Women Researching In Africa

This edited collection explores the lives, consequences and motivations of female researchers in Africa, giving unprecedented insights into how their gender—and sometimes their ethnicity and age—impacted on their research experiences, and how doing research in Africa affected them as women. Each contributor considers her place or position in the research process and provides a vivid portrait of that experience. Drawing on research findings from Nigeria, Ethiopia, Cameroon, Ghana, Guinea, Malawi, Uganda and other African countries, the book looks at gender and identity as a female researcher in Africa; relationships with 'others'; and unique methodological challenges for female researchers in Africa. With refreshing candour, each chapter challenges other researchers in Africa (both women and men), to integrate critical reflections of gender and diverse gendered field experiences into their work. Women Researching in Africa will be of interest to students and scholars across a range of disciplines including development studies, anthropology, geography, gender studies and international studies.

An essential exploration of and guide to research ethics in the field.

This definitive handbook is the first reference of its kind bringing together knowledge, scholarship, and debates on themes and issues concerning African women everywhere. It unearths, critiques, reviews, analyses, theorizes, synthesizes and evaluates African women’s historical, social, political, economic, local and global lives and experiences with a view to decolonizing the corpus. This Handbook questions the gendered roles and positions of African women and the structures, institutions, and processes of policy, politics, and knowledge production that continually construct, deconstruct, and reconstruct African women and the study of them. Contributors offer a consistent emphasis on debunking erroneous and misleading myths about African women's roles and positions, bringing their previously marginalized stories to relief, and ultimately re-writing their histories. Thus, this Handbook enlarges the scope of the field, challenges its orthodoxies, and engenders new subjects, theories, and approaches. This reference work includes, to the greatest extent possible, the voices of African women themselves as writers of their own stories. The detailed, rigorous and up-to-date analyses in the work represent a variety of theoretical, methodological, and transdisciplinary approaches. This reference work will prove vital in charting new directions for the study of African women, and will reverberate in future studies, generating new debates and engendering further interest.

This handbook provides information to help the policymaker or educator understand the research process in order to study problems and opportunities associated with the education of girls in Africa. In Africa, girls account for only 57% of the school-age population. They are more likely to drop out of school and to score lower on the examinations that determine their enrollment at postprimary levels. Research into the education of girls has the potential to improve their opportunities, and to raise the educational level of society in African countries. The purpose of research is outlined, and steps in planning a research project are defined. The discussion of the planning phase includes a discussion of sampling and sample size selection. Part III of this manual reviews the basic tools of the social science researcher. Literature reviews, techniques such as surveys and interviews, and qualitative research are described. A final section considers working with research findings and using the results. Appendixes present a sample research outline, an example data grid, and a list of some research instruments commonly used in the study of education of girls. Suggested readings are listed with each chapter. (Contains 36 figures, 50 tables, 33 illustrative boxes, and 104 references.) (SLD)

This is the first comprehensive reader that brings African experiences to bear on the ongoing global discussions of women, gender, and society. Bringing together the essential writing on this topic from the last 25 years, these essays discuss gender in Africa from a multi-disciplinary perspective.

Technology, Gender and Power in Africa

This collection comprises a diverse and stimulating collection of essays on questions of gender and sexualities, crafted by both established and younger researchers. The collection includes fascinating insights into topics as varied as the popularity of thong underwear in urban Kenya, the complexity of Tanzanian youths negotiation of HIV-cultures, the dialogues between religion and controversial questions in sexualities activism, and the meaning of living as a Zimbabwean girl, who became HIV-positive because her mother had no access to antiretroviral drugs during pregnancy. Some pieces deepen contemporary debates, others initiate new questions. The collection seeks to sustain and invigorate research, policy-making and continentally-focused thought on difficult, yet compelling, realities.

This book investigates the barriers to women’s economic empowerment in the Global South. Drawing on evidence from a wide range of countries, the book outlines important lessons and practical solutions for promoting gender equality. Despite global progress in closing gender gaps in education and health, women’s economic empowerment has lagged behind, with little evidence that economic growth promotes gender equality. International Development Research Centre’s (IDRC) Growth and Economic Opportunities for Women (GrOW) programme was set up to provide policy lessons, insights, and concrete solutions that could lead to advances in gender equality, particularly on the role of institutions and macroeconomic growth, barriers to labour market access for women, and the impact of women’s care responsibilities. This book showcases rigorous and multi-disciplinary research emerging from this ground-breaking programme, covering topics such as the school-to-work transition, child marriage, unpaid domestic work and childcare, labour market segregation, and the power of social and cultural norms that prevent women from fully participating in better paid sectors of the economy. With a range of rich case studies from Burkina Faso, Democratic Republic of the Congo, Ethiopia, Ghana, India, Kenya, Nepal, Rwanda, Sri Lanka, Tanzania, and Uganda, this book is perfect for students, researchers, practitioners, and policymakers working on women’s economic empowerment and gender equality in the Global South.