Patricia McFadden is a radical African feminist, sociologist, writer, educator, and publisher from eSwatini. She is also an activist and scholar who worked in the anti-apartheid movement for more than 20 years. McFadden has worked in the African and global women’s movements as well. As a writer, she has been the target of political persecution. She has worked as editor of the Southern African Feminist Review and African Feminist Perspectives. She currently teaches, and advocates internationally for women’s issues. McFadden has served as a professor at Cornell University, Spelman College, Syracuse University and Smith College in the United States. She also works as a “feminist consultant”, supporting women in creating institutionally sustainable feminist spaces within Southern Africa. Patricia is a member of the Development Alternatives for Women in the New Era (DAWN) and Akina Mama wa Afrika networks, and is also a gender trainer for the Women’s Movement and the United Nations system.
She attended the University of Botswana and Swaziland studying politics and administration, with economics and sociology as minors. She then went to the University of Dar es Salaam for a master’s degree in sociology. She received her PhD from Warwick University in the United Kingdom in 1987. She worked as a program officer in the Southern African Regional Institute for Policy Studies (SARIPS) in Zimbabwe, from 1993 to 2005. She worked as editor of the Southern African Feminist Review from 1995 to 2000. She served as international dean at the International Women’s University (IFU) from 1998 to 2000 in Hanover. She also taught in the Masters in Social Policy (MPS) program offered by SARIPS for the past seven years. She was an adjunct professor at Syracuse University Study Abroad program in Zimbabwe and then later at the parent location in Syracuse New York as a faculty member in the Department of African American Studies. As a writer, McFadden’s main areas of intellectual inquiry are: sexuality, reproductive and sexual health, and identity, violation and citizenship for African women. She has presented numerous papers at universities, conferences and seminars internationally in Norway, Sweden, Denmark, Namibia, South Africa, Ghana, Djibouti, Kenya, Uganda, Brazil, China, Germany, Ethiopia, the United Kingdom and others.
McFadden lives and works in Zimbabwe as well as at the level of the regional and global women’s movement. (She considers the Women’s Movement her home) She works particularly in conceptualizing gender within the African context; making the distinction between Gender as a construct and Feminism as a political ideology/stance. She also works in Sexuality and Reproductive Rights/Health, and more recently she has been focusing on issues of citizenship and relations of property between African women and the state.
