Conceptualising the framing of Gender in the African Context

Globally, it has been agreed that gender is a construct that does not naturally occur. The characteristics of the construct are shaped by context-specific social, economic, political and cultural processes and factors that are used to prescribe expectations about perceived appropriate thought, roles and behaviour attributed to people based on their biological sex. Although many societies, including African ones, have always acknowledged sex-related physiological differences amongst people, and roles have always existed. However, the conferment of privilege and power on certain people on the basis of their physiological characteristics is a recent phenomenon that coincided with modernity and industrialisation. It is crucial to understand that the belief in the universal designation of privilege and power on the basis of biological sex is a contested phenomenon and the origins of such a logic has been critiqued especially by African scholars. The idea that anatomical sex determines gender roles and status has been debunked and rendered complicated because of the influence of Western modernity. In modern or colonial African nations, gender is a construct with ramifications for tangible outcomes as it is used to influence decisions pertaining to the allocation and redistribution of resources. Despite this contemporary reality, it is crucial not to silence African agency and pre-colonial historical realities. This means that as signifiers of gender involve roles, status, norms and performances that are socially engineered in particular societies.