Cameroon

This wide-ranging collection analyzes the status and progress of women both in a national context and collectively on a global scale, as a powerful social force in a rapidly evolving world. The countries studied―China, India, Indonesia, Iran, Egypt, Cameroon, South Africa, Italy, France, Brazil, Belize, Mexico, and the United States―represent a cross-section of economic conditions, cultural and religious traditions, political realities, and social contexts that shape women’s lives, challenges, and opportunities. Psychological and human rights perspectives highlight worldwide goals for equality and empowerment, with implications for today’s girls as they become the next generation of women. Women’s lived experience is compared and contrasted in such critical areas as: home and work; physical, medical, and psychological issues; safety and violence; sexual and reproductive concerns; political participation and status under the law; impact of technology and globalism; country-specific topics.

Christian Churches have been important in quite a few African movements. This book analyses different churches – Catholic, Protestant (mainstream), Evangelical, Pentecostal and Independent – and their beliefs, and also assesses their role in the emerging of civil society. Case studies of four countries: Ghana, Uganda, Zambia and Cameroon.

Contributors to this book include democracy activists as well as scholars, who look critically at the process of democratization in: Malawi, Cameroon, Nigeria, Ethiopia, Tanzania, Ghana and Gabon. The focus is not on institutions but on leadership, and also on the role of the military and churches in the reform process.

The authors note that the Cameroon government had announced the goal of restoring 12 million hectares of degraded land by 2030 and had applied for support from the Bonn Challenge and AFR100 initiatives. They argue that women, who constitute over 60% of the rural workforce in Central Africa, have a crucial role to play, and examine some forms of restoration so far undertaken by women’s groups in Cameroon.

Chapter 14, pp. 81-95, specifically discusses the electoral performance of the opposition and criticises its lack of internal democracy.

This volume investigates different abortion and reproductive practices across time, space, geography, national boundaries, and cultures. The authors specialise in the reproductive politics of Australia, Bolivia, Cameroon, France, ‘German East Africa,’ Ireland, Japan, Sweden, South Africa, the United States and Zanzibar, and cover the pre-modern era and the nineteenth and twentieth centuries, as well as the present day. Contributors draw on different theoretical frameworks, including ‘intersectionality’ and ‘reproductive justice’ to explore the very varied conditions in which women have been forced to make these life-altering decisions.