Silenced Resistance: Women, Dictatorships, and Genderwashing in Western Sahara and Equatorial Guinea

Spain’s former African colonies—Equatorial Guinea and Western Sahara—share similar histories. Both are under the thumbs of heavy-handed, postcolonial regimes, and are known by human rights organizations as being among the worst places in the world with regard to oppression and lack of civil liberties. Yet the resistance movement in one is dominated by women, the other by men. In this innovative work, Joanna Allan demonstrates why we should foreground gender as key for understanding both authoritarian power projection and resistance. She brings an ethnographic component to a subject that has often been looked at through the lens of literary studies to examine how concerns for equality and women’s rights can be co-opted for authoritarian projects. She reveals how Moroccan and Equatoguinean regimes, in partnership with Western states and corporations, conjure a mirage of promoting equality while simultaneously undermining women’s rights in a bid to cash in on oil, minerals, and other natural resources. This genderwashing, along with historical local, indigenous, and colonially imposed gender norms mixed with Western misconceptions about African and Arab gender roles, plays an integral role in determining the shape and composition of public resistance to authoritarian regimes.Silenced Resistance: Women, Dictatorships, and Genderwashing in Western Sahara and Equatorial Guinea is written by Joanna Allan and published by University of Wisconsin Press. ISBNs for Silenced Resistance are 9780299318437, 0299318435 and the print ISBNs are 9780299318444, 0299318443. Additional ISBNs include 9780299318406.