Since September 1991, when CODESRIA, a major Social Science institution in Africa, held its inaugural workshop on ‘Gender Analysis and African Social Science’, a lot of developments have taken place in the academization of the women's movement in Africa. Before then, issues of women and gender analysis found a peripheral, but still a conservative, treatment in the academy. Women and gender equity issues were limited to the welfare activities of the women's movement and the tokenist gestures from male politicians. The women’s bureaus created after the 1985 Women’s Congress in Nairobi remained under-funded and occasionally patronized by class interests. Universities in the continent continued to teach topics and conduct research related to women without a transformative consciousness to women’s issues and gender analysis. Much as the 1975 (Mexico) and the 1985 (Nairobi) congresses had internationalized the plight of African women, the political and economic crisis in most of Africa led to the exclusion of more women from any development process, both in terms of access to all levels of education, gainful employment and distribution of incomes. The net effect of this was a regression in the capacity of African universities to constitute themselves as sites for the advancement of the feminist agenda in African scholarship.

The 1991 CODESRIA workshop therefore, fertilized by an emerging and financially endowed civil society, led to a new rethinking that the struggles of African women were as much a social responsibility of the universities as it was a political issue. The 1990s therefore saw both a growth in the feminist leaning civil society, a synergy between the works of gender activists and feminist scholarship in the universities, and an embracement of gender analysis by the universities as an important social science methodology on its own right, not just as a complement to existing methodologies. Continental and regional research institutions, such as CODESRIA, OSSREA, AICAD, and national ones often located in universities, prioritized gender research and analysis as a critical component of their programmes. Problems of funding and lack of critical human capital have faced some of these programmes at the level of individual universities, but the movement from feminist scholars, especially the young generation of scholars should never be overlooked or underestimated. Perhaps the singular development towards the academization of the women’s movement was the establishment in 1996 of the African Gender Institute (AGI) at the University of Cape Town in South Africa. The vision of the AGI is both ambitious and admirable. The institute seeks to strengthen teaching and research in Women and Gender studies in African universities, using relevant African epistemologies, as a basis of occasioning social and political transformation in the continent¹. The institute develops online resources for teaching gender in African higher education, and as such, has become a critical site for the Africanization of feminist pedagogies. In this, the institute shares with and contributes to the vision of Africanizing academic discourse and gender studies in African universities, as convincingly stated by Mkandawire (1997), Amadiume (1997), Oyewumi (1997; 2000), and Arnfred (2003) among others. The mandate of African universities that are establishing women and gender studies is therefore to embed the teaching and research within the above vision and avoid the charge of cultural plagiarism that academic discourses in African universities often attract.

What then has been the contribution of universities in east Africa to the academization of women issues and the Africanization of the gender discourse? How do the teaching and research activities relate to the vision of the feminist scholarship in the continent? This vision, as Oyewumi (2003) compellingly restates, strives for African women be the authors of an academic discourse that defines them, their agency and their being. In this, African feminist thought seeks to achieve two things. First, it aims to reassert the validity of an African feminist epistemology within the broad array of feminisms that have emerged with the advent of the third, and possibly fourth, wave of feminist movements.

Second, it seeks to embed itself as a disciplinary discourse in both African universities and the global arena, in the context of other universal contentions to knowledge about Africa and African womanhood. Underlying this second objective is the desire to transform the disciplinary and structural landscape of African universities, to gender their academic programmes and administrative orientations. A review of what the universities are doing to contribute to this vision should therefore go beyond acknowledging the existence of some programmes, though important as a preliminary step, to examining the content, the direction and the ideological grounding of the programmes. This is the idea underlying this review.

Makerere University, Uganda, ranks foremost among the universities in Africa in teaching Women and Gender Studies. This is because of the context within which the Department of Women and Gender Studies (DWGS) was established, and the fact that, when other institutions were struggling to infuse teaching of women issues in a form of scattered topics, Makerere went in for a full academic programme. Three factors contributed to the pioneer status of Makerere in terms of the level the teaching of women issues (Sicherman 2005; Ankrah and Bizimana 1991). First was a factor dating back to the days of Makerere as the pioneer University College in east Africa. Colonial welfare politics then led to the formation of women’s clubs, some of which later mutated to the Uganda Association of University Women (UAUW) in 1957. This created a tradition of feminist organization at the university at a time when feminist politics at university level were not heard of. Second was the fact that women were embraced by the National Resistance Movement (NRM) during the struggle for power, which finally institutionalized gender and women’s rights into the constitution when it took over political leadership in 1985 (Tripp 2000). This gave women in Uganda leeway in terms of political space to organize at a time when one party political leadership in countries like Kenya was bent on patronizing the women’s movement. Third was a combination of what one could refer to as a ‘feminist foresight’ and the availability of resources from donors from 1986. Because of the 1985 Women’s Congress in Nairobi, donors' support for activities that led to the economic and political empowerment of women in most of Africa became easily forthcoming henceforth. In Uganda, women organizations, besides vouching for such economic and political empowerment, proposed to donors that women issues be part of the reconstruction of Makerere University, and this be done through the support to establish a Women Studies department at the university. This led to the establishment of the DWGS in 1991.

What then is the ideological orientation of the DWGS at Makerere and how do they relate to the vision of achieving an African feminist epistemology? The department offers programmes at Bachelor's, Master's and PhD levels. In its 2002 annual report, the department restated its commitment to follow a multidisciplinary orientation in its academic activities by enriching the programme with African perspectives on women and gender².

The undergraduate programme is offered in 13 core units and 9 electives. Out of the 13 core units, only two focus exclusively on women, as opposed to gender analysis. These are units on ‘The International Women’s Movement: Africa and Global Connections’ and ‘Introduction to Women in Literature and Media’. The inclination towards more gender analysis is also reflected in the Master's programme, where only one introductory course focuses on Women and Gender Studies. All the other courses examine issues of gender and development in the fashion of the often-criticized and limited Gender and Development (GAD) approaches (see, for example, Arnfred 2003). The other aspect of the DWGS in Makerere relates to advocacy, research and dissemination. Through these avenues, the department has contributed to reproduction of human capital in gender studies, gendering institutional cultures both within and outside the university, and generating new knowledge in the area of Women and Gender Studies. An analysis of these components as shown on the department’s website however reveals a descriptive and technical approach to both tasks. Research, for example, has remained at the descriptive level, showing gender-desegregated data that has been used to reveal the marginal position of women in most sectors. The advocacy and dissemination component also remains more technical in approach, stressing tenets of gender training as opposed to designing subversive approaches of confronting and transforming the masculine culture that feeds gender inequities.

At the University of Dar es Salaam, teaching on women and gender has been mainstreamed into other Social Science areas, not as a separate programme like in Makerere. This has been going on since 1980, when the Institute of Development Studies Women Study Group (IDSWSG) was formed. This transformed in 1982 into the Women’s Research and Documentation project (WRDP) making it the first formally organized group in any east African University focusing on documenting knowledge and studies on and about African women. It is therefore curious that despite this initial history, Women and Gender Studies have not been elevated to a departmental or programme level. Dar es Salaam, however, has formally institutionalized gender mainstreaming as part of its corporate strategic plan that came into being in 1994. This means that women and gender issues are critical elements of the institution’s transformation programme. This has entailed specific research programmes on women and gender issues, introduction of new courses and topics teaching women and gender issues across the disciplines, and innovative programmes to increase the number of women as students and academics, especially in science and technology related fields (Mkude et al. 2003).

What may be lacking, as the case with Makerere, is to reorient the programmes towards an ideological vision of African epistemologies. However, the Dar es Salaam case is different in the sense of awareness that there is something that needs to be done if Women and Gender Studies have to achieve a disciplinary recognition and contribute to transforming gender relations. Mbilinyi (1992; 2000), for example, makes a case for utilization of approaches to research and teaching that move beyond descriptive explanations to embrace transformative pedagogies. The realization of the limitations in the prevalent approaches is therefore an important step in the disciplinary evolution of the programmes.

Lastly is what is happening in Kenyan universities in this regard. Despite the large size of its public and university system, issues of academization of women and gender issues is not as entrenched in the universities as is in Uganda and Tanzania. Much intellectual work on women issues still takes place in the NGO sector in the form of advocacy and activism. This scenario has its place in the struggle for women and gender element, in terms of creating awareness, and sometimes in increasing the number of women accessing certain services. It does not entail critical and sustainable transformations, as women are integrated into existing gendered structures. The approach does not also lead to epistemological liberation in the sense already articulated.

Formal teaching of Women and Gender studies takes place at the University of Nairobi, a public university, and at the United States International University (USIU), a private institution. At the University of Nairobi, the programme seeks to provide a deeper understanding of the evolving gender system as socially constructed, within the Gender and Development paradigmme³. The undergraduate programme consists of 49 units spread over four years. However, only two units focus on women. These are ‘Women and the Democratization Process’ and ‘Women’s Development Organizations in a Changing World’. Three other units focus on aspects related to theory and methods. These are: ‘Interdisciplinary Approaches to Gender Analysis’, ‘Theoretical Perspectives in Gender Studies’, and ‘Gender Research Methodology’. There is an apparent leaning towards GAD approaches and an almost absence of conscious efforts to generate knowledge based on African perspectives of gender and womanhood. The teaching at USIU is integrated. The other public universities in Kenya have topics on women and gender integrated into other Social Science and Humanities units. Some even have non-functioning centres for ‘Gender and Development’. The nature of these topics and centres however does not reflect a conscious ideological orientation to the issues that the academization of women and gender needs to grapple with.

This review then is a bird’s eye view of the status of Women and Gender studies in relation to the vision of an African gender epistemology and transformative gender pedagogy. The private university sector is, of course, growing in the whole of east Africa and this could present a new set of issues to both the issue of gender equity in higher education and the academization of women studies. However, the present concern is, what is the transformative capacity of the existing programmes? How do they fit in the continental feminist agenda as espoused by the AGI? If one had to summarize, the situation in Uganda and Tanzania is more conscious of these imperatives. Makerere has focused more on the technical bit, gendering both the university and the civil service and establishing organic links between feminist scholarship in the university and the civil society. The Makerere programme attends more to reforming the institutions. The contribution of the programme to the epistemological vision has not been fully attended. As Mama (2003) notes, such efforts lead to reforming but not transforming the institutions in the interest of women, gender equity and society. The Dar es Salaam program is trying to address both the technical component (gendering the operations of the university), and the epistemological side as evidenced by the internal debates about the need for transformative approaches to teaching and research. In Kenya, gender issues are more outside the university, and the teaching that takes place is still limited to technical approaches. This means that in terms of making Women and Gender issues part of the disciplines and the transformations in higher education, Kenyan universities lag behind. This scenario reflects the challenges to Women and Gender Studies in east African universities.

A number of challenges need to be overcome in order to fully realise Women and Gender Studies in east African universities as a discipline and as an avenue for institutional and structural transformation in society. The first challenge relates to how to establish an epistemological and disciplinary identity. Women and Gender Studies in east Africa need to take up the issue of developing African feminist perspectives more daringly than is the case now. This will free the programmes from ideological dependence on western feminism and shield them against the accusation of being patronized by foreign cultural ideologies, as has so often been the case. In so doing, Women and Gender Studies would make an important contribution to Africanizing academic discourse in African higher education that has eluded the Social Sciences over the years. Coupled with this is the imperative to establish a disciplinary identity. So far, only Makerere and Nairobi Universities have done this, though strictly and technically speaking, the disciplinary nature of the programmes still lacks in the institutions. At Nairobi, Women and Gender studies is part of the Institute for African Studies courses, while at Makerere it is tied with Development Studies. This coupling implies some assumptions on the capacity of Women and Gender Studies programmes to be independent, epistemologically. Yet, they require the independence for the production of critical feminist knowledge.

The second set of challenges revolve around the issue of epistemological representation. Put differently, given the social class hierarchies that manifest in the women’s movement, how will inclusiveness of knowledge in Women and Gender studies be secured? This issue cannot be wished away. It is what causes fissures in the women’s movement and may crop up again in the academy. Producing an all-inclusive knowledge that encompasses the experiences of the diversity of African women is what a study on Women and Gender requires as part of its agenda to be transformative.

The last challenges deal with issues that are more practical. This relates to how to establish a niche for Women and Gender studies in institutions that are increasingly privatizing and demeaning knowledge that does not lead to direct commercial gains. Women and Gender Studies have struggled to be accepted as programmes, centres or topics in a majority of these institutions. Even so, hiring adequate staff and setting budgets for staff training remains problematic unless underwritten by donors. This is not a sustainable way to develop a discipline with the kind of mandate that Women and Gender Studies have. Coupled with the masculine cultures that dominate most institutional life, this means that the practical issues that the discipline has to overcome are as critical as the epistemological ones. However, what has taken place so far in east African universities needs to be appreciated, given the institutional and economic contexts in which feminists scholarship continue to operate in the region.

Amadiume, Ifi. 1997. Reinventing Africa. Matriarchy, religion and culture. Zed Books.

Ankrah, E. Maxine and P.D. Bizimana. 1991. Women’s studies program for Uganda. Signs, 16: 4, pp. 864-69.

Arnfred, Signe. 2003. African gender research: A view from the North. CODESRIA Bulletin,1, pp. 6-9.

Mama Amina. 2003. Restore, reform but do not transform: The gender politics of higher education in Africa. Journal of Higher Education in Africa, 1:1, pp. 101-125.

Mbilinyi, Marjorie. 2000. Gender issues in higher education and their implications for gender mainstreaming and strategic planning. Paper presented at the Strategic Planning Workshop for the UDSM Gender Program, MUCHS, 23-26 October.

____. 1992. Research methodologies in gender issues. In Meena Ruth (ed.), Gender in Southern Africa. Harare, SAPES Books.

Mkandawire, Thandika. 1997. The social sciences in Africa: Breaking local barriers and negotiating international presence. African Studies Review, 40: 2, pp. 15-36.

Mkude D., Brian, C. and Lisbet Levey. 2003. Higher education in Tanzania: A case study. James Currey and Mkuki Na Nyota, Oxford and Dar es Salaam.

Oyewumi Oyeronke (ed.). 2003. African women and feminism: Reflecting on the politics of sisterhood. Africa World Press, Trenton NJ.

____. 2000. Family bonds/conceptual binds: African notes on feminist epistemologies. Signs, 25, 4.

____. 1997. The invention of women, making an African sense of western gender discourses. University of Minnesota Press.

Sicherman, Carol. 2005. Becoming an African university, Makerere 1922-2000. Africa World Press, Trenton, NJ and Asmara, Eritrea.

Tripp, Aili Mari. 2000. Women and politics in Uganda. Madison, University of Madison Press; Oxford, James Currey and Kampala Fountain Publishers.

* Educational Foundations Department, Kenyatta University, P.O. Box 43844, 00100 GPO, Nairobi, Kenya
E-mail-iboanda @yahoo.co.uk

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