Bea Lundt and Nina Paarmann (Europe-Univ. Flensburg/Univ. of Education, Winneba UEW, et al); Edmond Agyeman, Gertrude Nkrumah and Justina Akansor (UEW, et al)

Venue: University of Education, Winneba UEW, Ghana
Time: 21.-23.05.2020
Proposals by: 31.12.2019

At the World Women’s Conference in Beijing in 1995, one of the most spectacular encounters between European and African women took place. It was about the sacrificial role that European feminists ascribed to African colleagues. These vehemently resisted because they saw the situation of gender completely misjudged.

They pointed out that it was only the colonial rulers who tried to introduce the dominant dualism between the sexes in Europe of the 19th century in African countries. This banished women to reproductive domestic activities in the household and rated their work as inferior to that of the man in professions and politics of the public. But precolonial patterns of gender roles and relations survived.

The “gender”- concept was developed on the example of European conditions, which are not true for Africa, where there were permeable, fluid gender concepts, and participation of women in power was just as widespread as their professional activity in the community. African and European countries have their own feministic theory-tradition, which on both continents is very diverse in itself.

On the background of postcolonial challenges both are on search for new approaches to understand issues about women and men in overcoming essentialistic positions. In the last years there was a specific interest to have an exchange and to discuss gender-phenomenons on both continents in their transcultural entanglement. Read more and source … (Web)