Intersections of African Women’s Theologies and African Masculinities: Towards Gender Justice and Social Transformation

Located at the intersection of scholarship, community praxis, public theology, and social engagement, this Research Topic affirms that theology is never neutral. Across African contexts and the African diaspora, religion and theology continually shape social identities, gender relations, moral values, community practices, and public life. In this collection, “African” is understood inclusively, encompassing both the diversity of countries and communities across the continent and African heritage more broadly, including the experiences of people who identify as African living in the diaspora. Contributions are welcome from scholars across the globe, provided their work engages substantively with these experiences. While theological traditions have sometimes been used to legitimise patriarchy, gender inequality, exclusion, and social injustice, they also contain powerful resources for resistance, healing, liberation, and transformation. African Women’s Theologies centre African women’s experiences, agency, and epistemologies, challenging patriarchal, colonial, and Eurocentric forms of knowledge while affirming women’s voices in the church, academy, and community life. African Masculinities Studies examine how masculinities are socially constructed within African societies and diasporic communities in relation to power, violence, coloniality, race, religion, and culture, offering tools to interrogate harmful masculinities and imagine more equitable and life giving alternatives.Despite their shared commitments to justice and transformation, African Women’s Theologies and African Masculinities Studies have often evolved as parallel fields, limiting their combined capacity to address complex and interconnected social issues such as gender based violence, sexual and reproductive injustice, ecological crises, economic inequality, migration, queer exclusion, and spiritual trauma. This Research Topic seeks to bring these two approaches into sustained, critical dialogue to generate an integrated framework that is intellectually rigorous, ethically grounded, sociologically informed, and responsive to the lived realities of African communities, both on the continent and in the diaspora. By exploring how religion, gender, and power intersect in everyday life, the collection aims to advance a decolonial, contextually rooted understanding of social transformation and gender justice with relevance for communities, faith based organisations, academic institutions, and civil society.Contributors are invited to submit academically researched papers on, but not limited to, the following themes:- African Women’s Theologies: challenging patriarchal and colonial systems while affirming women’s voices in shaping ethical and social life.- African Masculinities Studies: analysing the social construction of masculinities in relation to violence, responsibility, and transformation, across the continent and in diasporic contexts.- Decolonial and intersectional approaches to gender, justice, and social transformation.- Faith, power, and gender relations in African public and community contexts, including diasporic communities.- Religion and sociological thought on resistance, relationality, and liberation.We welcome Original Research, Review, Perspective, and Community Case Study articles that explore these intersections and contribute to sociological and theological understandings of gender, justice, and transformation in African contexts and among African diasporic communities. Topic editors: Sophia Chirongoma, Loreen Maseno, Linda Naicker Source: https://www.frontiersin.org/research-topics/83698/intersections-of-african-womens-theologies-and-african-masculinities-towards-gender-justice-and-social-transformation