Creative methodologies Writing the stories of working women from popular classes in African urban milieux, 1920 — 1970

This conference seeks to address the problems of researching and writing the history of female urban professionals, that is women who earned an income by working in professions such as birth attendants, beauty specialists (hairdressers, beauticians), market vendors, craftswomen (tailors, pottery makers), wedding singers and musicians, and so on. However, how to do so? The aim of this conference is to reflect together on what it is perhaps the most obvious common points that these workers shared (and still share): the silence of historiography about them; their almost total absence from national master narratives, including stories of national liberation; their lack of subjectivity as historical actors.