Gretchen Bauer

Biography

Gretchen Bauer, Ph.D. (University of Wisconsin-Madison, 1994), joined the Department in 1994. She teaches classes in African politics, African politics and literature, and gender and politics. She conducts research on women's political leadership in Africa, with a focus on women in parliament and cabinet in Ghana and West Africa. She has been a visiting researcher at the Institute for Public Policy Research in Windhoek, Namibia (2002) and at the University of Botswana in Gaborone (2009). During 2016, she was a Fulbright Scholar at the University of Ghana (UG); in 2019 a senior fellow at the Merian Institute for Advanced Studies in Africa (MIASA) at UG, and in 2023 again a Senior Fellow at MIASA at UG. She is co-editor of Women in African Politics (Lynne Rienner 2006), Women in Executive Power: A Global Overview (Routledge 2011) and Gender and the Judiciary in Africa: From Obscurity to Parity (Routledge 2016), among other books and many journal articles. At UD, from 2014–2018, she directed the summer civic leadership institutes for Mandela Washington Fellows as part of the Young African Leaders Initiative (YALI). From 2022–2025, she served as the vice president, president and past president of the African Studies Association – USA. From August to December 2026, she will be a STIAS Fellow at the Stellenbosch Institute for Advanced Study in Stellenbosch, South Africa.

Publications

‘You Feel That You Can Make a Difference in the World’: Experiences of Women Cabinet Ministers in Five West African Countries. 2024 ASA Presidential Lecture. Revise and resubmit. African Studies Review.

Mobilization Around Violence Against Women in Africa. In Aili Mari Tripp and Ola Yacob-Haliso, eds. Women’s Mobilization in Africa. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2026.

Engendered Political Transitions in Ghana? Impacts on Women’s Rights and Representation. In Frank Ohemeng and Joseph Ayee, eds. Peaceful Political Transition in Ghana: Elections, Institutions, and Impact, 1992-2024. New York: Lexington Books, 2026. Co-authored with Rosina Foli.

‘We See What Men Don’t See’: Reflections of Women Cabinet Ministers from The Gambia, Liberia, and Sierra Leone. Africa Today. 2025. 71(3-4): 13-41.

‘Who Will Open the Door?’ Women in Parliament and Cabinet in Ghana. In Scott Strauss and Aili Mari Tripp, eds. The State, Ethnicity, and Gender in Africa: Intellectual Legacies of M. Crawford Young. Madison: University of Wisconsin Press, 2024: 274-292. Co-authored with Akosua Darkwah.