A Nigerian woman scholar addresses three main areas of literature in gender and women's studies, a discipline which has become a vast field of research, teaching and activism in Africa and beyond. She situates African women's studies in the context ofinternational feminism, regional political and institutional conditions. The study addresses recent publications in the general field of state and politics, from precolonial times to the present; reviews a range of material grouped under the heading of cultural studies; and considers the historical and contempoary literature on all aspects of women's involvement in various sphers of work and the economy. Finally, the author questions the relationship between women's studies and the women's movement in Africa.