African Women Shaping the World
Des Africaines façonnent le monde
Activism, Networks and Connections (1920s-1970s)
Activisme, réseaux et connexions (années 1920-années 1970)
Published on Wednesday, October 29, 2025
Abstract
Research on the long-term history of African women’s rights struggles in the 20th century is currently vibrant, however, a gap remains in the scholarship concerning the global engagement and impact of African women activists’ thought, practices and contributions to the emergence of international feminist movements. This workshop, convened by an international group of scholars, aims to foster collaboration on this issue, with a focus on African pioneers of women’s movements and their global connections.
Announcement
Argument
Research on the long-term history of African women’s rights struggles in the 20th century is currently vibrant, however, a gap remains in the scholarship concerning the global engagement and impact of African women activists’ thought, practices and contributions to the emergence of international feminist movements. This workshop, convened by an international group of scholars, aims to foster collaboration on this issue, with a focus on African pioneers of women’s movements and their global connections. Indeed, the contributions of African activists are largely ignored in global history and frequently excluded from historical analyses of how human rights and international politics intersected in the twentieth century. By centering African women’s roles and trajectories, this international workshop provides a platform for exploring the impact of African women’s activism and its role in shaping global women’s networks, thereby enriching the history and theories of black internationalism, global feminisms, Pan-Africanism, African and world history, and 20th-century feminist thought.
More specifically, the conference aims to analyze the significance of international and transnational relationships between African women and international women’s organizations since the twenties until the United Nations Decade for women (1975-1985). Research on transnational feminism and women’s rights activism has argued that studying the contributions of activists from the Global South expands and deepens our understanding of transnational women’s rights organizations, and their struggles against long-lasting colonial legacies (Castledine, 2012; De Haan and Jones, 2013; Florvil 2017). However, to date, academic work has largely overlooked the crucial decades from the 1920s to the 1970s when feminist activists around the world forged networks that expanded beyond national boundaries to build international networks.
Our goal is to document how African women activists navigated and contributed to international organizations over time, thereby shaping and transforming the meanings and modes of women’s advocacy and political mobilization. Existing scholarship has already demonstrated that women in Europe and North America of diverse identities were involved in a range of global organizations that advocated for increased women’s social, political, legal, and economic rights (Boittin, 2010; Blain, 2018; Hendricks 2022; Taylor and Rupp, 2002; Ohene-Nyako 2019). Some of these organizations were led by women (International Council of Women, International Alliance of Women, World-Young Women’s Christian Association, Women’s International Democratic Federation), others are mixed (World Federation of Trade Unions, World Council of Church, World Peace Council, World Federation of Democratic Youth, Red Cross...).
In 1945, keen to consolidate their influence on a global scale, they turned their attention to women in countries under colonial rule, particularly in Africa (Armstrong, 2024). Recent scholarship has begun to research how African women mobilized with women from Europe, the Americas and beyond, particularly around issues of colonialism, women’s rights or social welfare (Barthélémy, 2022; Barthélémy and Panata, 2023; Boittin and Couti, 2023; Gradskova, 2021; Kiazoulu 2020). Their work revealed that, for African women, this collaboration served as a way to push their own political agenda, thereby challenging imperial feminism at the very roots of the international women’s movements.
Yet research remains to be done on these issues, and the workshop aims to expand these previous studies in terms of chronology, organizations and scales, thereby broadening our “cartographies of struggles” (Mohanty 2003: 43). A key objective is to bring together scholars working on several of the aforementioned organizations in order to illuminate the power struggles and rivalries that existed between them in Africa, as well as the complex position of African women navigating these competing influences. Doing so, will not only contribute to the long-term history of African feminisms but also enhance our understanding of the diversity of feminisms worldwide. Our goal is to create, through this workshop, a network of scholars whose work focuses on these topics and to encourage sustained collaboration among them.
To address these questions collectively, we welcome scholarly contributions engaging with the following themes:
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African Women Activists Navigating International Networks
We invite contributions exploring trajectories of African activists and their engagement with international organizations. By focusing on their mobility—both across countries and within international networks— we aim to document how these women articulated their connections to these international organizations. What local, national and imperial dynamics were at play? How did they navigate political, judicial or financial obstacles?
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Alternative Visions of a Global Word: Ideas, Debates and Intellectual Productions
We welcome contributions studying the content of the discourses these women convey in relation to national organizations dominated by men and international women’s organizations dominated by Western women. What ideas did African women express on the international stage? What were the material dimensions of their debate and struggles: periodicals, slogans, poems, novels, songs? Did African women have an impact on international agendas and repertoires of action?
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Women Activists, Global Circulations and National Movements
Submissions may address how these activists made their demands visible in their countries. During a time when calls for independence, nation building and national unity often overshadowed feminist demands, how did African women activists position themselves during the 1960s-1970s? How did they align with local social movements? Impacts of these international connections at the national level are still largely unknown: did these activists bring about reforms in their countries as a result of their international meetings?
Submission guidelines
We welcome contributions on all these topics, including proposals that combine different themes. Papers that utilize understudied archives and adopt interdisciplinary approaches, drawing from history, literature, political science, anthropology and sociology are encouraged. The conference will take place in Dakar, Senegal, in June 2026. Paper proposals (in French or in English) should include 200-word abstract, the paper title, the author’s name, institutional affiliation, e-mail address and a two-page curriculum vitae, all compiled into a single file, preferably in MS-Word.
Proposals should be sent to the following email address: africanwomendakar2026@gmail.com
The deadline for proposals is December 1st, 2025
Notification of papers accepted will be sent out by January 10th.
If accepted, we will request that participants submit their paper by April 15th, 2025.
Limited funding is available to cover hotel and travel costs for participants. Please indicate in your proposal if you require financial assistance. Participants will have read the pre-circulated papers ahead of the workshop. We anticipate that we will publish these articles in a special edition of a journal
Workshop Conveners
- Pascale Barthélémy, École des hautes études en sciences sociales (EHESS), Institut des mondes africains.
- Omar Gueye, Université Cheikh Anta Diop de Dakar.
- Rachel Jean-Baptiste, Stanford University.
- Claire Nicolas, University of Basel.
- Sara Panata, Centre national de la recherche scientifique (CNRS), Les Afriques dans le Monde.
- Fatoumata Seck, Stanford University.
Subjects
- History (Main category)
- Mind and language > Thought > Intellectual history
- Mind and language > Language > Literature
- Mind and language > Epistemology and methodology > Biographical approaches
- Society > Sociology > Gender studies
- Society > Political studies > Political and social movements
- Society > History > Women's history
- Society > History > Social history
Places
- Dakar, Republic of Senegal
Event attendance modalities
Full on-site event
Date(s)
- Monday, December 01, 2025
Attached files
Contact(s)
- Equipe organisatrice
courriel : africanwomendakar2026 [at] gmail [dot] com
Information source
- Sara Panata
courriel : sara [dot] panata [at] cnrs [dot] fr
License
This announcement is licensed under the terms of Creative Commons CC0 1.0 Universal.
To cite this announcement
« African Women Shaping the World », Call for papers, Calenda, Published on Wednesday, October 29, 2025, https://doi.org/10.58079/15224
