African Feminism: Toward a New Politics of Representation

Mikell asks who is authorized to define African women’s politics. International development institutions, Western feminists, nationalist leaders, and male-dominated states each produce representations that can make women visible while speaking over their priorities. The article locates feminist politics in material struggles over land, work, food, health, and public authority.

This emphasis unsettles the idea that African feminism must reproduce a fixed sequence of Western debates. Kinship and motherhood may become political languages rather than simply signs of submission, while collective survival may take precedence over individualized autonomy. Representation is adequate only when it remains accountable to the institutions and histories through which women act.

Some of the essay’s generalizations reflect the 1990s and understate queer and sexuality-centered African feminist work. That limitation makes later movement texts essential companions. Even so, the article supplies a durable warning: comparative feminism becomes extractive when it treats African women as raw experience and reserves theory for observers elsewhere.