by Afua A. Yeboah and Nana-Anna Abaka-Cann
Scholarship on African women, although a subject so vast and consequential, is so persistently marginalised within the disciplines that claim to explain the African world. This textbook, Women in Africa by Toyin Falola and Olajumoke Yacob-Haliso, arrives as a deliberate correction to this erasure. In this comprehensive single-volume work, Falola and Yacob-Haliso state that the “book explores the various ways in which gender has been constructed in different African cultures across history and how this has impacted the lived experiences of women … [and] invites us to think again about the changing roles, identities, and contributions of African women across space and time” (iv). In 22 chapters spanning the pre-colonial, colonial, and postcolonial lives of women, the textbook covers an extraordinary range of topics, from history, health, religion, and sexuality to economic life, migration, feminist theory, popular culture, peacebuilding, and social media.
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Book-review-3_Women-in-Africa