Spain’s former African colonies―Equatorial Guinea and Western Sahara―share similar histories. Both are under the thumbs of heavy-handed, postcolonial regimes, and are known by human rights organizations as being among the worst places in the world with regard to oppression and lack of civil liberties. Yet the resistance movement in one is dominated by women, the other by men. In this innovative work, Joanna Allan demonstrates why we should foreground gender as key for understanding both authoritarian power projection and resistance. She brings an ethnographic component to a subject that has often been looked at through the lens of literary studies to examine how concerns for equality and women’s rights can be co-opted for authoritarian projects. She reveals how Moroccan and Equatoguinean regimes, in partnership with Western states and corporations, conjure a mirage of promoting equality while simultaneously undermining women’s rights in a bid to cash in on oil, minerals, and other natural resources. This genderwashing, along with historical local, indigenous, and colonially imposed gender norms mixed with Western misconceptions about African and Arab gender roles, plays an integral role in determining the shape and composition of public resistance to authoritarian regimes.
Author(s): Joanna Allan
Series: Women in Africa and the Diaspora
Publisher: University of Wisconsin Press
Year: 2019
Language: English
Pages: 360
City: Madison
List of Illustrations ix
Acknowledgments xi
Abbreviations xiii
Introduction 3
Part 1 Spanish Colonialism and Indigenous Women's Resistance
1 Spanish Sahara, Falangistas, and Gendering Subaltern Studies 31
2 Women's Resistance and Gender in Spanish Guinea 65
Part 2 The Politics of Gender in the Saharawi State in Exile and Equatorial Guinea
3 Saharawi Women's Resistance in the Diaspora 95
4 Constructions of Gender in the Nationalist Discourses of the Obiang Regime 131
Part 3 Resistance to Authoritarian Dictatorships since Spain's Exit
5 Women, Gender, and Resistance in Moroccan-Occupied Western Sahara 155
6 Gendering Ngueismo and Gendered Resistance 192
Final Remarks 221
Archives Consulted 227
Glossary 229
Notes 231
Bibliography 291
Index 327
