Constitutions and women’s rights advocacy: strategic uses of gender provisions in Argentina, Chile, Botswana, and South Africa

2018 ◽  
Vol 8 (2) ◽  
pp. 228-247
Author(s):  
Priscilla A. Lambert ◽  
Druscilla L. Scribner
2021 ◽  
pp. 176-212
Author(s):  
Berihun Adugna Gebeye

This chapter explains how legal syncretism influences and manifests itself in the design and practice of constitutional rights—with a particular focus on women’s rights—in the constitutional systems of Nigeria, South Africa, and Ethiopia. The chapter demonstrates how the interaction between the liberal and indigenous conceptions of rights in a constitutional space produces unique regimes of women’s rights in these countries. The chapter first presents a brief theory of women’s rights as a standard of comparison and evaluation; this is done through a more general investigation of women’s rights in international law. This is then followed by a more focused discussion of women’s constitutional rights in Nigeria, South Africa, and Ethiopia. Such discussion explores the substantive content and the way in which women’s rights are constitutionalized, as well as their practical and judicial applications. The syncretic nature of women’s rights in these countries sheds some light on the importance of looking beyond the universalism versus cultural relativism debate when trying to enforce human rights in Africa.


2012 ◽  
Vol 26 (1) ◽  
pp. 97-120 ◽  
Author(s):  
Shari L. Dworkin ◽  
Christopher Colvin ◽  
Abbey Hatcher ◽  
Dean Peacock

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