Silenced Resistance: Women, Dictatorships, and Genderwashing in Western Sahara and Equatorial Guinea

Allan, Joanna (2019) Silenced Resistance: Women, Dictatorships, and Genderwashing in Western Sahara and Equatorial Guinea. Women in Africa and the Diaspora . University of Wisconsin Press. ISBN 9780299318406

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Abstract

Spain’s former African colonies—Equatorial Guinea and Western Sahara—share similar histories. Both are under the thumbs of heavy-handed, postcolonial regimes, and are known by human rights organizations as being among the worst places in the world with regard to oppression and lack of civil liberties. Yet the resistance movement in one is dominated by women, the other by men.

In this innovative work, Joanna Allan demonstrates why we should foreground gender as key for understanding both authoritarian power projection and resistance. She brings an ethnographic component to a subject that has often been looked at through the lens of literary studies to examine how concerns for equality and women’s rights can be co-opted for authoritarian projects.

She reveals how Moroccan and Equatoguinean regimes, in partnership with Western states and corporations, conjure a mirage of promoting equality while simultaneously undermining women’s rights in a bid to cash in on oil, minerals, and other natural resources. This genderwashing, along with historical local, indigenous, and colonially imposed gender norms mixed with Western misconceptions about African and Arab gender roles, plays an integral role in determining the shape and composition of public resistance to authoritarian regimes.

Item Type: Book
Uncontrolled Keywords: Western Sahara, Equatorial Guinea, Genderwashing, Resistance, Activism, Dictatorships, Afro-Hispanism
Subjects: L700 Human and Social Geography
V200 History by area
Department: Faculties > Arts, Design and Social Sciences > Social Sciences
Related URLs:
Depositing User: Paul Burns
Date Deposited: 03 Apr 2019 17:19
Last Modified: 03 Apr 2019 17:19
URI: http://nrl.northumbria.ac.uk/id/eprint/38738

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