The majority of African States have now begun to profess a gender politics that is usually couched in terms of encouraging women's integration into development. African women's political maturation has been most visible at international forums, but locally, too, African women have been engaged in political action. In a number of States, individual women have capitalized on their position as wife of the Head of State to assume powerful new roles, often arrogating themselves the right to represent and lead women. However, this First Lady phenomenon raises questions regarding the democratic character of this form of gender politics. While feminism is defined as being the popular struggle of African women for their liberation from the various forms of oppression they endure, this is counterpoised to the idea of a femocracy - an antidemocratic female power structure dominated by a small clique of women whose authority derives from their being married to powerful men. A case study of the femocracy established in Nigeria by Maryam Babangida, the wife of General Ibrahim Badamasi Babangida who seized power in 1985, shows that femocracy does not lead to any enduring improvement in the lives of ordinary women, nor can it be successfully transformed to create a democratic space for women in an otherwise totalitarian society.