Whom Do We Thank for Women’s Conferences?

By Ama Ata Aidoo

Here

in this truly

no man’s land,

all is fair as understood not in terms of

Penelope’s false blondness but

that which is right and healthy.

Where

we throw

our big

hairy legs and

bottoms that make any Levi’s cry for air.

Hairy too are the faces

we acknowledge

—some were born that way—or

as signs of:

the pills we took in,

the wombs we threw out, and

plain

normal

aging.

Yet

ancient graces

walk elegantly tall or

charmingly petite

in celebration pinks and royal indigos . . .

as though the earth itself was

newly found,

the air a discovery.

We were not afraid of ideas.

Not our own.

Not those of others.

Along those corridors and

in those easy days’ assemblies,

apologizing for our being was

not on.

We were

Nobody’s wives or mistresses.

No one called us

“Mother”:

and when some daughters present did,

it was with the clearest mandate that

they picked the fight where we brought it.

We were

only ourselves:

each alone as when we were born, and

shall be, when

we died.

But

living and together,

a true power thing that

searches

researches

solving

resolving . . .

And as always

sweetly hopeful as

only women can be.

Quote: “African women were feminists long before feminism. They had to be.”

— Ama Ata Aidoo

Ama Ata Aidoo was a Ghanaian writer, politician, and academic whose work problematized the paradoxes of modern African identity, particularly for women. She served as Ghana’s Minister of Education from 1982 to 1983. Her work includes the play The Dilemma of a Ghost (Longman, 1965), which made her the first published female African dramatist; the novel Our Sister Killjoy; or, Reflections from a Black-Eyed Squint (Longman, 1966); the short story collection No Sweetness Here (Longman, 1970); and the poetry collection Someone Talking to Sometime (College Press, 1985). Aidoo earned a BA from the University of Ghana in 1964. She taught as a professor in Ghana, Kenya, and the United States.

Resources https://www.poetryfoundation.org/poets/ama-ata-aidoo

African Feminism vs. Western Feminism

Aidoo’s feminism was distinctly African. She rejected the idea that gender equality could be discussed apart from history, economics, and colonialism. In her view, feminism in Africa could not simply replicate Western models focused on individual liberation or legal equality. It had to address the communal structures, cultural continuity, and the intersection of patriarchy with imperialism that produced inequality.

Her characters are not merely fighting men; they are negotiating complex worlds shaped by colonial education, class and tradition. They challenge the notion that progress means rejecting culture. Instead, Aidoo’s women seek to redefine it. Her feminism emphasizes cooperation, storytelling, and cultural reclamation over confrontation, a framework many scholars now recognize as central to African feminist thought. Aidoo remarked in her 1998 essay “The African Woman Today” that she is a feminist, insisting that “every woman and every man should be a feminist.”

Beyond the Page: Educator, Activist, and Advocate

 Aidoo’s activism extended beyond writing. In 1982, she was appointed Ghana’s Secretary for Education under Jerry Rawlings’ government, the first woman to hold the post. She resigned a year later as she was frustrated by the political constraints that prevented her from implementing changes. She later worked in Zimbabwe with the Ministry of Education’s Curriculum Development Unit and was active in the Zimbabwe Women Writers Group. In 2000, she co-founded the Mbaasem Foundation with her daughter Kinna Likimani, a nonprofit organization supporting Ghanaian and African women writers. Through education, mentorship, and advocacy, she advanced the cultural infrastructure necessary for African women’s literary production, a vision of feminism that was as practical as it was philosophical.

Resource: https://www.blackwomenradicals.com/blog-feed/the-radical-feminist-imagination-of-ama-ata-aidoo

~Nikki