Date: 
6-7 June 2024

Venue: 
06 June: "Marietta-Blau-Saal" lecture hall, Main Building, Universitätsring
07 June: Department of African Studies - Seminar Room 1, Spitalgasse 2, 

African countries became independent, being represented in state institutions was a political goal for many women, but undoing the legacy of colonial politics and gaining public visibility in the political field was no easy task. Despite serious difficulties and challenges, women vied for offices, campaigned, talked and wrote about politics, voted, and expressed their ideas within various institutions (organizations, political party, unions, local and national assemblies...). They were strategic actors in the processes of postcolonial state building. Yet, their history has remained confined to a separate section of African politics, the "women's section" while African political history has long been dominated by male actors. All in all, the history of African women in politics has been primarily written from the perspective of grassroots politics and women's role in social and economic development projects. A new wave of scholarship has recently begun to address this discrepancy in the historiography, with scholars exploring the ways women have challenged established political orders "from the top". This conference aims to retrieve histories of African women's contribution to the postcolonial politics of state building, and to retrieve narratives, concepts and sources to acknowledge African women's complex modes of political imagination, action, and languages.

For further information, please see here.

This event is supported by the University of Vienna, the City of Vienna (Stadt Wien), the Austrian Academy of Science (OeAW).