Call for Book Chapters: Charting Power in Patriarchal Landscapes: Women's Agency and Political Discourses in Africa during Crisis

Call for Book Chapters: Charting Power in Patriarchal Landscapes: Women's Agency and Political Discourses in Africa during Crisis

This call invites book chapters that explore the dynamic roles, voices, and strategies of women in shaping political discourses across Francophone Africa for the upcoming co-edited volume Charting Power in Patriarchal Landscapes: Women's Agency and Political Discourses in Africa during Crisis with Palgrave Macmillan publisher. Literature on feminist theory, African cultural politics, and citizenship studies has demonstrated how women are not just subjects of rights but active authors of political belonging. While women’s activism and leadership have often been under-represented in mainstream narratives, their interventions, whether in grassroots mobilisation, political institutions, intellectual production, or transnational networks, have profoundly influenced debates around governance, democracy, human rights, peacebuilding, and social transformation. This transdisciplinary edited volume aims to explore different institutional arrangements developed by women in Africa in order to charter power in entrenched patriarchal landscapes during crisis. It seeks to amplify the considerable untold women’s political agency in Francophone, Anglophone and Lusophone Africa.

We seek contributions that critically engage with women’s agency in political spheres, broadly defined, from the colonial to the contemporary era. Themes of interest may include (but are not limited to):

• Women, migration, transnational solidarities, diaspora activism, and global feminist networks.

• Women and political leadership in postcolonial societies

• Women’s participation in nationalist, liberation, and postcolonial movements.

• Feminist critiques of power, patriarchy, and state-building.

• Women’s voices in diplomacy, peacebuilding, conflict resolution, and transitional justice.

• Intersectionality and political belonging: class, ethnicity, religion, and generation.

• Representations of women in political discourse, media, and cultural production.

• The challenges and prospects of women’s leadership in political parties, civil society, and public office.

• Women in faith-based political discourses.

• The politics of voice and silence in women’s autobiographies.

• Gendered politics and sexuolitics.

• Ecofeminism and political discourse around climate justice

• Women and political rhetoric in Francophone, Lusophone, and Anglophone Africa 

We especially welcome interdisciplinary approaches and case studies from diverse Francophone, Anglophone, and Lusophone contexts (South, West, Central, and North Africa, as well as the diaspora), in both French and English. Comparative reflections across regions and languages are also welcome.

Submission Guidelines:

Please submit a 250-300 word abstract and a short bio (100 words) by March 30, 2026, to the editors, Dr Tshimpaka at leon.tshimpaka@up.ac.za and Dr Amina at saidouax@jmu.edu with the subject line “Women's Agency and Political Discourses in Africa during Crisis".

Selected contributors will be notified by April 1, 2026, of the retainment of their abstracts and invitation to submit a full book chapter by July 30, 2026