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What if I told you that feminism isn't universal and never has been, that a movement built
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to liberate women has, in many places, quietly centered whiteness, westerness, and middle-class
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comfort, and then called it global? How do we change that? In this episode, I'm exploring
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why African feminists have been critiquing Anglo-American and even African-American feminism for decades,
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and why they are right to do so. We'll talk about colonialism, gender, race, disability,
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trans inclusion or exclusion, and why context is not a footnote. It's the whole damn story.
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I'm Aurora, and this is Intersectional Psychology. Stick around.
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Aurora Brown and Intersectional Psychology acknowledge the traditional owners and custodians
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of country throughout South Africa, and their connections to land, water, and community.
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We pay our respects to their elders past and present, and extend that respect to all
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Indigenous people listening today.
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Intersectional Psychology, Season 6, Gender Under Pressure, Power, Context, and the Psyche.
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Episode 1, African vs Anglo-American Feminism, Decolonising Power, hosted by
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Registered Counsellor Aurora Brown.
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Hello and welcome back to Intersectional Psychology. I'm Aurora Brown. I'm a Registered Counsellor.
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Today, we're going to talk about feminism and feminist psychology, but not in the girl boss
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lean-in, shatter-the-glass ceiling sense. Feminism didn't just fall out of the sky fully formed.
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It emerged in very specific historical and political contexts, largely European and Anglo-American ones.
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But the discourse on feminism reveals a notable divergence between Anglo-American and African
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feminist perspectives, each addressing unique sociocultural contexts.
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And while feminism has evolved into its decolonial and so-called fourth waves, a key tension remains.
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Whose lives does mainstream feminism actually center?
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And who keeps being told they're an add-on?
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Today, I want to compare Anglo-American feminism and African feminisms and explore what is needed for the future of our society.
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And yes, this episode is obviously political.
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Anglo-American feminism. Who is it really for?
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Let's start with Anglo-American feminism. Historically, this strand of feminism has focused on issues that matter.
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No argument there. Things like voting rights, workplace equality, reproductive autonomy, and legal recognition.
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These struggles were real and necessary.
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But, and it's a very big but, they were framed around the experiences of white middle-class women in Western societies.
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This form of feminism often emphasises individual rights and legal reforms.
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Patricia Hill Collins has been pointing this out since the 1990s.
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Mainstream feminism often treats gender as if it exists in a vacuum, detached from race, class, colonial history, or capitalism.
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And when feminism does that, it quietly produces a hierarchy of suffering.
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Black feminism and womanism emerged in the U.S. precisely because Black women there were saying,
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this movement keeps talking about women, but somehow never about us.
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Even then, African women, as in women in Africa, were often left out of the conversation,
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because Black feminism in the U.S. is still shaped by American histories, American racism, and American social structures.
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African women were organising long before academic feminism noticed them,
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through trade unions, anti-colonial movements, and community resistance.
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As scholars like Iris Berger show, African feminism didn't start in universities, it started in struggle.
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And yet, Anglo-American feminism has often treated Africa as either a site of backwardness to be rescued,
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or an abstract symbol of oppression, rather than a source of theory.
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That's not solidarity. That's intellectual extractivism.
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The problem with universal womanhood.
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One of the biggest issues African feminists raise is the universalisation of womanhood.
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Nigerian scholar Oyèrónkẹ́ Oyěwùmí famously argues that western feminism exports its own gender categories,
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as if they are natural, timeless, and global.
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But here's the uncomfortable truth.
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Many African societies did not historically organise themselves primarily around gender in the way that Europe did.
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For example, in pre-colonial Yoruba society, social roles were structured more around seniority, lineage, and social position,
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not rigid gender binaries.
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Colonialism imposed European gender systems onto African societies, and then had the audacity to call them traditional.
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So when western feminism says, this is how women are oppressed everywhere,
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African feminists respond with, "According to whose history?"
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De-colonising feminism isn't about rejecting gender analysis.
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It's about refusing to pretend that Europe invented gender itself.
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African feminism. Context is not optional.
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African feminisms, plural because African cultures are not a monolith, start from a very different place.
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African feminist scholars like Desiree Lewis, Oyěwùmí, Bakare-Yusuf, and Sylvia Tamale emphasise context, history, and lived experience.
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African feminism is not just about patriarchy in isolation.
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It's about colonial violence, apartheid and racial capitalism, economic survival, land, labour and migration, community responsibility,
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and Indigenous knowledge systems.
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The role of Indigenous knowledge systems was explored by Garutsa and Nekhwevha in 2019.
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They discussed the decreasing reliance on such systems in rural households, and the implications for gender dynamics.
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They argue that the erosion of indigenous knowledge can undermine the social and economic roles traditionally played by women in these communities.
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Emphasising the need to preserve and integrate these systems into contemporary feminist thought.
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African feminism understands that you cannot talk about gender without talking about race, class and colonialism, because these were never separate projects.
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This is why African feminisms are inherently intersectional, long before intersectionality became a buzzword on Instagram.
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They recognise that African women experience oppression not just as women, but as racialised, economically marginalised, culturally regulated subjects.
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And importantly, African feminism values storytelling, art, music and embodiment as legitimate forms of knowledge.
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Ibiba woman songs, South African women's writing, Black lesbian visual activism, these are theory in motion.
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Why Anglo-American feminism still falls short?
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So why do African feminists remain critical of Anglo-American feminism, despite its progress?
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Because it still tends to universalise Western experiences, prioritize legal equality over material survival, centre individual autonomy over collective care and struggles deeply with confronting race, coloniality and whiteness.
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As Bakare-Yusuf notes, the Western feminist focus on gender binaries and reproductive politics can be limiting and alienating for African women whose primary concerns might include economic survival, political instability and community welfare.
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Connell's work on theorising gender highlights the importance of viewing gender as a social construct influenced by various power structures.
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DiAngelo's work on white fragility, Eddo-Lodge's refusal to keep explaining racism and Layla Saad's call to confront white supremacy all point to the same issue.
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Many white feminists want inclusion without discomfort.
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African feminisms refuse that bargain.
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They insist that feminism must grapple with hunger, violence, land dispossession and state failure, not just glass ceilings and representation.
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Kisiang'ani's work highlights the need to challenge Eurocentric foundations in gender studies, advocating for an approach that is more reflective of African realities.
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And frankly, for many African women, choice feminism is a luxury discourse that doesn't survive contact with reality.
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Intersectionality. Why this is personal for me?
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I need to be very clear about my own positionality here. I am white. I benefit from racial and economic privilege in South Africa.
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I will never experience the world the way that Black women do, and I don't pretend otherwise.
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But I am a disabled transgender woman.
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And I know what it feels like to be erased or excluded by ableist systems, by medical gatekeeping and very much by trans-exclusionary radical feminists.
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African feminism's intersectional lens allows me to hold these truths together, my privilege, my marginalisation and my responsibility.
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It doesn't ask me to smooth myself into a single identity. It asks me to stay accountable.
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South Africa, apartheid and compounded oppression.
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In South Africa, you cannot talk about gender without talking about apartheid.
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Economic inequality, spatial segregation and racialised violence continue to shape women's lives, especially for women of colour.
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African feminism gives us the tools to understand why. Poverty is gendered. Violence is racialised.
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And liberation cannot be imported wholesale from the Global North.
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Lewis emphasises that African feminism must also account for the diverse sexual identities and expressions found on the continent.
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According to Carrera-Fernández and DePalma, it also insists on trans-inclusion.
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Not as an afterthought, but as part of a serious engagement with gender diversity on the continent.
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Scholars like Camminga and Mbugua remind us that transgender Africans are not new.
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What's new is the violence directed at us in the name of imported moral panics and quote-unquote tradition.
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And that's an idea of African tradition that Anglo-American colonisers and missionaries imposed on Indigenous communities.
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African feminism, at its best, refuses that lie.
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This understanding is vital for creating a feminist movement that is truly inclusive and reflective of the lived experiences of African women.
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This inclusivity is essential for a feminist framework that seeks to address the full spectrum of gender-based oppression, as seen in African feminism.
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Msimang reflects on the intersections of personal experiences and political activism.
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Nkealah discusses the transformative potential of South African women's writing.
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These perspectives underscore the importance of storytelling and personal narrative in African feminist activism.
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Similarly, in Inyabri, Offong, and Mensah examine how Ibibio women's songs serve as a form of satire and agency,
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contesting patriarchal structures, and providing a space for women's voices and experiences to be heard.
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Contemporary African feminists are using digital platforms to challenge patriarchal norms and advocate for gender equity,
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such as social media movements like hashtag being female in Nigeria.
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This highlights the role of cultural expressions and artistic forms in African feminist activism and scholarship.
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Why African feminism matters.
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So, here's where I land.
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Anglo-American feminism has achieved important victories, but it is not universal, neutral or sufficient for every context.
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African feminisms offer something far more robust, historically grounded, politically honest,
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culturally embedded and unapologetically intersectional.
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They allow us to see how gender is shaped by race, class, colonialism, disability and sexuality, without ranking who's suffering is more legitimate.
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African feminism takes into account the compounded effects of apartheid, economic inequality and cultural diversity,
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while also creating a more just and inclusive feminist movement that reflects the diverse experiences of all African women.
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For me, African feminisms don't just explain the world I live in.
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They give me a language to survive it and to change it.
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And if feminism is going to remain relevant in the 21st century, it will have to listen to Africa,
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not as a case study, but as a source of knowledge.
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As we close this episode, I want to leave you with one lingering thought.
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If feminism is always shaped by context, power and history, then so is masculinity.
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In the next episode, we'll shift our focus to masculinities, not as personal identities or individual failings, but as social arrangements.
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Ones that are taught, rewarded and fiercely protected,
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because you can't understand gendered injustice without also understanding how masculinity itself is reproduced.
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That's next time in this series on Intersectional Psychology.
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Until then, remember, everyone has the right to live with their optimal mental health.
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Thank you for listening to intersectional psychology. Please follow or subscribe to the
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Intersectional Psychology in your preferred app. It really helps other people find the podcast.
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This episode of intersectional psychology was researched, written, recorded, and edited by
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me, Aurora Brown. For a transcript of this episode, please see the link in the show notes on your
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podcast app or go to intersectionalpsychology.com. You can also take the website or the show notes
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for a full list of references for this episode. A video of this episode with closed captions
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is available on YouTube.com/IntersectionalPsychology.
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as well as more guided mindfulness sessions, please go to Patreon.com/IntersectionalPsychology.
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You can also chat with me on BlueSky at intersectpsych.bsky.social
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and Instagram, Facebook or TikTok at Intersectional Psychology but mostly BlueSky.
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Aurora Brown and Intersectional Psychology are committed to the Cite Black Women praxis.
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All episodes of Intersectional Psychology are for educational purposes only and are not intended
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to be a substitute for professional mental health advice diagnosis or treatment.
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I, Aurora Brown, am not able to answer specific questions about individual situations.
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Always seek the advice of your health provider with any questions you may have regarding a
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mental health condition. Never disregard professional medical advice or delay in seeking it because of
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please call your local emergency number or any mental health crisis hotline.
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Everyone deserves good mental health.
