As colonial states simultaneously attempted to exploit the productive capacity of
their colonized subjects and maintain social order, the status of women and the
significance of gender changed drastically throughout Africa. Various precolonial gender
norms interacted with new forms of European colonial sexism in order to create a new
highly gendered socio-political context. However, as Margot Lovett argues, African
women were active agents in this process and often worked to maintain their economic
autonomy and contest the definition of African femininity imposed by colonial
authorities. Though they have often been portrayed as a homogenous group, African
women were divided by a variety of factors, including class, socio-cultural background
and proximity to seats of power. Lovett concludes that analyses of African gender
relations must take into account the specificities of each situation. Such work will have
to acknowledge the heterogeneity of African women's and African men's experiences and
the contradictions of the colonial state's objectives.
In the historiography of colonialism in Africa, many authors have tended to
dichotomize the colonial experience between two monolithic groups, the colonial state
and its African subjects. In so doing, they obscure the divisions and contradictions within
each side, thus denying the agency of people whose status did not fit within the normative
boundaries of this distinction. Perhaps the greatest discursive violence of this colonial
historiography is its negation of the experiences of African women. By taking the
generalized experience of certain African men as a normative reference point, many
historians have effectively written African women out of history. Though they present
themselves as universal histories of colonialism, these accounts deal exclusively with
men's experiences.
1
This rejection of African women's points of view ignores the gendered nature of
colonialism, which Lovett illustrates in her article, "Gender Relations, Class Formation,
and the Colonial State in Africa".
She asserts that African "women's and men's
experiences of state and class" were markedly different from each other in a variety of
ways. (24) Though all Africans were subordinated under colonial rule, African women
were relegated to the domain of reproduction while African men were mobilized as
producers. (23) Partly as a result of this, the status of most women relative to men was
slowly eroded throughout the era of colonial rule. From this perspective, one could
characterize colonialism as a European and African male conspiracy against African
women.
Although Lovett acknowledges that colonialism was a highly gendered form of
rule, she does not explain Africans' experiences solely in these essentialist terms. African
women did not enter or live through the colonial period as a monolithic group. As with
African men, their sole, or even primary, identity was not based on gender. Some
Western feminists, claiming a pseudo-universalist model of women's liberation based on
a Western paradigm, have asserted the primacy of gender at the expense of all other
aspects of one's identity. This approach has tended to reproduce the imperialist tendency
to reduce African experiences to a Western model.
Perhaps most importantly, the homogenization of African women's experiences
obscures the other factors that influence African women's lives, such as ethnicity,
nationality and class. As part of a broader denial of African diversity within colonial
thought, many writers have made gross generalizations about precolonial African
societies, contending that all Africans encountered colonialism from similar or identical
2
locations. In an attempt to assert racial and/or gender unity, other authors have denied
the relevance of class or status differences among Africans, thus reproducing the
Manichean logic of colonial discourse. With the expansion of capitalist production and
colonial rule, new socially and historically contingent identities and alliances developed
among African women, men and colonial administrators in addition to those that existed
before colonialism.
Lovett emphasizes the fluid nature of African colonial societies, challenging the
dominant colonial perception of 'African society' as a static entity thrust into contact with
a dynamic yet coherent colonial power. Though Lovett characterizes all precolonial
societies as precapitalist, they had varying degrees of inequality and numerous
overlapping forms of economic organization. In an effort to emphasize the inherent
gender biases within many precolonial societies, Lovett tends to generalize about African
women's status prior to colonial rule. Likewise, she does not mention the differences in
policy among the various colonial powers. However, her analysis is premised on the
unevenness of precolonial social organization and the inherent contradictions of colonial
rule, which are often overlooked in other accounts. She argues, "Colonial states […]
were forced simultaneously to pursue two contradictory objectives: to ensure capital
accumulation while also maintaining social control." (26) State policies aimed at
economic exploitation often negated plans for social order by engendering adaptation,
protest and resistance by those the state sought to control.
The state's attempt to accomplish these goals over many different pre-existing
forms of social and economic organization led to new contexts in which gender was
redefined and its significance reconfigured. However, the most compelling aspect of
3
Lovett's article is her argument that the remaking of gender was a contested process that
cannot be sufficiently explained "on the level of ideology." (37) She asserts the centrality
of women's agency and rejects the idea that the decline in women's economic autonomy
was "linear [or] uncontested." (24) Colonialism is often viewed, both positively and
negatively, as a one-way process in which the colonial state acted upon malleable, docile
colonial subjects in order to achieve its goals. Without obscuring the violent exploitative
nature of colonial rule, Lovett emphasizes the power of Africans', particularly women's,
actions in the formation of colonial, and later postcolonial, social relations.
As Frederick Cooper has written, "[Colonial] policy and ideology also reflected
European adaptation (and resistance) to the initiatives of the colonized."1 The colonial
state sought to increase its own economic accumulation by mobilizing African men as
producers while relegating women to the private sphere of reproduction, thus denying
that women's labour constituted real work. In response, "women seized new avenues of
power and agency […] in order to accumulate surplus, gain autonomy, and exercise
control over their own labor, power, fertility, and sexuality." (24) As Lovett points out,
however, many of these strategies, such as beer making or prostitution, prompted the
colonial state to react to, and in some cases appropriate, these same tactics. (35) Thus,
rather than an untainted imposition of European colonial ideals, colonial social, class and
gender norms were equally the results of African women's responses. Lovett writes,
"Ultimately […] it was men's and women's evolving structural positions within the
developing colonial capitalist economy which proved most important in determining the
1
Frederick Cooper. "Conflict and Connection: Rethinking Colonial African History." American Historical
Review; 1994; 99. (1531)
4
manner in which the state related to them and thus molded their experiences of the state
as well as of class." (40)
Though broad in scope, Margot Lovett's article emphasizes the gendered nature of
colonialism, the fluidity of identity, and the centrality of African women's agency in the
shaping of colonial societies. These themes are absent in much of the historiography of
colonialism in Africa, which has tended to focus exclusively on men's experiences.
Rather than provide a specific detailed study, Lovett's work suggests certain themes that
she believes should be central to any research concerning African women and class
formation in the colonial context. As a result, she tends to generalize about the processes
that she describes in order to emphasize the gaps in male-centred texts. However, by
stressing the significance of African women's agency, she contributes a useful paradigm
through which to understand women's roles in the history of colonialism.
5