Disrupting Colonial Practices of Gender

In her seminal work, The Invention of Women: Making an African Sense of Western Gender Discourses (1997), Oyěwùmí argues that the concept of gender, as understood in the West, is not universal and that imposing it on African societies had and has harmful colonial consequences. By drawing from Yoruba culture, she reexamines how we think about identity, power, and the roles assigned to women. Together with Oyěwùmí, Grâce Ndjako, Amanda Mokoena and Linda Musariri, we discuss how Oyěwùmí’s work continues to challenge dominant narratives and inspire new approaches to gender across disciplines and cultures, highlighting the importance of reclaiming indigenous viewpoints in today’s academic and social conversations.

About the speakers

Oyèrónkẹ́ Oyěwùmí is a Professor of Sociology specializing in Gender, Knowledge, and Culture at Stony Brook University. A scholar of Nigerian origin, her research spans (post)colonial studies, modernities, and African studies. Her seminal work, The Invention of Women: Making an African Sense of Western Gender Discourses (1997), has had a profound impact on fields such as sociology, (cultural) anthropology, decolonial theory, and African, cultural, and gender studies. Her writings are widely studied in humanities and social sciences courses, including in the Netherlands. In 2021, she was honored with the prestigious Africanist Award by the African Studies Association, and recently, she co-edited Naming Africans: On the Epistemic Value of Names (2023), a volume that explores the idea that personal names serve as rich sources of historical and cultural insight, revealing layers of hidden knowledge. 

Grâce Ndjako is a philosopher, author and translator. She studied Political Science and Philosophy at the University of Amsterdam and the Sorbonne in Paris. She writes for various Dutch publications such as Dipsaus Podcast, De Nederlandse Boekengids, Hard//Hoofd, De Witte Raaf and De Internet Gids. She translated Aimé Césaire’s ‘Discours sur le colonialisme’ and the poems of Nele Marian from French to Dutch. She is currently working on her PhD in Philosophy at the University of Amsterdam.  

Amanda Mokoena is anthropologist-in-training interested in unsolvable existential questions of the tensions between society and science, and the impact of this divide on the natural environment and more-than-human life forms. Currently a PhD candidate in anthropology at the University of Amsterdam, she is an African Feminist and was trained at the African Gender Institute housed at the University of Cape Town, where taught the politics of knowledge production in the newly renamed African Feminist Studies department.  She is a keen mountaineer from South Africa with roots in the Kingdom in the Sky- a place of snowy winters and endless mountain peaks- Lesotho. Her research is on the water-energy-food nexus in urban South Africa, with a focus on water insecurity. 

Linda Musariri is an assistant professor at the University of Amsterdam in the Anthropology Department. She completed her PhD in Anthropology at the Amsterdam Institute of Social Science Research (AISSR), University of Amsterdam. Linda Musariri is interested in understanding power differentials, inequalities and epistemological injustices embedded in knowledge production processes. She employs a critical development lens to research violence, migration, gender and climate change. 

Shahana Siddiqui (moderator) is a medical anthropologist by training, specializing in sexual reproductive health rights, gender-based violence, and colonial medicine. She received her doctorate degree from Universiteit van Amsterdam where she is currently a lecturer.  Her doctoral research focused on public health responsiveness to sexual violence in Bangladesh, having conducted a hospital ethnography at the largest public hospital in the country. Before shifting to academia, Siddiqui worked extensively in the development sector, mainly on child rights, urban poverty, digital healthcare provision, and overall sexual reproductive health and rights programming and advocacy. She is currently a steering committee member for Share-Net Netherlands, the largest network on SRHR and adjunct faculty at James P. Grant School of Public Health, BRAC University. Her greatest passion is teaching, believing in the power of the classroom as the site for feminist decolonial transformation.  

This event is co-organized by SPUI25, University of Colour, Africadelic and the Decolonial philosophy group at UvA, and made possible by The Faculty of Humanities UvA, the Department of Philosophy UvA, ASCA and NICA.