Women, Equality, and Citizenship in Contemporary Africa

2019 ◽  
Author(s):  
Robtel Neajai Pailey
Keyword(s):  
Lived Experience ◽  
Structural Adjustment ◽  
Women's Movements ◽  
Cultural Barriers ◽  
African Women ◽  
Gender Justice ◽  
Citizenship Rights ◽  
Cultural Rights ◽  
Independence Era ◽  
The Public Sphere

Though deeply contested, citizenship has come to be defined in gender-inclusive terms both as a status anchored in law, with attendant rights and resources, and as agency manifested in active political participation and representation. Scholars have argued that gender often determines how citizenship rights are distributed at household, community, national, and institutional levels, thereby leaving women with many responsibilities but few resources and little representation. Citizenship laws in different parts of Africa explicitly discriminate based on ethnicity, race, gender and religion, with women bearing the brunt of these inequities. In particular, African women have faced structural, institutional, and cultural barriers to ensuring full citizenship in policy and praxis, with contestations in the post-independence era centering around the fulfillment of citizenship rights embedded in law, practice, and lived experience. While African women’s concerns about their subjective roles as equal citizens were often sidelined during nationalist liberation movements, the post-independence era has presented more meaningful opportunities for women in the continent to demand equality of access to citizenship rights, resources, and representation. In contemporary times, a number of local, national, continental, and transnational developments have shaped the contours of the battle for women’s citizenship equality, including the prominence of domestic women’s movements; national constitutional reviews and revisions processes; electoral quotas; female labor force participation; and feminism as a unifying principle of gender justice. African women have had to overcome constraints imposed on them not only by patriarchy, but also by histories of slavery, colonialism, structural adjustment, land dispossession, militarism, and neoliberalism. They have often been subordinated in the domestic or private sphere, with gendered values and norms then undermining their agency in the public sphere. Although African women have managed to secure some political, socio-economic, and cultural rights, resources, and representation, this has certainly not been the panacea for achieving full equality of citizenship or gender justice.

scholarly journals "You Are Never Truly Free" Social Stigma in India and its Impact Upon Rehabilitation, Reintegration and Advocacy for Survivors of Sex Trafficking

2021 ◽  
Author(s):  
◽  
Sumu Diya Mukesh
Keyword(s):  
Human Rights ◽  
Lived Experience ◽  
Human Trafficking ◽  
Gender Discrimination ◽  
Sex Trafficking ◽  
Social Stigma ◽  
Vulnerable Groups ◽  
Structured Interviews ◽  
Cultural Rights ◽  
Trafficking Victims

<p>This research examines how social stigmas related to sex work and sexual activity in India contribute to the creation of environments conducive to gender discrimination and the erosion of female rights. It seeks to understand, through the work of anti-trafficking staff and the lived experience of sex trafficking survivors in Kolkata, how this subsequently impacts survivors' ability to be successfully rehabilitated and reintegrated into their communities. Human trafficking directly limits the human rights and freedoms which development aims to facilitate and realise; it is fundamentally a development concern. Violations of human rights are a cause and a consequence of trafficking in persons, making their universal promotion and protection relevant to anti-trafficking. Females constitute 80 per cent of all sex trafficking victims, demonstrating that it is a significantly gendered crime. India is home to 40 per cent of the estimated global slave population, and operates as a destination, transit and origin country for all forms of human trafficking.   This research involved semi-structured interviews focused on experiences and understandings of social stigma with eight staff of the anti-trafficking NGO Sanlaap, one staff member of a partnering Government-run shelter home, and one focus group with eight sex trafficking survivors. Data were analysed thematically through concepts of human rights, social stigma, gender discrimination and vulnerability.  The results indicated that prioritising the protection and promotion of their human rights was integral to Sanlaap's success in rehabilitating and reintegrating survivors. This research, therefore, reinforces conceptual links between human rights violations and sex trafficking, and argues that preventative action needs to have a more central role in current anti-trafficking efforts. The results demonstrate that stigma is a manifestation of power, which enables the subordination and displacement of vulnerable groups, reinforces inequality and power imbalances, and continues to undermine survivor rights to reintegration. This study also highlights where there is a need to advance discourse about cultural rights and sexuality within anti-trafficking work in India, and to implement broader approaches to women's development as part of sex trafficking prevention strategies.</p>

scholarly journals Questioning the Ideal of the Public Sphere: The Emotional Turn

2019 ◽  
Vol 5 (3) ◽  
pp. 205630511985217 ◽  
Author(s):  
Karin Wahl-Jorgensen
Keyword(s):  
Public Sphere ◽  
Lived Experience ◽  
Common Good ◽  
Public Debate ◽  
Letters To The Editor ◽  
The Public ◽  
Media System ◽  
Essential Resource ◽  
The Public Sphere ◽  
The Ideal

This article discusses the usefulness and limitations of Habermas concept of the public sphere, on the basis of the trajectory of the author’s work. It starts from the observation that the concept has generated a rich scholarly debate on tensions between the normative ideals and the nitty-gritty lived experience of mediated publics. While fundamental norms of interaction associated with the ideal of the public sphere remain essential to the creation of meaningful debate, it also relies on a series of unhelpful binary distinctions that may be neither normatively desirable nor attainable. Key assumptions of the public sphere model include the idea that public debate should be rational, impartial, dispassionate, and objective. This, in turn, implies the undesirability of emotionality, partiality, passion, and subjectivity. In recent years, particularly in response to the rise of digital and social media, scholars have begun to question the rigid delineation of such norms. The article draws on the author’s work to illuminate how an “emotional turn” in media studies has opened up for a more nuanced appraisal of the role of subjectivity and personal stories in the articulation of the common good, challenging Habermasian understandings of rational-critical debate. This “emotional turn” constitutes an essential resource for theorizing public debate as it unfolds within a hybrid media system, for better and for worse. The article shows how the “emotional turn” has shaped the author’s work on mediated public debate, ranging from letters to the editor and user-generated content to Twitter hashtags and the “emotional architecture” of Facebook.

Women in Postcolonial Africa

2020 ◽  
Author(s):  
Selina Makana
Keyword(s):  
Social Economic ◽  
African Women ◽  
Effect Change ◽  
The Past ◽  
Peace Activists ◽  
Political Economies ◽  
Independence Era ◽  
Postcolonial Africa ◽  
Experiences Of Women

As scholars of Africa continue to challenge the place and role of Africa in world history, shedding light on women as valid historical actors in postcolonial Africa within the last three decades remains an ongoing and much-needed endeavor. African women in the past and the present have used their position as breadwinners, mothers, and community leaders to influence their social, economic, and political worlds and to assert their power. In the 21st century, they have become known especially for their success as formidable politicians and peace activists. Even in the age of cyberactivism, women in postcolonial Africa have demonstrated their ability to mobilize across ethno-linguistic lines to effect change in their societies. It is important to move beyond the male-centric perspectives on Africa by highlighting not only the diverse experiences of women in the post-independence era but to also underscore the fundamental roles they continue to play in defining and redefining the postcolonial political economies, and their place in them.

Women and Post-Independence African Politics

2017 ◽  
Author(s):  
Gretchen Bauer ◽  
Akosua Darkwah ◽  
Donna Patterson
Keyword(s):  
Structural Adjustment ◽  
Local Level ◽  
Early Years ◽  
African Women ◽  
Political Transitions ◽  
Women's Associations ◽  
Structural Adjustment Programs ◽  
Institutional Infrastructure ◽  
Political Roles ◽  
Political Office

Building upon their participation in anti-colonial struggles across Africa in the mid-20th century, African women have taken on many political roles in the post-independence period. While military rule and single-party rule precluded access to elected office in many countries in the early years after independence, female combatants fought alongside their male counterparts in ongoing struggles for national liberation in other parts of Africa, especially southern Africa, into the 1980s and 1990s. In many countries, national gender machineries established in the 1970s provided an institutional infrastructure for pursuing women’s rights even if they were often not fully implemented. State feminism, articulated through First Ladyism and state-led national women’s associations, sought to co-opt women’s struggles for political gain. In some instances, it did ameliorate women’s economic hardships and promote political participation. Women’s mobilization in the 1980s, in part a response to the severe impact of structural adjustment programs on devastated African economies, led to local-level organizing and eventually to a focus on women’s access to political office. Since the political transitions that swept the continent beginning in the early 1990s, women have accessed political office in all three branches of government in unprecedented numbers just as new forms of mobilization have emerged around issues like the rights of sexual minorities.

The lived experience of help-seeking by South African women after sexual assault

2017 ◽  
Vol 38 (5) ◽  
pp. 425-438 ◽  
Author(s):  
Sheila Young Steinbrenner ◽  
Celeste Shawler ◽  
Sandra Ferreira ◽  
Claire Draucker
Keyword(s):  
Sexual Assault ◽  
Lived Experience ◽  
South African ◽  
Help Seeking ◽  
African Women ◽  
South African Women

New waves for old rights? Women’s mobilization and bodily rights in Turkey and Norway

2016 ◽  
Vol 24 (1) ◽  
pp. 23-38 ◽  
Author(s):  
Sevil Sümer ◽  
Hande Eslen-Ziya
Keyword(s):  
Comparative Analysis ◽  
Women's Movements ◽  
Political Agenda ◽  
The Political ◽  
Citizenship Rights ◽  
Neoliberal Policies ◽  
Gender Policies ◽  
Definition Of ◽  
The Right

This article focuses on the resurgence of women’s movements in Turkey and Norway against the backdrop of their historical trajectories and wider gender policies. Throughout the 2010s, both countries witnessed a similar set of conservative and neoliberal policies that intervened in women’s bodily rights. In both countries, women’s movements responded with mass mobilizations and influenced the political agenda. The proposed restrictions on abortion were interpreted as a restriction on women’s basic bodily rights in both countries. This article argues that a feminist, multidimensional reconceptualization of the concept of citizenship and a definition of abortion as an element of women’s bodily citizenship rights are useful to promote a strong and encompassing argument for mobilization. The comparative analysis shows that the right to control one’s own body has been a unifying issue for women’s movements in Turkey and Norway which are gradually becoming more inclusive.

Sign in / Sign up

Export Citation Format

Share Document