The problems and intersectional politics of "#BeingFemaleinNigeria"

In June 2015, Nigerian women on Twitter convened around the hashtag “#BeingFemaleinNigeria” (#BFIN) to represent their experiences, observations, and critiques of patriarchal oppression in Nigeria. This article parses the content and internal politics of #BFIN as a Nigerian feminist hashtag campaign. Given that there is no singular Nigerian female experience, and that experience is not unmediated, the article asks: as represented by participants in the #BFIN campaign, what are the issues involved in being a woman in Nigeria, and for whom exactly, for Nigerian women occupying what kinds of discursive-material subject positions? Based on a thematic and intersectional analysis of 700 #BFIN tweets, I argue that the predominant representations are of the voice, experiences, and concerns of a type of subject that I call “the empowered Nigerian woman,” an educated, capacious, and confident urban career woman belonging to the country’s higher socio-economic strata. The campaign made urgently important claims about mundane sexist attitudes and practices that impede this type of Nigerian woman. However, marked by a lack of intersectional consciousness, the predominant story of the campaign was unrepresentative of the problems and experiences of the vast majority of Nigerian women

Author interview: Q and A with Dr Simidele Dosekun on fashioning postfeminism: spectacular femininity and transnational culture

In this author interview, we speak to Dr Simidele Dosekun about her new book, Fashioning Postfeminism: Spectacular Femininity and Transnational Culture, which reflects on ideas about postfeminist self-fashioning and subjectivity through interviews with women in Lagos, Nigeria, who practise a spectacularly feminine style

Feminist book publishing today

In this piece, Bibi Bakare-Yusuf, publisher of Cassava Republic Press based in Abuja (Nigeria) and London (UK), discusses with Simidele Dosekun her founding and continued visions for the press, how these translate into the daily management and operations of the business, and the opportunities and challenges publishing presents for feminist, Black and African political purposes, including transnationally. We also discuss what it means to run and brand a feminist business in a contemporary cultural climate in which feminism is said to be ‘popular’

Intimate archives: rethinking gender in African Studies

On 14 April 2021, the Governing Intimacies: Sexualities, Gender and Governance in the Postcolonial World research project, convened by Associate Professor Srila Roy at the University of the Witwatersrand, Johannesburg, hosted a webinar discussion between Oluwakemi M. Balogun (University of Oregon), Simidele Dosekun (London School of Economics), and Jacqueline-Bethel Tchouta Mougoué (University of Wisconsin) about their recently published books: Beauty Diplomacy: Embodying an Emerging Nation (Balogun, 2020); Fashioning Postfeminism: Spectacular Femininity and Transnational Culture (Dosekun, 2020), and Gender, Separatist Politics and Embodied Nationalism in Cameroon (Mougoué, 2019). The webinar was organised and hosted by Professor Srila Roy and Dr Caio Simões De Araújo