Women Missionaries and the Evangelization of Women in Africa

This chapter focuses on the role of Western women in the evangelization of women in sub-Saharan Africa from the early 1800s through the end of formal colonialism in the 1960s. It highlights key shifts in women’s missionary work and the influence that Western notions of race, culture, and gender had on the work. The chapter emphasizes the interwar period as the apex of foreign women’s influence, as Africans embraced education for girls and as many Western women served as headmistresses and teachers in girls’ schools. Missionary women invested in building relationships with African women and girls, and although these relationships were fraught by power differentials, cross-cultural friendships developed. Missionary women had to rely on African women as “culture brokers” to interpret Christianity within their communities, and these African women were critical to the indigenization of Christianity in Africa.