African Women Early History to the 21st Century [Paperback]

African women's history is a topic as vast as the continent itself, embracing an array of societies in over fifty countries with different geographies, social customs, religions, and historical situations. In African Women: Early History to the 21st Century, Kathleen Sheldon masterfully delivers a comprehensive study of this expansive story from before the time of records to the present day. She provides rich background on descent systems and the roles of women in matrilineal and patrilineal systems. Sheldons work profiles elite women, as well as those in leadership roles, traders and market women, religious women, slave women, women in resistance movements, and women in politics and development. The rich case studies and biographies in this thorough survey establish a grand narrative about womens roles in the history of Africa.

A comprehensive history of African women remains a necessity given that current histories of Africa areafter more than 45 years of scholarship on African womenmostly histories of men's actions. Kathleen Sheldon provides a thoroughly researched long view of African women's material lives, social relations, challenges, and forms of mobilization to change their societies.This is an essential book that will enrich undergraduate classroom discussions and, hopefully, bring more attention to the rich and creative scholarship produced by scholars of gender and womens studies.

This book should be regarded as a magisterial achievement, and will no doubt find a well-?deserved place on a whole host of undergraduate reading lists.

Kathleen Sheldon's book provides a great spine around which one could build a women's history of Africa survey course or better yet, a feminist history of Africa survey course.

This comprehensive work on African women decisively adds to the understanding of the subject. . . . Highly recommended.

Sheldon has made an important contribution to the field of African womens history with this text, andAlS%