Problematising women’s leadership in the African context

Abstract

This article is a response to a longstanding debate about what feminist theorists and leadership scholars mean when they refer to “women’s leadership in the African context”. (The debate was sparked again as a response to the initial call for papers for this topic.) We argue that there is ultimately a need for more caution and conceptual clarity in employing terms such as “women’s leadership” and “in the African context” since they are contested and ambiguous. In so doing we situate both terms within broader interdisciplinary debates about feminist leadership theory, mainstream leadership theory, and discussions of African values as they pertain to leadership. We argue that there is a need to avoid essentialist, reductive assumptions about gender and leadership that can, among other things, place undue pressure on women in leadership positions. In so doing we distinguish leadership from ethical, effective leadership and offer an exploratory discussion of how some of the challenges we raise here might be addressed.

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