PAWLO & Pan African Women
Pan-African Women Organizing for the Future: The Foundation of the Pan African Women’s Liberation Organization and Beyond*
Until recently, much of the past has been recorded and presented as his-tory. The male voice and perspective have dominated the interpretation of the past, focusing on the deeds of “great men” and a few “outstanding” women. Conventional wisdom has cast men as the knowers and entrenched their construction of social reality in the collective memory as knowledge. In the case of precolonial Africa, women were assumed to be helpless, downtrodden and voiceless. Male centered historiography rarely mentions African women except in accounts of polygamy or the few women who whose contribution they considered worthy.
In the past twenty years, gendered historical interpretations of Africa’s story have highlighted the central position of women in some pre-colonial societies, particularly in the areas of medicine and spirituality. Under colonialism, these positions held by women were devalued systematically, especially by Christian missionaries, and this knowledge possessed by women was supplanted by the colonial construction of social reality and forms of knowledge which aided the mission. The essential role for both men and women was to serve as a labor force for colonialism. During colonialism in some African societies, women’s roles were viewed as that of mother and wife, to preserve the home as a haven for men. Elizabeth Schmidt describes how missionaries in Zimbabwe “educated” African women for domestication to ensure that the women’s influence on the men and children corresponded to the requirement of the colonial system.
Recorded history of the nationalist struggles in Africa provided narratives of women in the anti-colonial struggle, whether they were the veiled Algerian women or the combatants in the liberation struggles of Southern Africa. Despite the central role that women played in the decolonization process, their voices have not been heard. The negative silences with respect to women also abound in the recorded history of the Pan African Movement. The fact that women in Africa daily move beyond the colonial borders to engage in trading activities points to their vast potential as agents of Pan Africanism.
Because historical accounts of the Pan African movement have tended to focus on formal meetings, this history falls within the male-centered framework. Women, with the exception of Adelaide Casely-Hayford, Shirley Graham DuBois, Amy Ashwood Garvey and Amy Jacques Garvey, were virtually invisible in this history, particularly for the first five Congresses. There were, however, several forthright women who participated in these congresses. Some of the Black women participants in the early Congresses included Annie J. Cooper, Jessie Faucet, Ida Gibbs Hunt and Mary McLeod Bethune. A group of twenty-one women of African descent were the main organizers of the Fourth Pan African Congress, held in New York, 1927. Many of them were members of a women’s organization called “The Circle of Peace and Foreign Relations.” Dorothy Hunton, who was the President of this organization, was involved in the struggle for Pan Africanism for many years.
The Sixth Pan African Congress, held in 1974, was the first of these Congresses to openly address the issue of women. Women were members of the organizing secretariat and among the resolutions passed at the Congress was a Resolution on Black Women:
The Sixth Pan African Congress:
- Decides to give its total support to the political struggles for equality undertaken by black women.
- Above all, calls upon the states and organizations participating in this Congress to tackle the problems of the oppression of women thoroughly and profoundly.
The impetus for this resolution was surely women, in the forefront of the organization at the 6th PAC and the fact that women were on the Frontlines in the liberation movements. Women’s presence had to be acknowledged. Apart from this resolution, however, women’s voices were still marginalized, as very few of the other Congress documents, which have been published, include women or were even written by women.
In this regard, the Seventh Pan African Congress was path breaking. It was the first of the Pan African Congresses which clearly placed women on the agenda. A pre-Congress Women’s Meeting was held the two days preceding the Congress. The commitment for this meeting emerged after some struggle within the International Preparatory Committee (IPC) for the 7th PAC. However, the persistence of women ensured that this meeting occurred.
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*Zaline Makini Roy-Campbell, “Pan-African Women Organizing for the Future: The Foundation of the Pan African Women’s Liberation Organization and Beyond,” in African Journal of Political Science New Series Vol. No. 1, June 1996.
