Ebook: Changing Narratives of Sexuality: Contestations, Compliance and Women’s Empowerment

Innovative exploration between sexuality and women's empowerment.

Changing Narratives of Sexuality examines the tensions and contradictions in constructions of gender, sexuality and women's empowerment in the various narrations of sexuality told by and about women. From storytelling to women's engagement with state institutions, stories of unmarried women and ageing women, a sex scandal and narrations of religious influence on women's subjectivities and sexualities, this impressive collection explores sexuality in a wide range of national contexts in the global South.

The authors analyse what scope exists for women to subvert repressive norms and conceptions of heterosexuality, interweaving rich, contextual detail with theoretical concerns.

Charmaine Pereira is a feminist scholar-activist who has worked extensively on the themes of feminist thought and practice, sexuality, gender and university education, and civil society and the state. Based in Abuja, she coordinates the Initiative for Women’s Studies in Nigeria (IWSN), which strengthens capacity for teaching and research in gender and women’s studies. As IWSN national coordinator, Pereira has developed and led programmes on the politics of sexual harassment and sexual violence in universities, gender justice and women’s citizenship, and women’s empowerment. She is the author of Gender in the Making of the Nigerian University System (2007) and co-editor of Jacketed Women: Qualitative Research Methodologies on Sexualities and Gender in Africa (2013).