(En)Gendering Africa's Triple Heritage: Women, Religion and the Postcolonial State

Abstract

Religion was perhaps one of the most contentious spheres of colonial domination. The colonial religious encounter between indigenous Sub-Saharan Africans and foreign missionaries in particular is a quintessential colonial experience. Indubitably the imposition, or acceptance, of colonizers’ religious beliefs and practices in colonial societies played a significant role in entrenching and legitimizing imperialism. In line with a methodology of closely examining the socio-religious and cultural ideologies that structurally sustain women’s statuses as subordinates in African postcolonial society and drawing on participant observations and primary interviews in Ghana, I examine, in this paper, the ways in which women challenge both traditional socio-cultural ideologies on women’s subservience and deconstruct dogmatic religious doctrine that reinforces women’s marginalization. Since religion and matters of spirituality impact the psyche so deeply, it is an important area of examination as far as decolonization projects and empowerment in the postcolony are concerned.