Prof Stephanie Cawood – former Director of the Centre for Gender and Africa Studies, University of the Free State – Mandelaism

This week on Womanity, Dr Amaleya Goneos-Malka speaks with Professor Stephanie Cawood, an interdisciplinary scholar and former Director of the Centre for Gender and Africa Studies at the University of the Free State. This conversation journeys into the intersections of African identity, feminism, education, leadership, memory, and social transformation

Drawing from her experiences as a founding member and former director of the Centre for Gender and Africa Studies at the University of the Free State, Professor Cawood shares the personal and academic experiences that shaped her lifelong commitment to Africa-centred scholarship and gender justice.

Originally founded in 2007 as the Centre for Africa Studies, the institution focused on postgraduate research and social justice scholarship relating to Africa’s politics, cultures, histories, and global relationships. Over time, gender studies became increasingly integrated into its work, leading to a formal repositioning of the centre to foreground both African and gender scholarship.

A Childhood Spark that Grew into a Scholarly Mission

Professor Cawood reflects on how her awareness of gender inequality began in childhood, long before she had the language to explain it. Growing up with a strong pride in being African, she recalls feeling uncomfortable when witnessing women being treated differently and recognising early on that inequality was deeply embedded in society.

These formative experiences later evolved into a scholarly journey focused on both Africa Studies and Gender Studies. Two fields she describes as “cognate allies” because both challenge historical prejudices, inequalities, and inherited systems of exclusion.

Breaking Academic Silos Through Interdisciplinary Thinking

Professor Cawood describes herself as an “interdisciplinarian” and “epistemic traveller”; someone who crosses disciplines, methodologies, and intellectual boundaries in pursuit of deeper understanding. She shares how innovation often emerges when scholars move beyond traditional silos and embrace cross-disciplinary thinking. Professor Cawood explains that understanding how people create meaning in their lives requires insights from multiple fields including culture, memory, heritage, gender, geography, ecology, and politics.

This openness to intellectual exploration has shaped her work on sacred sites, ecological memory, and spatial identity, all connected through what she describes as “pragmatic constructivism”, the idea of placing the body back into the environment and understanding human experiences within specific spatial and social contexts

Leadership Rooted in Consensus and Humanity

Reflecting on her years as director, Professor Cawood discusses her philosophy of leadership, inspired in part by her doctoral research on Nelson Mandela.

She speaks about Mandela’s concept of leadership as “a shepherd leading from behind”; a style grounded in consensus-building, collaboration, and bringing people along rather than dominating them.

The discussion explores the challenges of leading within academic environments that often remain highly masculine in structure and culture. Rather than adopting authoritarian approaches, Professor Cawood explains how she learned to strategically position ideas, build academic and business cases, and cultivate support for transformative institutional change.

Under this leadership approach, the Centre for Gender and Africa Studies became one of the university’s most successful and productive research centres.

Reframing Feminism in African Contexts

In this conversation, we discuss African feminism and the complexities surrounding the term “feminist.” Defining feminism fundamentally as a belief in equality. However, Professor Cawood also explains why many younger African women remain hesitant to identify as feminists due to perceptions that feminism is Western, anti-men, or disconnected from African traditions and family structures. African feminist thought is diverse. It includes concepts such as womanism, motherism, and stiwanism; African-centred frameworks that emphasise complementarity, social transformation, culture, motherhood, and communal wellbeing.

Rather than presenting feminism as a singular ideology, we highlight the richness and plurality of African feminisms, each shaped by different cultural and social realities across the continent.

Importantly, Professor Cawood notes that many women already live deeply feminist lives through their actions, resilience, leadership, and agency, even if they do not use the term itself.

Education as the Key to Gender Equality

Turning toward global gender equality, the discussion references findings from the World Economic Forum’s Global Gender Gap Report, which estimates that economic and political gender parity remain generations away.

Professor Cawood identifies education as the single most important intervention for accelerating gender equality, particularly ensuring equal educational access for girls across Africa. At the same time, she acknowledges the immense structural challenges facing the continent, including instability, insecurity, poverty, food insecurity, and conflict in regions such as the Sahel and the DRC. While education has transformative potential, sustainable change requires peace, stability, dignity, and coordinated continental responses.

A Message of Integrity, Kindness and Hope

Closing the conversation, Professor Cawood offers an inspiring message to girls and women across Africa. In a world often marked by division and uncertainty, she encourages listeners to remain grounded in integrity, kindness, tolerance, and respect; even when confronted by disagreement or adversity. Meaningful change begins when ordinary individuals consistently choose to do the right thing.