The Department of Political & International Studies invites you to the weekly Friday lunchtime seminar.

SPEAKER:     Prof Yolande Bouka

TOPIC:         *Black Women in the African Postcolony*

CHAIR:          Okuhle Boqwana

VENUE:          Ruth Mompati Seminar Room (Politics Department)

TIME:             13h00 – 14h00

DATE:             Friday, 22 April 2022



*ABSTRACT*

Femicide and other forms of gender-based violence have received an
increased amount of attention globally. Recent research finds that 30
percent of women aged 15 and older have been subjected to physical and/or
sexual violence at least once in their life. It also finds that while women
are less likely to die of murder than men, the majority of femicides are
perpetrated by male relatives or intimate partners, thereby challenging the
myth that women are safer at home. Lastly, research also explains how
states routinely and systematically fail to put the necessary resources and
measures in place to protect women from violence. While femicide is a
global phenomenon, violence against women disproportionately affects low-
and lower-middle-income countries and regions, many of which are former
colonies. This seminar interrogates the relationship between the
coloniality of gender, the feminicidal state, and the lives and deaths of
women in the African postcolony. This interrogation takes place at a time
of increased militarization of African women’s lives which, despite its
promises, has failed to make them safer. This seminar moves away from
cultural tropes often used to explain and exceptionalize the lower status
of women in many African countries. It questions the ways in which the
modern manly state, which was also adopted by newly independent states, has
contributed to women’s vulnerability to deadly masculine violence. This
seminar walks alongside the story of the unadjuticated 2012 murder case of
a young Kenyan woman, Angnes Wanjiru. The historical and geopolitical
landscapes of the scene of the crime, in Nanyuki, Kenya, offer a
particularly clear schema through which to analyze femicide in the
postcolony.



*SPEAKER BIO*

Yolande Bouka is a Canadian/Togolese political scientist and Assistant
Professor of gender and politics and international relations at Queen’s
University in Canada. She is currently a writing fellow at the Johannesburg
Institute for Advanced Study. Prior to her academic appointment, she worked
as a researcher at the Institute for Security Studies (ISS) in the Conflict
Prevention and Risk Analysis Division, focusing on Africa’s Great Lakes
Region. Her research focuses on gender, political violence, and race and
international relations. The key questions driving her multidisciplinary
research agenda is how vulnerable groups and individuals understand and
navigate structural and political violence and how these experiences
influence the social and political landscapes of conflict-affected
societies. Her current research is a multi-sited historical and political
analysis of female combatants in Southern Africa. She is also a
co-investigator on a project exploring the micro-dynamics of political
protests in Africa. Her research has received support from the Fulbright
Scholar Program, the American Association of University Women, and the
Social Sciences and Humanities Research Council of Canada.