The Emancipation of Women: An African Perspective

Ever since International Women’s Year in 1975 highlighted the issue of the equality of men and women, various studies have shown that, to a large extent, women the world over suffer similar types of discrimination within the family structure, in employment, in education and access to professional training etc. However, given the differences in the societal, educational and especially, the cultural background of women in different parts of the world, it is inevitable that there will be differences in women’s perception of what emancipation means to them.

In this book, Professor Florence Abena Dolphyne of the Department of Linguistics, University of Ghana, Legon, and a former Chairman of the Ghana National Council on Women and Development, explains, from her experience in Ghana and in different parts of Africa during the UN Decade for Women, what she believes  women’s emancipation means to women in Africa. It certainly involves more fundamental issues than the question of who cooks the dinner or changes the baby. Professor Dolphyne discusses a number of pertinent issues such as traditional beliefs and practices that still keep women under subjugation, specific women in development activities that help to achieve appreciable levels of emancipation and the role of governmental, non-governmental and inter-governmental organizations in the process of women’s emancipation in Africa.

Written in a very simple and lucid language, the book will certainly be useful for those who are interested in issues that affect women, especially Third World women. Indeed, it is a book for everybody, both men and women.