# Women in the African academy  
Africanization replaced European men with African men, with little consideration to the fact that colonial regimes had concentrated on drawing men into serving economic and administrative systems, and largely excluded women. There is now evidence pointing to legislative and policy regulations that banned women from cities and imposed other curbs on mobility, and which were enforced through punitive round-ups and fines, and the colonial propagation of discourses that denigrated and pathologized African women (Barnes, 1999; White, 1990). Colonial education for women was minimal, amounting to schooling in domesticity that would add 'a feminine touch' to the empire and produce suitable wives for a Western-style male elite (Mann, 1985; Hansen, 1992; Geiger, 1998). More extensive programmes for women, such as those of the French in Algeria (Lazreg, 1994), were based on a deliberate strategy to undermine the resistance.  
Women's 'special treatment' during colonialism emanated from European gender ideologies, but most African leaders did not see this as a problem during the initial euphoric decade of flag independence. ${ }^{2}$ Nationhood was primarily  
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[^0]:    2 There is evidence that women and gender issues were discussed in popular education as far as this was sustained in movements. Left-inclined movements such as the PAIGC under Amilcar Cabral, FRELIMO under Samora Machel and Oliver Tambo's ANC afforded women higher levels of participation during the years of struggle. The legacy of greater involvement is evident in the Southern African nations that record higher levels of political representation: South Africa, Mozambique, Zimbabwe and others. Postindependence movements have campaigned energetically for increased women's political participation.