African American Women

Social constructions including race, political class, degree of wealth, moral codes, and of course gender are really hot topics today. We shall focus on women in this paper and their role in wars; African women in particular have a different way of life than European women. Obioma Nnaemeka, in her article “Bringing African Women into the Classroom: Rethinking Pedagogy and Epistemology”, that an outsider to a culture or a way of life can still learn and teach about this (571). Not only does this mean that anybody can be immersed into African culture, but also, within the African culture, men can still publish artistic works about women and vice versa. Even though women do have positive portrayals in many films, there is often times some insight

The Hunting Ground, directed by Kirby Dick, shows several examples of women in the United States being overjoyed at their acceptance into prestigious universities. Many American women also have a strong desire to join the military. Even though parents sending their daughters off think that they will have a great, safe experience, this is not always the case. Dirk’s documentary shows that many women on several prestigious college campuses, including but not limited to Harvard University, Yale University, the University of Southern California, the University of California, Berkeley, and Arizona State University are raped. The act is most commonly performed by men who take advantage of drunk women, although men often times have to resort to physical force to rape women. Rather than confront the problem of rape culture on college campuses, many colleges try to cover up the problems in order to not lose their prestige. The Hunting Ground shows that the few college women that do report having been raped, many administrators try to (partially) blame the incident on the victims and make excuses for the perpetrators. According to Dirk’s documentary, “more than 16 percent of college women are sexually assaulted while in college”. In the case of the military, women soldiers are vastly outnumbered by male military members and have difficulty keeping up with them. The Invisible War, also directed by Kirby Dick, shows that

Keith Shiri’s Directory of African Film-makers and Films (1992) makes a claim that of the over 250 filmmakers in Africa in the year of 1992, less than 10 were women, cited by the article “The emergence of women’s film-making in francophone sub-saharan Africa: from pioneering figures to contemporary directors” written by Lizelle Bisschoff (159). Bisschoff goes on to explain, however, that others studying this topic have more recently pointed to figures way higher, with there now being over a hundred women filmmakers in Africa (159). Still, women are primarily limited to behind the scenes roles such as makeup artistry, editing, production management, and wardrobing, therefore directing far fewer films than men and Bisschoff says this is a problem “because it results in an imbalanced representation of sociocultural complexities as well as disproportionate representations of individual and collective subjectivities and identities” (159). The uniqueness of being an African filmmaker is that there are so many routes to take when conveying a message. It is true that many women filmmakers focus on women’s issues, but this can include many things, such as being a mother, being a wife, being a target for sexual assault, and going through periods. In addition, they can talk about the same cultural themes as men. Safi Faye explains that she does not only focus on women, but on society as a whole, and she acknowledges