African feminisms have always been caught between two tough forces:

the strong influence and control of the West, and the way African traditions
sometimes ignore or criticize women’s rights. Because of this, there is a need to move
into a new stage of Afro-feminist activism by removing the parts of Western feminism
that were taken without enough thought, and by creating new ways of fighting for
women’s rights that are more meaningful and relevant to African contexts.

While male dominance (patriarchy) exists everywhere and women around the world
share some similar struggles, African feminists cannot have the same concerns or
goals as Western feminists. This is not only because race plays a big role in how
gender is experienced, but also because Africa is shaped by its own cultural, social,
economic, and political situation—very different from that of the West.

On top of this, the lasting effects of slavery, colonialism, and imperialism continue to
mix with patriarchy and come out as a special kind of oppression that is different
from what women face in Western countries.

As Africans, the education systems we inherited from colonialism mostly limited the
way we think. From childhood songs to classic literature and classroom instruction,
we were taught to think in Western ways. So-called “modern” colonial education
avoided building creativity and problem-solving among African people. Worse, it
taught racist and sexist ideas about the superiority of Western nations and male
control.

Even after African countries became independent, neo-colonial powers made sure the
system didn’t change much. It is time for change—to open our eyes and focus on ways
of thinking that put Africa and African people at the center.

Ways of thinking that divide everything into opposites—like male versus female,
husband versus wife, public versus private—only increase division and conflict. But
African women must work together with men to fight economic suffering. This means
we need fresh and transformative feminisms on the continent. As John Marah points
out, “transformational feminism breaks down the traditional walls between men and
women, and between masculinity and femininity. It is flexible and sees all humans as
connected. It also looks closely at the blurry lines between what is considered
masculine and feminine, in terms of economics, society, and even sexuality.”

In the same way, decolonizing must take into account how race, gender, class, and
other kinds of oppression are connected.

African women began resisting colonialism alongside African men from the beginning.
Imperialism hurt women in two major ways:
First, they suffered as Africans who had lost their land, freedom, and dignity.

Second, their social status as women got worse under colonialism.

Through different feminist efforts—including boycotts, protests, armed struggles, and

intellectual work—African women have resisted colonial control in many forms.
Unfortunately, these efforts are often not seen as “feminist.” As Ella Shohat explains:

In mainstream feminist histories… women from the “Third World” who took part in
anti-colonial struggles are not seen as part of feminism. Because these struggles
weren’t clearly labeled “feminist,” they have not been seen as important to feminist
studies. But the truth is, when colonized women joined anti-colonial and anti-racist
movements, it often led them to also fight patriarchy and sexism. Still, these parts of
their activism remain outside the main feminist story.

In Africa, women’s struggles against oppression started long before colonialism. There
is a long history of women organizing in smart and creative ways to fight male and
political control and to demand their rights as individuals and as groups. Some
powerful women leaders helped shape their societies even before Europeans arrived,
including Queen Eyleuka (Dalukah) of Ethiopia, Queen Lobamba of Kuba (Congo),
Princess Nang’oma of Bululi (Uganda), Queen Rangita of Madagascar, Queen Nzinga of
Angola, and Queen Nyabingi (northern Tanzania & western Uganda).

However, the word “feminism” itself causes debate. Some traditionalists say it is just
“copying the West.” Some African scholars and activists also reject it because it came
from Western societies and often left out non-white women.

Because of this, African thinkers have created their own versions of feminism that are
rooted in African history and culture. These include: womanism,7 stiwanism,8
motherism,9 femalism,10 and nego-feminism.11

These ideas have also been criticized for being too focused on traditional family roles,
excluding LGBTQ+ people, or being unclear or contradictory. These issues show how
hard it is to create one single theory for so many different African cultures and
histories.12

Still, the main message from all of these African feminist approaches is this:

If African women are going to succeed in fighting oppression, they must carefully
develop home-grown ideas that reflect the real political, cultural, and economic
situations they live in.

Because of Africa’s history and the lasting effects of colonialism, racism, imperialism,
and global capitalism, theories made in the West do not always fit Africa’s reality.
That is why we need new, African-centered ways of thinking and telling our stories—
ones that reveal the hidden power systems within mainstream ideas.

This chapter looks at how African feminist scholars are trying to explain the links and
connections between systems of oppression and gender hierarchies. First, the chapter
gives an overview of the places where feminist thinking happens in Africa. Next, it
looks at how different social factors—like race, class, and others—shape women’s
experiences of oppression. Finally, it explores how the exploitation of women is
connected to the abuse of nature, through a look at African eco-feminism based on
Indigenous ideas.

Throughout this analysis, the chapter recognizes that post-colonial African universities
are often uncomfortable—if not unfriendly—places for feminist work. Chapter seven
will go deeper into the politics of African universities. But here, the focus is on a part
of academic study that tries to:

Put African women at the heart of theory,

Broaden our understanding of knowledge, and challenge dominant ways of thinking.

Gender Studies in African Universities – Explained Simply

Universities are very important in creating and spreading knowledge. They can also
help bring about big social changes. As Amina Mama reminds us, raising awareness (or
“conscientisation”) is a mix of deep thinking and action. Feminist writing and
publishing are important ways to raise this awareness.

We must remember that modern universities are based on Western traditions and
ways of thinking. This means they usually follow Western values and systems. In
Africa, most feminist academic work happens in universities and activist spaces. Since
the 1980s, African feminists (alongside leftist scholars) began challenging how
knowledge is produced and taught in African universities. These were some of the first
efforts to “decolonize” African education.

One big challenge is that there aren’t enough women—especially feminists—teaching

in universities. The gender gap in African universities is well-known. Even though
some countries like Ethiopia, Malawi, Uganda, and others have tried to bring in more
women through special policies, women still don’t enroll in large numbers. And among
those working in universities, most women are in lower academic positions.

This gender imbalance in universities reflects society in general. Although women

slightly outnumber men in Africa, they usually have less economic and political power.
African women also face other types of oppression, such as racism, classism, and
discrimination based on religion, disability, or sexuality.

Change doesn’t just happen by itself—it takes time, research, and action. To bring
real change, we need to study the problems, understand how they started, how they
continue, and what can be done to fix them. This requires producing knowledge that
can help guide social movements. Right now, African universities mostly use
knowledge created in Western countries. To truly decolonize education, Africans need
to produce their own knowledge.

Gender and Women’s Studies (GWS) should be included in all university subjects, but
in African universities, it’s often placed in the “feminized” areas like the humanities
and social sciences. For example, when Makerere University in Uganda started its
Women and Gender Studies department in 1991, it was part of the Faculty of Social
Sciences. Some feminists worry that if GWS is just “added in” to other subjects, it
might lose its power or be misused.

Amina Mama points out that in Africa, GWS is often treated as a separate field, mostly
run by women. It’s allowed, but often ignored. Meanwhile, male-dominated teaching
and research continue without being challenged.

Outside of universities, GWS work also happens in places like research institutes,
government organizations, and NGOs. Some Pan-African groups like AAWORD (Dakar),
FEMNET (Nairobi), and WORDOC (Ibadan) also focus on women’s issues. But for
feminist movements in Africa to be truly effective, academic feminist work must
connect with activism in the real world. Most African women “theorize from the
everyday,” meaning they get their ideas from daily life. Sadly, the connection
between feminist academics and activists is often weak.

To help fix this, the African Feminist Forum (AFF) was created. It brings together
academics and activists every two years to reflect, plan, and act. They focus on things
like:

Understanding Africa’s challenges through a feminist lens

Supporting each other

Using creative methods

Starting new projects for African women

These efforts help African feminists work together across countries, especially using
the internet to stay connected.
African feminists are very aware of how global knowledge systems work. Most of what
we read—whether in history, science, religion, or law—is written from a Western, male
perspective. This remains true even though such knowledge is often claimed to be
“neutral” or “objective.”

The way Gender and Women’s Studies is pushed aside shows how powerful groups
decide what counts as real knowledge, who produces it, who it’s for, and who pays for
it. A big part of the decolonization project is to center African people in research,
while also focusing on gender and other identities.

Even though feminist scholars have made great progress, many people in mainstream
academia still don’t accept feminist methods as valid science. Until feminism
becomes part of everyday academic thinking, Gender and Women’s Studies will
continue carrying the heavy task of filling in the gaps about women and gender in our
knowledge systems.

The Growth of Research on African Women

Interest in studying African women became noticeable in the 1970s. Most of this early
research was done by scholars from the Global North, especially in fields like social
anthropology and economic development. These studies were important because they
helped fill the gap in knowledge about African women and showed how women were
being treated unfairly.

However, many of these studies used Western methods and ideas without questioning
if they were right for Africa. They often saw African women as helpless victims or as
exotic objects. As Mary Kalawole explains, African women were treated as outsiders
who needed others to speak for them.

These studies followed Western capitalist and liberal ideas, which were deeply
patriarchal. Even feminist research from the West often repeated these same colonial
and universal beliefs. In response, African feminist scholars began doing their own
research to challenge these problems in Western feminist thinking. They wanted to
explain African women’s issues in ways that made sense in African contexts. They
focused on the struggles African women faced and the important roles they played in
resisting colonialism.

Over time, this kind of research spread across Africa and led to a strong body of
African feminist writing. These efforts helped establish Gender and Women’s Studies
(GWS) programs across the continent.
GWS in African Universities Today

Today, around three-quarters of African countries have some form of GWS, mostly
located in universities. These programs:

Challenge different kinds of oppression.

Try to make women’s experiences part of academic conversations.

Often have little funding and are not well-supported by their universities.

Sometimes focus too much on technical or economic development issues, which ties
them to neoliberal (free-market) thinking.

Are often separated into specific subjects, like “gender and law” or “gender and
health,” rather than being part of all areas of study.

Try to connect across African countries, but language barriers and other issues make
this difficult.

Are mostly disconnected from grassroots activism and community work.

In 2002, the Women’s World Congress (WWC)—the largest global feminist event—was
held in Africa for the first time, organized by the Women and Gender Studies
department at Makerere University in Uganda. That same year, South African scholar
Desiree Lewis wrote a major review of gender research in Africa to help with
curriculum development. Also in 2002, an online network called GWS-Africa was
launched by the African Gender Institute in Cape Town to connect scholars across the
continent.

African Feminist Publishing and Challenges

To support feminist work in Africa, feminists started their own journals to publish
research from African and diaspora scholars. But Gender and Women’s Studies faced
serious problems because of larger issues in the African academic world.

In the late 1980s, the World Bank and IMF pushed African countries to adopt neoliberal
policies, which led to major cuts in public spending—including education. Many
academics left Africa (called a "brain drain"), and publishing systems on the continent
became very weak. Most African universities lost access to important journals and
couldn’t afford to buy new ones. Some schools even had to cancel all journal
subscriptions.
This made it very hard to do good research and affected areas like GWS the most,
because they were already underfunded and undervalued. Other problems include:

Not enough researchers with time, money, or support to run journals.

➢ A lack of skilled editors.

➢ Not enough publishable research.
➢ Censorship or political pressure.
➢ University leaders who don’t care much about academic publishing.
➢ For women, these challenges are even harder due to:
➢ Sexist attitudes.
➢ Responsibilities at home.
➢ Violence and other forms of gender-based oppression.
➢ Discrimination based on race, disability, immigration status, etc.

Colonial powers also kept control over African scholarship by offering scholarships and
controlling which research gets published in major journals. Today, large international
publishers like Springer, Elsevier, Taylor & Francis, JSTOR, Wiley, and Sage take over
journals from the Global South and profit from them, making things even harder for
African scholars.

In short, African GWS scholars face pressure from all sides—lack of funding, lack of
support, global inequality in publishing, and gender-based barriers. Still, they
continue working to create and spread African feminist knowledge.

The Problem with Commercial Academic Publishing

Big publishing companies make huge profits—around 40%—by controlling academic

journals. They sell expensive subscriptions to institutions and individuals. This means
most people, especially in poorer countries, can't access important knowledge
because it's behind a paywall.

These companies also control what gets published and how. Scholars don’t earn
royalties, and their work is copyrighted by the publishers. This turns knowledge—
which should be free and shared—into a product sold for profit. As Ben Halm points
out, human creativity builds on past knowledge, so it shouldn't be locked away.

Publishing digitally costs very little, so using paywalls is especially unfair. As Michael
Kwet argues, free digital access for everyone would improve education, equality,
democracy, and innovation. But Western technology systems are designed to block
that kind of free sharing, hurting poor people the most.
Open Access (OA) is very important in Africa, where resources are limited and access
to critical, alternative scholarship is badly needed. Removing paywalls helps spread
feminist and decolonial ideas more freely—both in print and online. Unfortunately,
there are still very few African feminist journals, and only a few are based on the
continent.

For example, African Journals Online (AJOL) hosts over 500 journals, but it doesn’t
even have a category for Gender and Women’s Studies.

Open Access and Feminist Publishing in Africa

A major step toward free access to knowledge was the Budapest Open Access
Initiative (BOAI) in 2002. It encouraged institutions and individuals to remove barriers
to academic research. It said the internet and scholars’ willingness to share their work
could create a huge public benefit: free access to research for everyone. This would
help education, speed up discovery, and connect rich and poor through shared
learning.

The BOAI showed that open access is cheaper than traditional publishing, especially
through self-archiving and funding from sources like governments or foundations
(e.g., Open Society Foundation).

Key African Feminist Journals

Agenda: Empowering Women for Gender Equity

This is Africa’s oldest feminist journal, launched in 1987 by women activists, students,
and scholars at the University of Natal in South Africa.

It published feminist articles that met high academic standards. For many years, it
was run independently by Agenda Feminist Media.

But in 2010, Agenda partnered with Taylor & Francis, a large international publisher,
to keep the journal going. Taylor & Francis handles marketing and digital access,
while UNISA Press prints and sells copies in sub-Saharan Africa.

Agenda still chooses its own themes and articles, but now the profits from digital
access go to the publisher. This is part of a larger trend of capitalism entering
feminist academic spaces.

Journals like Signs, Feminist Theory, Feminist Legal Studies, and Gender & Society
have also been taken over by big publishers. This shows how social movements can get
absorbed and controlled by institutions—even in colonized settings.
African feminists are fighting back. For example, the African Women’s Development
Fund (AWDF) has given grants to help Agenda with its publishing costs and special
issues.

Southern African Feminist Review (SAFERE)

Launched in 1995 in Harare, Zimbabwe, it was another key journal. But it stopped
publishing in 2000. Although it’s still listed on AJOL, it hasn’t had a new issue in years.
This shows how hard it is to keep such journals running in Africa’s difficult academic
and funding environment.

Feminist Africa

Started in 2002 by the African Gender Institute (AGI) at the University of Cape Town.
Its goal was to build a strong feminist academic community by showcasing African
women’s intellectual work.

Unlike most journals, it included articles, conversations, personal reflections, and

even poems. It wanted to create a space for voices often ignored by mainstream
academia.

Feminist journals like Feminist Africa see it as politically important to build and
protect a body of “oppositional knowledge”—ideas that challenge the status quo. To
avoid racism and sexism in mainstream publishing, Feminist Africa "kept its own gate,"
meaning it controlled who published and how, rather than relying on outside
publishers.

Feminist Africa and the Struggles of African Feminist Journals

Each article published in Feminist Africa was reviewed by at least one African
feminist. In 2017, the journal paused for two years to reflect and plan for the future
without compromising its core values. The founding editor explained some of the
major challenges:

How can feminist research thrive in Africa today? The work was often done within
institutions that already had their own problems.

There’s a serious lack of resources, and this has only gotten worse.

The journal relied heavily on unpaid labor, mostly done by highly skilled people who
found ways to stay involved while still earning a living.
Editorial work was intense because many contributors had never received proper
feedback or support before. The journal helped them revise their writing so it could
be understood in different contexts.

Now, Feminist Africa is based at the Institute of African Studies at the University of
Ghana. Importantly, the journal has stayed independent and refused to be taken over
by corporate publishers, because it wants to remain open access and true to its
original principles.

Other Feminist Journals in Africa

A third academic journal on gender and women's studies (GWS) in Africa is Gender
Questions, started in 2013 by the Institute of Gender Studies at UNISA (University of
South Africa). It is published once a year and focuses on a range of topics, like
feminist research, masculinity studies, and alternative sexualities. However, unlike
Feminist Africa, it is not open access.

Interestingly, all three major feminist journals on the continent—Agenda, Feminist

Africa, and Gender Questions—were started by South African institutions. This reflects
South Africa’s economic and political influence, and its post-apartheid focus on issues
of power and discrimination. But running a journal takes more than passion. It
requires reliable electricity, internet, full-time editors, and funding—all things that
many African countries struggle to provide.

Feminist Journals in the Diaspora

There are a few journals run by African feminists in the global North:

JENdA: A Journal of Culture and African Women Studies, started in 2001, is based in
the US and is not open access.

Journal of African Gender Studies (JAGS), launched in 2019, is also based in the US
and has the same access issues.

One open-access journal published on the continent is BUWA!, started in 2009 by the
Women’s Rights Programme of the Open Society Initiative for Southern Africa (OSISA).
It’s based in Johannesburg and comes out once a year. BUWA! targets both academic
and non-academic readers. Its name comes from the SeSotho word “bua,” meaning
“speak,” to reflect its mission to amplify African women’s voices.

Growth and Self-Reflection in African Feminist Studies

Like any developing field, African feminist studies have gone through periods of self-
examination and growth. Many scholars were trained in colonial systems, so they must
actively "unlearn" those ways of thinking. As Sondra Hale said, we must ask:

What do our views say about how knowledge works?

How do our institutions shape what we know and how we teach?

Hale even jokingly calls herself a “recovering anthropologist” to show how much
effort it takes to move away from colonial thinking.

African feminists also warn against presenting African women as helpless victims of
patriarchy and capitalism. As Chandra Mohanty once criticized, some Western feminist
research only looked for "powerless" women to make their point. In reality, African
women often resist and find creative ways to survive. Feminist research must also
focus on everyday relationships and personal experiences, not just big political
systems. It must also recognize the differences between women.

In today’s globalized world, we can't treat identities like gender, race, or nationality
as separate boxes. As Ella Shohat says, these are all connected, and our feminist work
must reflect that.

African Feminist Scholarship's Impact

African feminist research has contributed a lot to many fields:

In history, they insist on including women’s stories ("herstories") to avoid incomplete

or biased accounts.

In politics, they analyze how gender affects institutions and leadership.

In economics, they introduced the idea of the “care economy”—unpaid work like
childcare and housework that supports the whole system.

In religious studies, feminist scholars revealed how the Bible has often been
interpreted in ways that silence women.

Feminists also push for research that fits the African context. Even though these
feminist frameworks aren’t always mainstream, they’ve expanded how we think about
decolonization and social change.

Barriers and Hostility Toward GWS in Africa

You might think GWS (Gender and Women’s Studies) would be well-established in
Africa by now—but it’s not. That’s because GWS challenges political and economic
power structures, so it’s not very popular. Some male academics dislike it for exposing
patriarchal systems. Also, as a decolonial movement, it faces resistance from former
colonial powers.

As a result, GWS is often underfunded and sidelined. Feminist academics are

sometimes isolated or treated unfairly. They are sometimes labeled negatively—seen
as “troublemakers” by those in power.

On top of this, sexual violence and harassment remain serious issues in African
universities. Women at all levels—students, staff, and academics—often deal with this
personally. So while feminist scholars research gender-based violence, they are also
dealing with it in real life.

Beyond Journals: Alternative Feminist Knowledge

Feminists in Africa don’t just publish in journals. They also produce books, research
reports, and conference papers—many of them as open-access resources.

One great example is Women and Law in Southern Africa (WLSA), started in 1989. This
project operates in seven countries and uses both academic and activist research to
study women's legal rights. They publish their findings in books and reports, all free to
access.

The goal is to break down the barrier between academic and everyday knowledge,
and include local experiences and voices. This kind of “organic knowledge” is vital for
understanding history and social change. Documentation includes more than just
paper and digital records—it also includes:

Newsletters

Photos

Videos

Music

Art

Blogs

Equally important is making sure these materials are widely shared, so they can make
a real impact.
The Road Ahead

Yes, there are many challenges for GWS in Africa—but there’s also hope. Building and
supporting feminist work is essential to decolonizing African knowledge. As bell hooks
reminds us, we can’t give in to despair—because when we lose hope, we can’t build
strong communities of resistance.

African women, with all their different experiences and struggles, must continue to
hold onto hope and keep pushing for change.

Beyond Racism: Understanding Multiple Inequalities and Intersectionality

Many African thinkers and activists fighting against racism have often ignored or even
supported gender inequality. Leaders like Kwame Nkrumah, Léopold Senghor, Sékou
Touré, and Kenneth Kaunda strongly opposed colonialism and racism but didn’t do
much about sexism. Even Julius Nyerere of Tanzania, who once wrote about gender
equality in 1944, didn’t apply it in real life. For example, when he became president
in 1961, his cabinet had no women. When a well-known activist, Bibi Titi, questioned
him, he said there were “no experienced women”—but this wasn't true, as many male
appointees had no more experience than her.

In early feminist research, both globally and in Africa, women were often treated as
one similar group. Phrases like “Third World women” made it seem like all women in
poor countries experienced oppression the same way. African women were often
shown using negative stereotypes. Ella Shohat criticized this, saying that Western
feminism made women from the Global South seem like helpless victims without any
power. But even African feminist movements have been silent about people with
different sexualities and gender identities.

Colonialism tried to erase diversity, so any real attempt to “decolonize” has to go

beyond just fighting racism. We must also consider gender, sexuality, poverty, religion,
disability, and more. African people are not all the same, and they experience
oppression in different ways based on who they are. For example, a woman may face
both racism and sexism at the same time. If she's also poor or disabled, her challenges
become even more complex. That’s why we must not fight just one type of injustice
while ignoring others.

In the U.S., Black women were the first to explain how they faced multiple kinds of
oppression at once. Sojourner Truth gave a powerful speech in 1851 asking, “Ain’t I a
woman?” She challenged both white women who ignored racism and white men who
claimed women were too weak for politics—despite her doing hard labor as a slave.
But even her story had to be told in terms that white society would understand, which
is itself a form of oppression.

Later on, thinkers like Kimberlé Crenshaw gave a name to this idea: intersectionality.
She explained that systems like racism and sexism don’t act separately—they work
together. You can’t fully understand a Black woman’s experience by looking at race
and gender separately. They combine and create a unique kind of oppression.

Think of this not as a list of problems, but as something more interwoven.

Discrimination doesn’t happen one piece at a time; it all hits at once. For example, a
Black woman experiences racism differently from a Black man, and differently from a
white woman. If she’s also disabled or queer, her experience is even more unique.

Some people think about identities as if they’re separate colors in a rainbow—clearly

divided. But in reality, our identities are more like a kaleidoscope—constantly shifting
and overlapping. Intersectionality helps us understand this complexity. It shows how
discrimination is deeply rooted in the systems we live in—like politics, law, health
care, and the economy.

Africa as a continent also experiences multiple forms of inequality at once—based on

race, colonial history, capitalism, patriarchy, language, and global power. To truly
decolonize Africa, we must understand these systems as connected. For example, you
can’t challenge capitalism without also challenging patriarchy—they are linked,
forming what we can call capitalist patriarchy.

This means African liberation movements must work with other social justice
movements around the world. These alliances should be built on shared goals, not on
pretending that everyone’s struggle is the same.

What’s powerful about intersectionality is that it recognizes both differences between

groups and differences within groups. For example, within African women, not all
have the same experience. Some may face more oppression due to class, sexuality, or
other factors.

Decolonial and feminist efforts must recognize that some people’s experiences have
been ignored—especially those who don’t fit the usual categories. Intersectionality
allows us to include those voices and understand their realities.

Finally, while intersectionality is a strong concept, it’s not always easy to turn into a
clear method or plan. But its main value is that it gives us a new lens to understand
injustice and create better strategies for real change.
Understanding Intersectionality: A Simple Explanation

Many scholars have pointed out that we lack strong methods to study how people
experience different forms of oppression at the same time. Chang and Culp asked an
important question: “How do we pay attention to where these forms of oppression
intersect?”

Some thinkers have offered ideas on how to study the way oppression and privilege
overlap and affect people’s lives. Scholars like Baukje Prins and Floya Anthias see
intersectionality not as one theory but as a useful way to understand how different
social hierarchies connect. Trina Grillo also views intersectionality as a helpful tool,
especially for challenging powerful systems (“the master’s house,” as she calls it).

Grillo explains that each person exists at the crossroads of many identities: for
example, someone might be Latina, a woman, a mother, short, lesbian, etc. Some of
these identities might matter more at certain times, while others might not matter at
all. Race, gender, class, and sexual orientation are often important most of the time.
Depending on the situation, a person might be in a powerful or powerless position.

For example, a person could be oppressed because of their gender but may also
benefit from their class or race. Grillo argues that dominant systems (like law, media,
religion, etc.) often ignore this complexity and focus only on one identity at a time—
like seeing someone as a “mother” or a “worker,” but not both.

Because intersectionality can be used across many disciplines, it is flexible. One

effective way to use it is to combine it with feminist research methods like
storytelling, life histories, or case studies. These help researchers understand how
different identity categories show up in real-life experiences. This method creates
deep, meaningful data that can show hidden layers of power and meaning.

Rachelle Chadwick says that to truly understand intersectional stories, we must pay
attention to both the words and the context—looking for gaps, contradictions, and
silences. These gaps may reveal structural oppression and hidden power dynamics.

Storytelling is also a traditional method in many Indigenous cultures and fits well with
decolonial thinking. When people share their stories and researchers listen carefully,
we get a clearer picture of how oppression works in everyday life.

For example, researcher Terrell Strayhorn first asked gay college students of color to
talk about their race and then their sexuality. Many of them struggled to answer. At
first, he ignored their long pauses. But later, after adopting an intersectional
approach, he realized the problem: his original questions forced the students to
divide parts of their identity unnaturally. When he changed the question to “tell me
about yourself,” the students responded more naturally, and their pauses became
meaningful data. Strayhorn learned that silence could also be a form of resistance or
struggle.

Vivian May takes this further by proposing a matrix approach. Instead of seeing
identities one by one, the matrix approach sees them as all connected. This method is
against thinking in simple either/or terms and supports a layered understanding of
people’s experiences. It encourages us to look at both privilege and oppression
happening at the same time. Patricia Hill Collins explains that a matrix is not just a
container—it shapes how power works. She says that in every context, some forms of
power might be more obvious than others, but intersectionality helps us notice the
less visible ones too.

Vivian May says we shouldn’t break apart complex identities to make them easier to
study. Instead, we should accept that people’s lives are complicated and that this
complexity is meaningful. Intersectionality helps us notice how oppression works
together across many areas of life, making it a powerful tool for both understanding
and challenging unfair systems.

Intersectionality in African Legal Contexts

Intersectionality is especially important in Africa’s struggle for justice and

transformation. African women—who often face poverty, disease, and unpaid work—
experience many overlapping forms of oppression. These are linked to colonial
histories and ongoing gender hierarchies.

One clear example is the “fallist” student protests in South Africa, which began
around 2015. Students protested against the lasting effects of colonialism in
education. During these protests, issues like sexism and homophobia also came up.
Women in the movement shared their experiences to show how oppression based on
gender and sexuality affected them. In some cases, female protesters were raped by
male protesters. Groups like the UCT Trans Collective and Patriarchy Must Fall
responded to this by demanding more attention to gender and sexual identity issues
within the movement.

Feminists also protested topless to fight rape culture, adding hashtags like
#EndRapeCulture to the broader movement. By applying intersectional thinking, these
activists made the movement more inclusive and justice-focused.
Law plays a big role in either upholding or challenging oppression. While law often
represents power, it can also be used to question that power. Legal activists across
Africa—especially those from LGBTQ+ communities—have used courts to challenge
anti-gay laws and force recognition of their complex identities. In countries like
Botswana, Mozambique, and Angola, courts have removed colonial-era laws that
criminalized same-sex relationships.

However, many legal systems still treat discrimination as if it affects only one identity
at a time. This narrow approach ignores how gender, class, race, and sexuality
combine in real people’s lives. In some countries, legal victories have been reversed
due to pressure from political leaders who claim to defend "African values."

In Rwanda, for example, after the 1994 genocide, both men and women suffered
trauma. But women experienced additional trauma because of mass sexual violence.
Their suffering was shaped not just by ethnicity but also by gender and sexuality. Yet
even major court cases like Prosecutor v. Akayesu did not fully address these complex,
intersecting harms.

At the global level, the United Nations has tried to respond to these challenges. The
CEDAW committee added guidelines and recommendations to better deal with
intersectional discrimination, but it took time. Originally, the voices of poor, rural,
and non-Western women were not fully included in international women’s rights laws.
African and Global South feminists had to fight to make intersectionality part of the
conversation.

Conclusion

Intersectionality is a powerful idea because it shows how oppression is layered and

interconnected. It helps challenge mainstream narratives that oversimplify people’s
identities. Because of this, it has faced resistance—some groups have tried to water it
down or take the politics out of it.

But intersectionality is both a theory and a practice. It reveals how power works and
how change can happen. It pushes us to think in more complex ways and to include
the stories and struggles of those who are often left out.