This Marie Skłodowska Curie Action (MSCA) titled ‘Women Politicians in Africa: War of Symbols and the Struggle for Political Legitimacy’ (WOMPOL-AFRICA) explored the insights that sites of meaning production offer about African women’s struggle for political legitimacy. In postconflict periods in Africa, men often dominate the ‘war of symbols,’ that is, the struggles over meaning production that often characterise nation-building processes because they occupy the majority of decision-making positions in sites of meaning production such as history books, news media, documentaries, biographical films, published biographies and recorded interviews. Censorship by governments, political groups and communities also plays a significant role in silencing women. Patriarchal gender hierarchies are, therefore, often restored and reinforced in part through scripts written primarily by men, and women are relegated to supporting actors. This impacts women’s claims to political legitimacy since, in many African countries, political parties and leaders often justify their political authority by emphasising their roles in liberating their nations from, for example, colonialism or dictators.
The objectives of the Action were to a) build on important work by academics and feminists and contribute towards an interdisciplinary understanding of African women’s struggle for political legitimacy in postconflict periods; b) increase awareness of the significant role that the source of a woman’s political power plays in influencing her ability to participate effectively in national politics. To address these objectives, the Action i) contextualised women’s access to political power by tracing the experiences of individual women politicians through their portrayals in biographies, news media, film, and other cultural artefacts and examining their unique circumstances; ii) provided a more complex view of women’s struggle for political legitimacy by focusing on the intersection of patriarchal oppression and women’s resistance in the war of symbols; iii) explored the possibilities that the study of film and other media offer in generating and complementing conventional social science research. Mainly focussing on how studying sites of struggles over meaning can enrich our political conceptions and repertoires for action; iv) drew attention, through research and dissemination, to how perceptions about women’s sources of political power impact their claim to political legitimacy. In addition to these, another goal of the MSCA Individual Fellowship was to foster the development of the individual researcher.
