Roundtable Discussion: Women, Power, and Political Landscapes in Africa - Marion Ouma

The Western state system, at its inception, disregarded women as full beings capable of engaging in state-making, state-building, and peacebuilding—even though women have always played a crucial role in the daily social engineering of humanity. In the Western world, women were only granted the right to vote and participate in democratic processes in the early 1920s—and even then, this privilege was initially afforded only to white women. In colonized regions like Africa, white women gained voting rights in the 1950s, but for Black women, citizenship and voting rights were conditional—often tied to marital status. Fast forward to the post-Cold War era, we have begun to see more African women participating in politics, including running for public office and entering a male-dominated landscape that often views them with suspicion and skepticism. Despite these gains, political unrest remains rampant across the continent, with many states led by men who resist creating inclusive societies. Civil protests in the past two decades have challenged declining protections for citizens and the failure of liberal democracy to hold state actors accountable for injustices that diminish human dignity. Movements such as End SARS in Nigeria, Gen Z protests in Kenya, outcries against Zvigananda (state looters) in Zimbabwe, and calls for reform in Sudan and Tanzania illustrate the waning civil-state relations and the erosion of electoral efficacy in curbing state monopoly on violence. These struggles not only reflect institutional and political fractures but also reveal deep intergenerational wounds of power and political violence—carried in bodies, communities, and state structures—that continue to shape how Africans relate to authority, belonging, and collective agency. What’s striking in public discourses about the uprisings are the gendered responses, for instance President Samia Suluhu Hassan’s rise to power in Tanzania, has generated the rhetoric that she has taken the mantra “What a man can do, a woman can do better” literally and reinforced the notion of ‘Iron Lady’ politics. This brings to the fore assumptions about women in politics and the urgent need to debunk the ‘Iron Lady’ trope in African political discourse. We explore this phenomenon in a dialogue with African scholars, practitioners, activists, and political actors through the following key questions: 1. How does hegemonic masculinity and coloniality shape political participation and leadership in Africa? 2. In what ways do women leaders challenge or reproduce these norms? 3. What strategies can dismantle these systems without reinforcing gender stereotypes? 4. How do generational shifts—especially among Gen Z activists—reshape feminist and political agendas? 5. How might we begin to heal the intergenerational wounds of political and power trauma that continue to shape our personal, relational, structural, and cultural lives in Africa? 6. In what ways can African feminist and restorative frameworks (such as those rooted in indigenous wisdom and communal care) help transform the embodied legacies of colonial and patriarchal power into more life-affirming political realities?