Edited by Bene E. Madunagu and published by DAWN Anglophone Africa, this 2003 comprehensive anthology compiles empirical research and case studies by African feminist scholars and activists, including Patricia McFadden, Cesnabmihilo Dorothy Aken’ova, Maria Musoke, and Victor Osehobo. The publication examines how economic globalisation, neoliberal structural adjustment, and entrenched patriarchal institutions shape women’s citizenship, health, and livelihoods across the continent. Utilizing comparative regional research, the volume positions marginalized African women not as passive subjects of economic restructuring, but as active agents developing alternative paradigms for social development and human well-being.

The anthology explores the intersections of political economy, body politics, and environmental justice through diverse national contexts. It addresses Patricia McFadden’s critique of traditional health frameworks, examining the social construction of women’s autonomous sexual rights and bodily integrity beyond reproductive roles. In Zimbabwe, the text traces struggles for constitutional change and land rights against exclusionary property laws, while Maria Musoke’s research in rural Uganda analyses the role of health information in enabling community-led health dissemination networks. Additionally, the collection documents women’s grassroots mobilisation against multinational oil companies in the Niger Delta and Cesnabmihilo Dorothy Aken’ova’s analysis of how systemic poverty, gender power imbalances, and policy failures drive maternal mortality and the HIV/AIDS crisis in Nigeria and Ghana.