Women's Movements and Constitution Making after Civil Unrest and Conflict in Africa: The Cases of Kenya and Somalia

2016 ◽  
Vol 12 (01) ◽  
pp. 78-106 ◽  
Author(s):  
Aili Mari Tripp
Keyword(s):  
Women's Rights ◽  
Civil Conflict ◽  
Women's Movements ◽  
Customary Law ◽  
Women’S Rights ◽  
Gender Quotas ◽  
African Countries ◽  
Conflict In Africa ◽  
The Impact ◽  
Constitutional Changes

As numerous conflicts have come to an end in Africa over the past two decades, women's movements have sought to advance a women's rights agenda through peace accords; through constitutional, legislative, and electoral reforms; as well as through the introduction of gender quotas. This article focuses the impact women's movements have had in shaping constitutions after periods of turmoil, particularly in areas of equality, customary law, antidiscrimination, violence against women, quotas, and citizenship rights. It demonstrates how countries that have come out of major civil conflict and violent upheaval in Africa after the mid-1990s—but especially after 2000—have made more constitutional changes with respect to women's rights than other African countries. The second part of the article provides two examples of how women's movements influenced constitutional changes pertaining to gender equality as well as the difficulties they encountered, particularly with respect to the international community.

scholarly journals Challenges Surrounding the Adjudication of Women's Rights in Relation to Customary Law and Practices in Tanzania

2019 ◽  
Vol 22 ◽  
pp. 1-29
Author(s):  
Norah Hashim Msuya
Keyword(s):  
Human Rights ◽  
Women's Rights ◽  
Gender Discrimination ◽  
Customary Law ◽  
Women’S Rights ◽  
Traditional Practices ◽  
Human Rights Law ◽  
African Countries ◽  
National Human ◽  
Harmful Traditional Practices

Women's rights litigation has produced varied outcomes in many African countries. Although courts have looked at the legislation that discriminates against women with different degrees of success, matters such as tradition and culture continue to be unpredictable when subject to lawsuit. In Tanzania, the judiciary has gradually begun to recognise that discrimination on a prescribed ground cannot be justified. However, this principle has not blocked some judges from maintaining that gender discrimination based on customary rules can still be justified, despite the existence of internal, regional and national human rights law, which prohibits it. It is contended that the judiciary has a significant role to play in ensuring that customary law and harmful traditional practices are reformed and advanced to comply with human rights legislation and ensure equality between men and women in Tanzania.     

The Transnational Women's Rights Movement and the World Economy

2020 ◽  
Vol 6 (2) ◽  
pp. 145-173 ◽  
Author(s):  
Heidi E. Rademacher
Keyword(s):  
Women's Rights ◽  
Small Body ◽  
World System ◽  
World Society ◽  
Women’S Rights ◽  
Social Movement Organizations ◽  
Global Movement ◽  
Negative Effect ◽  
Society Perspective ◽  
The Impact

Promoting the ratification of the Convention on the Elimination of All Forms of Discrimination against Women (CEDAW) was a key objective of the transnational women's movement of the 1980s and 1990s. Yet, few studies examine what factors contribute to ratification. The small body of literature on this topic comes from a world-society perspective, which suggests that CEDAW represented a global shift toward women's rights and that ratification increased as international NGOs proliferated. However, this framing fails to consider whether diffusion varies in a stratified world-system. I combine world-society and world-systems approaches, adding to the literature by examining the impact of women's and human rights transnational social movement organizations on CEDAW ratification at varied world-system positions. The findings illustrate the complex strengths and limitations of a global movement, with such organizations having a negative effect on ratification among core nations, a positive effect in the semiperiphery, and no effect among periphery nations. This suggests that the impact of mobilization was neither a universal application of global scripts nor simply representative of the broad domination of core nations, but a complex and diverse result of civil society actors embedded in a politically stratified world.

scholarly journals Perempuan dan Hukum dalam Masyarakat Hukum Adat Lampung Sebatin

2018 ◽  
Vol 10 (2) ◽  
pp. 197-125
Author(s):  
Zuhraini Zuhraini
Keyword(s):  
Women's Rights ◽  
Indigenous Communities ◽  
Customary Law ◽  
Women’S Rights ◽  
Gender Analysis ◽  
Marriage Law ◽  
Inheritance Law ◽  
Biological Determinism ◽  
Fair Principles

The interpretation of the Qur'an is often disputed. The terms of custom, culture and ideology is not one thing that descends from the sky. It is shaped by humans and socialized from one generation to other. Biological determinism has also reinforced the view. In such situations, the differences, discrimination, and injustice resulting from mistakes in understanding and interpreting the universal doctrine, create injustices against women, including the women’s rights and position in Lampung Sebatin customary law community. This article discusses the rights and position of women in Lampung Sebatin customary law community and the form of injustice for women in the society. The conclusion shows that, firstly, women's rights and position in Lampang Sebatin customary law community are far from fair principles. Not fair either in marriage law or inheritance law. Second, the form of injustice for women in indigenous communities of Lampung Sebatin, from gender analysis is marginalization, penomorduaan and labeling, violence, and excessive workload. 

scholarly journals Customary Law, Women's Rights and Traditional Courts in Cameroon

2016 ◽  
Vol 27 (3) ◽  
pp. 349-356
Author(s):  
Joseph N. Temngah
Keyword(s):  
Women's Rights ◽  
Customary Law ◽  
Women’S Rights ◽  
Statutory Law

This article highlights the controversy over Women's Rights in Cameroon given that women are regarded as a man's property under customary law. The article points out the position of women's rights under statutory law. It compares both rules without settling for either of them. Both rules are sources of Cameroonian law and are administered concurrently by the courts. Again, this article shows the awareness women have demonstrated by challenging the customary law position which considers a woman as an object. Finally, the article settles for the codification of laws notwithstanding the difficulties involved in this exercise, especially in a bi-jural state like Cameroon.

The Impact of Forensic Issues on Women's Rights

1988 ◽  
Vol 528 (1 Human Sexual) ◽  
pp. 361-372 ◽  
Author(s):  
LENORE E. A. WALKER
Keyword(s):  
Women's Rights ◽  
Women’S Rights ◽  
The Impact

Women in Burundi

2020 ◽  
Author(s):  
Marie Saiget
Keyword(s):  
Women's Rights ◽  
Political Representation ◽  
Women's Organizations ◽  
Women’S Rights ◽  
Gender Quotas ◽  
Collective Actions ◽  
Domestic Sphere ◽  
Post Conflict ◽  
History Of ◽  
Women’S Organizations

The history of women is characterized by nonlinear and gendered social, political and economic processes. In particular, the history of Burundian women’s collective actions has been embedded in the contested and violent trajectory of the Burundian state. Burundian women’s collective actions refer to a broad range of interactions: from protest, and social mobilizations to institutionalized actions. These interactions have been shaped by both global and local social structures, and by complex conflictive and cooperative relations between the Burundian state, political parties, women’s organizations and movements, and external actors (colonial powers, international organizations, non-governmental organizations). Women’s experiences in Burundi’s pre-colonial patriarchal society are little known, with the exception of the glorified Queen-mothers. German and Belgian colonial policies (1886–1962) reinforced and rigidified pre-colonial social constructions of ethnic and gendered social identities and roles, assigning ordinary women to the domestic sphere and sanctioning their social inferior status along with ethnic lines (Tutsi, Hutu, and Twa). After Burundi’s independence, the one-party military regime organized and supervised the first forms of women’s political participation through the Union des femmes burundaises (1962–1980s). The democratic transition of the early 1990s led to the creation of autonomous women’s organizations and networks, which were extended during the civil war (1993–2005). Burundian women actively contributed to national and grassroots peace processes. In particular, a delegation of seven Burundian women participated in the negotiations held in Arusha (1998–2000), with observer status. Post-conflict struggles for women’s rights posed the central issue of women’s political representation, with the adoption of gender quotas from 2005, but left aside other issues after 2010, such as women’s right to inherit land. In Spring 2015, Burundian women were present in protests against the president’s third mandate; with the women’s march being the first to reach the city center in March 2015. Women’s organizations kept mobilizing towards women’s rights after the electoral crisis, in exile or within Burundi, though facing important financial constraints and political repression.

Implementing Inclusion: Gender Quotas, Inequality, and Backlash in Kenya

2020 ◽  
pp. 1-25
Author(s):  
Marie E. Berry ◽  
Yolande Bouka ◽  
Marilyn Muthoni Kamuru
Keyword(s):  
Focus Groups ◽  
Women's Rights ◽  
Women’S Rights ◽  
Gender Quotas ◽  
Top Down ◽  
Gender Oppression ◽  
Women's Power ◽  
Laws And Policies ◽  
Gender Quota ◽  
New Inequalities

Abstract Extensive research has affirmed the potential of gender quotas to advance women's political inclusion. When Kenya's gender quota took effect after a new constitution was promulgated in 2010, women were elected to the highest number of seats in the country's history. In this article, we investigate how the process of implementing the quota has shaped Kenyan women's power more broadly. Drawing on more than 80 interviews and 24 focus groups with 140 participants, we affirm and refine the literature on quotas by making two conceptual contributions: (1) quota design can inadvertently create new inequalities among women in government, and (2) women's entry into previously male-dominated spaces can be met with patriarchal backlash, amplifying gender oppression. Using the ongoing process of quota implementation in Kenya as a case to theoretically question inclusionary efforts to empower women more generally, our analysis highlights the challenges for implementing women's rights laws and policies and the need for women's rights activists to prioritize a parallel bottom-up process of transforming gendered power relations alongside top-down institutional efforts.

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