摘要：It may well be a feminist truism that women’s leadership has selfevident meaning, that is, women’s organising and strategising toadvance gender equality. Yet, deeper scrutiny exposes a terrain withcomplex embedded meanings that require unpacking: a single ‘definitive’ meaning of the term is inadequate conceptually to address thepower relationships, the homogeneity of women, and cover the theorisations of the meanings of leadership within Africa’s diverse contexts.The articles in this issue suggest that the concept “women’s leadership”itself is understood as an umbrella term that may at times both resist theneat categorisation of the mainstream literature on leadership, and beso broad and inclusive as to be ambiguous. Previous issues of Agenda have questioned thevalue of women’s leadership without the feminist demand for substantive equality. Mereappearance or numerical representation in political terms is not in itself a meaningful indicatorof women’s equality or the performance of leadership roles.
