Pathways to African Feminism & Development - Women's Economic Empowerment (Special Issue 2022)

Abstract

Welcome to the 2022 special issue of Pathways to African Feminism and Development. This is an international open access journal with a focus on all aspects of theories and practice in African women studies, both on the continent and in the Diaspora. It promotes scholarship on African women in all spheres of life. The Journal is a joint publication of the Women’s Economic Empowerment Hub of the African Women’s Studies Research Centre (AWSRC) and the African Women’s Studies Program of the Department of Sociology, Social Work and African Women Studies, University of Nairobi, Kenya. In September 2020 the AWSRC entered into a five years’ collaboration project with the Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation (BMGF) on Women’s Economic Empowerment. We appreciate the financial support of the Foundation in the production of the current issue of the Journal.

All articles have been peer reviewed double blind. The draft journal has then undergone further quality control by a scholar who goes through its totality and checks for coherence; faithfulness to the topic; contribution to knowledge on the subject matter; and any issues related to the theoretical, methodological, philosophical or ideological approaches.

The current bumper issue is a fulfillment of a promise made in the previous issue that presentations made at the African Women’s Studies Fourth Annual Conference, held from 23 to 24 November 2021 would be published in the next issue of the Journal. Thus, most of the twelve articles included here were presented at the 2021 Conference.

In the next regular issue of the Journal, we shall look at the devastating health and economic crisis that the COVID 19 caused. Women were disproportionately affected by this pandemic. We wish to engage scholars, researchers, students, professionals in the field of women’s economic empowerment, especially during the pandemic, in a social dialogue to discuss unpaid care work, women’s health and wellness; highlight women’s coping strategies such as self-mobilization and self-help; assess the effects of the Covid 19 pandemic on women’s business and employment; debate the use of technology in marketing during pandemics; and review the policy challenges and stimulus package opportunities for women’s economic empowerment during the pandemic.

For the next regular issue of the Journal, we invite articles, case studies, book reviews and letters/ comments to the editor on the following theme.