Women’s History Month Lecture: Working class women and West African liberation

University Square Stratford, E15 1NF

Ekua Andrea Agha will examine the factors that led to the creation of new roles for working class women in West African societies during the colonial period. The talk will make specific reference to Sembene Ousmane’s seminal novel, God’s Bits of Wood, to illustrate how women who were marginalised from the socio-economic centre of activity during this period challenged the African patriarchal and colonial systems by playing an active part in the historical 1947 Dakar-Niger railroad workers’ strike. Ekua will analyse how the effects of the defiant actions taken by these women who confronted the French colonial administration became the catalyst for the demand for liberation of French West Africa from France.