The culture industries of our world have historically been dominated by men and the African continent is no exception.

Women’s engagement in arts, cultural production and sports has led to the transmission of radical ideas, beliefs and attitudes. Women’s participation in cultural economies, also speaks to the immense value and contributions of women and invigorated connections and possibilities for communities across the continent and world. Through arts and sports, women have challenged and broken stereotypes, amplified the demands of women’s and feminist movements, raised resources, and spread messages of social change. Arts, culture and sports are critical sites for social transformation and movement building.

In spite of this work, women practitioners in arts, cultural production and sports face persistent restraints from intimidation, harassment, and theft of work to isolation, immobility, burnout and limited access to networks of care, support, and resources of sustainability. By working through a lens of intersectionality, African women are in a key position to speak out against multiple oppressions – gender, sexuality, disability, race, class, ethnicity, geography, etc. – within their fields of work.

Now more than ever, women practitioners are in a unique place to enable deeper engagement with and mobilisation of new constituencies of people, particularly young women.