In the mix: women and ethnicity among the Anlo-Ewe

Abstract

Studies on the role of women in the historical development of African ethnic identities tend to emphasise two separate but related approaches. The first, argued by John Lonsdale (1977, 1989) states that women in patrilineal societies were ‘outsiders in the patriclan’ and that because of their social location they were the ones who provided the framework which gave their children the ability to move from viewing themselves as members of a localised political community during the pre-colonial period to that of a ‘tribe’ or member of an ethnic group during the colonial era. The second approach, stated most clearly in Leroy Vail’s The Creation of Tribalism in Southern Africa (1989: 15), argues that women were completely outside the historical development of contemporary ethnic identities. Although these two approaches differ in significant ways,² both equate ethnicity with twentieth century ‘tribalism’. This definition, in turn, assumes that ethnic identities in Africa appeared only after the onset of colonialism and were generated by the policies and practices of Europeans. Both approaches also define African women as an undifferentiated and marginalised mass who played no role at all in shaping the content (as opposed to the framework) of their own identities and that of others, if they had such identities at all.

This chapter summarises a number of the major points discussed in Greene, 1996.