 One of the key areas of contemporary interest in Africana philosophy—the study of gender and sexuality—is both promising and difficult to summarize. In fact, describing it as a single area would be unforgivably misleading were it not for the expository constraints of this exercise and for all of the qualifications that will soon follow. It is less an area than an array of topics and issues that have yet to come into focus as a subfield in Africana philosophy in the way they have elsewhere. A detailed study of the reasons for the field’s elusiveness are beyond the scope of this entry, but it is worth noting that the most obvious factors—the existence of structures that have historically discouraged or openly excluded the study of these issues or the participation of the people most likely to take an interest in them—are among the subjects that researchers in this area take up.