Warriors: African women in African society

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Western media coverage on African women usually centers around issues of oppression such as female circumcision in East Africa, “Islamic” extremism in West Africa, or rape in South Africa. While the world should not dismiss these issues, what we are seeing is a lopsided image of African women’s lives. Africa is home to many cultures, and the place of women varies in different African societies. Unfortunately, a large number of non-Africans perceive the whole of Africa as a single cultural entity, and cannot imagine that two different African cultures can have value systems that are diametrically opposite to each other.What follows is a non-comprehensive list of African women warriors. It is our hope that these portraits will show a side of Africa not often seen by the rest of the world – the historic reality of strong women who forged their own destinies.

West Africa

Warriors and Rulers: the roles of African women in African society

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In a chance conversation with a visitor from Asia, I was surprised to uncover the view that Africa was a continent plagued by misogyny. Even people from a far flung corner of the globe, who had little exposure to Africa and Africans, had somehow acquired the idea that African men were sexist and violent, and that the lives of African women were disproportionately marred by sexual violence.

Rape certainly occurs in Africa, just as it occurs on other continents. Much of rape in Africa occurs in the context of war, just as wartime rape is common in other parts of the world. But our Asian visitor does not label all Europeans as rapacious because of the gang rapes they perpetuated against fellow Europeans during the World Wars and the recent conflict in the Balkans.

Without doubt, there are some African cultures with misogynistic practices, just as there are European and Asian cultures that have sexist customs. But Africa, like Asia and Europe, is a continent of diverse ethnic groups and social cultures. There is a wide range of African attitudes towards women and any other topic for that matter. It is overly simplistic to see all of Africa (or Asia or Europe) as culturally uniform.

The fact is, Africa has been home to a large number of matrilineal cultures. According to a 1961 article by David Aberle, 20% of “traditional” African societies have matrilineal descent groups; and 43% has descent groups in both male and female lines.1 Among the matrilineal Akan peoples of West Africa (including the Ashanti), the status of women was particularly high, a situation believed to have been altered by the influence of European missionaries.2

Even non-matrilineal cultures of Africa are not necesarily as oppressive towards women as non-Africans often imagine to be. The Igbo of Nigeria are patrilineal and allow polygyny, but marriages are arranged by women and women’s associations controlled the markets.3.

The ambilineal the Betsileo of Madagascar allow polygynous marriages but women arrange the marriages.4 Betsileo society gives women a prominent role in agriculture, in contast to European peasant societies such as the French and Spanish, where people think of the house as the domain of women and the field as the domain of men.5 Not surprisingly, gender stratification is a greater problem among French and Spanish peasants than it is among traditional Betsileo farmers.6

Among the Ju/’hoansi, a !Kung ethnic group in southern Africa, the rate of female murder victims compared to male murder victims is extremely low compared to the high level of female homocide victims (20-50%) in most Western societies, something which the anthropologist Richard B. Lee thinks might be related to “women’s high status in Ju/’hoan society”7. Lee states, “the many forms of sexual oppression that women experience in other societies, such as rape, wife battering, purdah, enforced chastity, and sexual double-standards are rare or absent in Ju/’hoan society.”8Are the social positions of African women really that much worse off than that of women in other parts of the world? Let’s take a brief look at African women’s roles in African societies:

Introduction to African Art and its history

Introduction to African Art and its history

African art and African artists evolved differently than their Western counterparts so much so that only very few pieces of African art bear the individual style of their artists. Even when African artists were commissioned to create particular artworks for a king or tribal leader, they still had to abide by certain traditions thus not allowing them to develop much of a personal style. Now they didn’t just copy designs from each other, every piece of art was a unique since it was made by human hands, but within certain tribal rules or traditions. However, despite this, African artists still managed to express their imagination by developing new techniques and if a new technique was superior to an old one then it would become part of the tradition very quickly.

Traditional African art and Contemporary African art

Traditional African art and Contemporary African art

The beginnings of African art are considered to be as early as twenty-six millennia ago with the earliest examples of African art being simple images of animals painted on rocks that were found in caves in Namibia. The oldest known African sculptures date from about five hundred BC and they represent heads and human figures made out of clay. However despite this evidently long and rich history, very few pieces of early African art exist nowadays mostly because they were made out of perishable materials such as wood, cloth or plant fibers and because their intensive use as either daily or ceremonial objects. A large proportion of the African art that is known today can be considered recent, coming to us from the nineteenth century or later.

African art masks, African paintings and African art patterns

African art masks, African paintings and African art patterns

The mask plays a very important role in traditional African art and life, particularly spiritual life. Masks are used during special events likeceremonies and celebrations and their purposes range from honoring and entertaining to initiating or blessing, while at the same time serving as both disguise and protection for the wearer. Usually, African masks are carved of wood but some are made with other materials such as cloth or clay, and they can also be painted and decorated with other things like Read More

Some of the most important artists offered by the African continent

Some of the most important artists offered by the African continent

This article will give you a look on a couple of the most famous contemporary African artists that the continent has produced in recent years.

How African art has influenced the Western architecture

How African art has influenced the Western architecture

African art became a great source of fresh inspiration to the artists of the early twentieth century who wanted to do away with the established artistic conventions of the time. However, despite this important impact it had on Western art in the past century, for the time before that it had little to no effect on European art. This was so because African art was conceptualized so differently than European art that most Europeans didn’t even consider it as art; the concepts of African art and its emphasis on form and ritual were strange and foreign to Europeans and this lead to it being overlooked till the beginning of the twentieth century when in search of new artistic forms, European artists took a closer look at the apparent abstract forms of African art.

HISTORY OF AFRICAN ART

Rival masterpieces: 5th century BC

By one of the strange coincidences of history, the 5th century BC produces the first masterpieces in two incompatible styles of sculpture. Nearly 2500 years later, these styles become bitter rivals in the studios of our own time.

One is the classical realism which will prevail from the Renaissance to the end of the 19th century. The other is the sculpture of Africa, distorting human features and limbs in a dramatically expressive manner. African figures in this long and vibrant tradition inspire Picasso’s experiments with Cubism, which launch the mainstream of modern art. 

The characteristic sculpture of Africa, which forms the largest part of what is usually considered primitive art, can be seen as early as 500 BC in the Nok culture – named from the village in Nigeria where pottery figures of this kind were first found.

The Nok statuettes are mainly of human subjects. Made of terracotta, they combine strong formal elements with a complete disregard for precise anatomy. Their expressive quality places them unmistakably at the start of the African sculptural tradition.