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Gender Lecture 2025: Questioning Gender Norms Through African-Rooted Feminisms

Veranstaltungsdaten

Questioning Gender Norms Through African-Rooted Feminisms

with Prof. Dr. Bagele Chilisa

Women and girls suffer colonial oppression, global imperialism, and two patriarchal systems that often pass as normal. The construction of knowledge through archived literature, dominant language systems, academic imperialism, and mainstream methodologies mutes Women’s and girls' voices, making it difficult to address their needs and aspirations. I discuss African-rooted feminist methodologies that incorporate women and girls' voices, experiences, and perspectives in contextualised spaces that recognize diversity within Africa, across regions, nations, and ethnicities. Drawing from a sense-maker survey on African ways of perceiving reality, knowledge, and values, I argue that research methodologies rooted in African philosophies, histories, culture, and experiences interrogate a reality that is interconnected, interdependent, and spiritual.  Gender cannot therefore be a nominal variable characterised by either, or, men or women, boys or girls’ descriptions, but rather a complex phenomenon that invoke intersectionality to understand how other various social categories, for example, race, class, and sexual orientation, interact to contribute to different forms of discrimination and privilege. I argue that feminist methodologies should be guided by contextual and cultural complexity, comprehensiveness, self-determination, and liberation.  Drawing from studies on young women’s projects on climate-smart agriculture in Zambia and Malawi and youth entrepreneurship projects in Uganda, I illustrate the use of songs, folktales, proverbs, and language in researching the complexities of gender inequalities and the importance of contextualised methodologies within Africa, across the regions, nations, or ethnicities.  

Professor Bagele Chilisa is a renowned post-colonial scholar, researcher, author, educator, and an important African thought leader. Some of the courses that she has been facilitating for over 30 years include Research design, policy design, and Measurement and Evaluation courses, among others. As a full Professor at the University of Botswana she has supervised more than 50 masters and PhD dissertations with diverse academic discourse and has served as external examiner for PhD thesis in the Southern African Development Community (SADC) region. Her interest in community-based research has driven her to write extensively on indigenous knowledge as well as publish a book titled “Indigenous Research methodologies”. A book that has sparked international discourse on importance of indigenous methodologies, especially in Africa. She has shared her intellectual knowledge about indigenous research methodologies on several platforms and at several conferences in Universities in South Africa, USA, Norway, UK, and Italy. With over 80 publications, Prof. Chilisa has been recognized as the Researcher of the Year and awarded UB Research Team Leadership at University Research Awards Ceremony in 2019. She has also been awarded the Prestigious USA National Institute of Health Research Award on capacity building on HIV/AIDS.