Gender and Decolonisation

The history of decolonisation in the twentieth century is often told as a history of “Great Men”: of Franz Fanon, Kwame Nkrumah, Mohandas Gandhi, Ho Chi Minh. There is no shortage of male thinkers and leaders from which to draw inspiration as we explore the continuing relevance of anticolonial critiques and movements to contemporary life. But if we fail to also recognise the historical contributions of women and of feminist thought, we miss an opportunity to take this discussion even further, to capture an even broader emancipatory vision from the past, for the future.

1920s–1970s: the gains of decolonisation for women

Women were everywhere involved in the anticolonial movements that peaked across Africa, Asia and the Caribbean from the 1920s to the 1970s. They led strikes, gave speeches, marched, wrote articles, engaged in armed combat, supported guerrilla armies, organised protests, maintained boycotts, reorganised their home lives to support nationalist causes. Some – like Funmilayo Ransome-Kuti, Bibi Titi Mohammed and Djamila Boupacha – became well-known figures in their own right. Many more laboured behind the scenes, doing the background organisational work that made the Great Men’s speeches and mobilisations successful. Their names may be lost to the historical record, but their contributions were foundational. As much as we are drawn to narratives of singular, charismatic leaders, it is this day-to-day labour that actually makes a movement successful.[1]

Like men, women participated in these struggles for a variety of reasons. Some came to decolonisation movements through their prior connections to socialist, pan-Africanist, labour or radical organisations; others were caught up in the momentum, fed up with exploitation under colonial rule and seeking something new. Some had explicitly feminist visions of decolonisation. Women like Una Marson, Claudia Jones and Paulette Nardal, for example, wrote brilliant analyses of the intersections between colonialism, class, race and gender in the 1930s and 1940s, long before the theoretical framework of “intersectionality” became popularised. Their work still reads as insightful and relevant today.[2]

As these actors recognised, if colonialism in the twentieth century was a project of economic and political domination, it also had profound social implications. Slavery and forced migration tore families apart; new systems of labour and patriarchal policies entrenched already existing inequalities or created new ones; Victorian-era laws criminalised behaviour that fell outside of strict sexual and gender norms. While some imperial governments made gestures towards women in the dying days of empire – instilling women’s suffrage or creating maternal health programmes – these generally proved piecemeal: too little, too late. Moreover, colonised women questioned whether policies and programmes designed in the metropole – either by male colonial officials alone or with the help of white European “sisters” – could really address their complex concerns. In 1934, for example, Rajkumari Amrit Kaur critiqued the way British feminists dominated the debate over women’s suffrage in India, noting that Indian women’s own voices were like “a cry in the wilderness. … It all seems so tragic that we should say these things again and again only to be told that ‘we know much better than you’. Why, then, ask us ever to give an opinion?”[3]

Several male nationalist leaders recognised these frustrations and attempted to tap into women’s activism. Gandhi situated women at the core of non-violent resistance, Patrice Lumumba argued that women’s education was key to societal progress, Julius Nyerere called for women’s freedom. As gender politics became nationalised, new spaces were opened up to discuss everything from bride price to birth control. Far from side issues, women’s rights and gender relations became hotly contested subjects. As Luise White notes, for example, the Kenyan Mau Mau “issued many more statements about the nature and proper organisation of marriage than it did about land or freedom”.[4]

Postcolonial or Recolonial Times?

This attention during decolonisation struggles led to practical gains for women in many newly independent states, including the creation of state apparatuses and/or social programmes that had beneficial impacts on women’s lives. But many women found themselves disappointed with the overall state of postcolonial affairs. As nationalist leaders shifted from fighting the state to being the state, some of the spaces created by decolonisation movements were closed. Many state women’s ministries/bureaus were marginalised or defunded over time; former combatants struggled to re-integrate, their once praised role in armed battle now seen as a form of gender deviance; female activists were told to return to the home and focus on reproducing the new nation. Sexual expression and sexual minorities became targets of state repression in a number of contexts, seen as threats to the postcolonial order. M. Jacqui Alexander has described this as a process of “recolonisation”, in which “the neocolonial state continues the policing of sexualised bodies … as if the colonial masters were still looking on”.[5]

Life after formal political decolonisation has also continued to be shaped for many by the continuation of imperialist structures in multiple forms. Continuities can be found, for instance, in the domination on the international stage of former imperial powers, the legacy of centuries of lopsided economic policies, and the privileging of Western knowledge and experiences. Indeed, while denouncing the practices of their own states, activists and scholars have challenged the assumption that formerly colonised countries can “catch up” with the “developed” world by adopting their gender norms, feminist theories or models of sexual rights activism. Vanessa Agard-Jones, for example, critiques the way that French gay rights activists “unwittingly support the mapping of a development teleology on France’s Caribbean territories,” labelling them as less “modern” and positioning themselves as “saving” local gay people in a way that echoes colonial narratives and reinforces hierarchies.[6]While denouncing the practices of their own states, activists and scholars have challenged the assumption that formerly colonised countries can “catch up” with the “developed” world by adopting their gender norms, feminist theories or models of sexual rights activism. 

Feminist critics like Agard-Jones and Alexander have thus called for a vision of decolonisation at once more contextualised and more expansive, firmly rooted in local experiences but “imagined simultaneously as political, economic, psychic, discursive, and sexual”.[7] One could also turn to the work of Uma Narayan, Amina Mama, Sara Ahmed, Patricia Hill Collins, bell hooks, Audre Lorde, Sonia Corrêa, Heidi Safia Mirza, Chandra Talpade Mohanty, Sylvia Tamale, Gloria Wekker and Rosamond King… to name only a few. This rich literature should be seen as crucial for anyone interested in decolonisation: what it has meant, how it has been limited, and what it might entail.[8]

These histories and perspectives are relevant not only for those who live in countries that experienced colonialism and political decolonisation directly in the twentieth century. We all carry the baggage of the imperial past, which continues to affect the way we see others, organise our societies and regulate our intimate lives. The emancipatory project of decolonial feminism provides a way of understanding this history, deconstructing its legacies and refashioning a more just and liberating world for all.