Doves of Fire: Women, Gender and Resistance in Western Sahara and Equatorial Guinea

My thesis focuses on indigenous women’s intersectional resistance in Western Sahara and Equatorial Guinea, from the onset of Spanish colonialism until the present day. Resistance has received scant academic attention and is under-theorised. The gendered aspects of resistance are even more deeply in shadow. Furthermore Spain’s former African colonies are themselves often ignored in Hispanic Studies. Taking these gaps as a starting point, I query, in this thesis, the relationship between gender and resistance to oppressive regimes. I focus on constructions of gender and how they influence both the tactics of resistance that women employ and the punishments dealt to activists. I also look at how women’s participation in resistance activities challenges hegemonic gender norms. Drawing on Spanish government colonial archives and fieldwork conducted in Equatorial Guinea, the Saharawi refugee camps in Algeria and the occupied zone of Western Sahara, and amongst the Saharawi and Equatoguinean diaspora in Europe, I argue that not only is gender central to understanding resistance to dictatorial regimes and colonialism, but also that scholars of authoritarianism must consider gender when assessing how such regimes maintain power. Secondly, I contend that globally hegemonic constructions of gender and particularly of ‘gender equality’ are essential to the international geopolitics that allow the continuation of the Obiang dictatorship in Equatorial Guinea and the Moroccan occupation of Western Sahara.