Women's Activism in Africa: Struggles for Rights and Representation
256
Women's Activism in Africa: Struggles for Rights and Representation
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Overview
Bringing together African authors who themselves are part of the activist groups, this collection represents the only comprehensive and up-to-date overview of women's movements in contemporary Africa. Drawing on case studies and fresh empirical material from across the continent, the authors challenge the prevailing assumption that notions of women's rights have trickled down from the global north to the south, showing instead that these movements have been shaped by above all the unique experiences and concerns of the local women involved.
Product Details
| ISBN-13: | 9781783609116 |
|---|---|
| Publisher: | Bloomsbury Publishing |
| Publication date: | 02/15/2017 |
| Sold by: | Barnes & Noble |
| Format: | eBook |
| Pages: | 256 |
| File size: | 1 MB |
About the Author
Aili Mari Tripp is a professor of political science and Evjue Bascom professor of gender and women's studies at the University of Wisconsin-Madison in the United States. She has published extensively on gender and politics and on women's movements in Africa and globally. She is author of several award-winning books, such as Women and Power in Postconflict Africa (2015) and co-author of African Women's Movements: Transforming Political Landscapes (2009).
Read an Excerpt
Women's Activism In Africa
Struggles for Rights and Representation
By Balghis Badri, Aili Mari Tripp
Zed Books Ltd
Copyright © 2017 Zed BooksAll rights reserved.
ISBN: 978-1-78360-911-6
CHAPTER 1
AFRICAN INFLUENCES ON GLOBAL WOMEN'S RIGHTS: AN OVERVIEW
Aili Mari Tripp and Balghis Badri
Introduction
Prior to, but especially since, independence, women activists in Africa have been engaged in a variety of movements and forms of collective action around issues ranging from rights to land and inheritance, to increasing female political representation, and ending domestic violence. While some of these women's rights agendas have been inspired by international feminisms and supported by external donor strategies, African women themselves have contributed significantly to global understandings and implementation of women's rights. This book – and this chapter in particular – seeks to highlight the various contributions of African women to these debates and to global understandings and framings of women's rights.
The chapter challenges assumptions that African women activists have simply absorbed external agendas and definitions of feminism and shows how instead they have creatively and actively forged their movements with reference to their own concerns as they have defined and conceptualised them. There has been considerable scholarly interest in how international norms are interpreted locally (Hodgson 2011; Merry 2006a, 2006b; Levitt and Merry 2009; Yuval-Davis 2009), and also in how there are differences between international/universal and local norms (Abu-Lughod 2002; Hodgson2011; Ilumoka 2009). This chapter – and the book – adopts a somewhat different perspective in showing how African movements themselves have shaped and are shaping global understandings of women's rights and feminism.
The key challenge for movements globally has been how to transform power structures that limit women. Up until the early 1990s, the focus of women's mobilisation in developing countries had been on women's poverty and economic empowerment (Snyder 2015). After the Human Rights Conference in Vienna (1993), and especially after the United Nations Conference on Women in Beijing (1995), the emphasis shifted to a frame that situated 'women's rights as human rights' and to subsequent efforts to address violence against women. While violence and other human rights violations have been key concerns of women's movements in Africa, it is interesting to note that the focus of women's movements has never simply been on women as victims, even though the international media often portrays African women primarily as victims of HIV/AIDS, Ebola, trafficking, famine, violence and war. Rarely do we read or hear in the international media about the women activists who have sought to challenge the structural constraints that underlie violence, cultural manifestations of women's marginalisation, and discrimination more generally. Nevertheless, the focus of women activists since the1990s has been on: 1) the political representation of women; 2) transforming economic structures by providing women with greater financial resources and support for businesses, and by incorporating gender- related reviews of national budgets; 3) initiatives around peace-making and peacebuilding; 4) violence against women; and 5) legal and constitutional reform of women's rights, including challenges to traditional authorities and customary law.
From time to time, some of these movements have indeed gained international visibility, such as the environmental Green Belt Movement, led by the late Nobel laureate Wangari Maathai, when it became an important force for political change in Kenya in the 1990s. In 2003, one of the regional women's peace organisations active in Sierra Leone, Liberia and Guinea – the Mano River Women's Peace Network, better known as MAROWPNET – was awarded the United Nations Prize for Human Rights by the UN General Assembly to recognise its 'outstanding achievement in the promotion of human and women's rights'. The peace movement in Liberia, involving thousands of women, helped bring an end to civil war in that country in 2003. This movement gained international recognition when Leymah Gbowee and Ellen Johnson Sirleaf won Nobel Peace Prizes in 2011. Women in Morocco, Tunisia and Egypt were at the forefront of movements for political reform and equality in 2011. Most recently, Tunisia passed a constitution in 2014 that is one of the most progressive in terms of women's rights anywhere in the world. In spite of this international recognition, the full extent of women's mobilisation and its influence on global trends in Africa has not been adequately acknowledged. Even this chapter provides only a cursory account, while the case studies in the book provide further evidence of these trends.
Changes in women's mobilisation
The trajectory of post-1990s women's mobilisation in Africa has had its own sources arising out of Africa's democratising trends; the economic crisis and structural adjustment of the 1980s and 1990s; the decline of conflict, especially after the 1990s; the influence of Africa's regional and sub-regional institutions; UN influences; the influx of donor funds; and the expansion of new communications mechanisms. Contemporary movements in Africa have also drawn on their roots in indigenous women's strategies that pre-date Islamisation, Christianisation and colonisation. They have drawn on women's experiences in anticolonial resistance and national liberation movements, as well as women's experiences in party- or state-directed women's organisations in the era of single parties and military rule.
During the first three decades after independence, women's organisations were generally tied to the patronage politics of the single-party state. Their activities were monitored and directed to ensure that they would support various party or government initiatives. This meant that women's organisations tended to be focused on welfare and domestic concerns and espoused a discourse of 'developmentalism'. At the grassroots level, women's associations were mostly producing handicrafts, promoting literacy, farming, participating in income-generating projects, fighting AIDS, subscribing to faith-based organisations, engaging in cultural expression and other such activities.
This changed in the 1990s, with the diffusion of new women's rights norms and strategies throughout the world. The UN and international and regional women's organisations influenced women's rights norms throughout Africa, but African women's movements were themselves active in helping shape these global trends. Similarly, the African women's rights movement engaged the African Union, Southern African Development Community (SADC) and other sub-regional organisations, which, in turn, put pressure on member states to advance women's rights. The 1985 UN Conference on Women held in Nairobi and later the 1995 UN Conference on Women in Beijing were especially important in serving as catalysts for many organisations and activists. International donors, tired of state corruption and inefficiency, began to focus on non-governmental organisations (NGOs), including women's associations, providing them with new resources, independent of the state and party patronage.
Women activists had fought for greater democracy from the 1990s onwards, while the new democratising trends opened up political space for women's mobilisation along with activism by environmentalist, human rights, indigenous peoples and other new forces. In the 1990s, single-party regimes transformed themselves into multiparty systems; military dictatorships dissolved into civilian rule; while freedom of the press, association and assembly expanded, albeit unevenly, with much backtracking.
The decline of conflict in Africa, especially after 2000, also speeded up the push for women's rights in post-conflict countries. The end of a significant number of conflicts after the 1990s created important political opportunities for women's movements, especially where women's peace movements overlapped with women's movements.
All of these changes – the diffusion of international norms regarding gender equality, new donor strategies, political liberalisation, and the decline of conflict – created conditions that allowed new women's movements to emerge and have an impact on policy, practice and public opinion. The expansion of the use of new media also facilitated these trends. A wide variety of new women's organisations emerged in most African countries, especially in countries that liberalised politically. New organisations began promoting a women's rights agenda to push for constitutional and legislative changes regarding gender equality. They began to introduce new agendas ranging from issues of reproductive rights to violence against women, peace, the environment, women's education, the expansion of credit facilities for businesswomen and women farmers, access to land, women's inheritance rights, media representation of women, women's political representation, and many other concerns.
New feminist influences
Another, more recent, development after the mid-2000s was that women's rights activists in Africa increasingly began to refer to themselves as feminists, but most still do not self-identify in this way even though they may share the goals of feminists. This is because 'feminism' has often been conceived of disparagingly as a Western or foreign concept. Although there are still opponents of women's rights who make this claim, this is changing rapidly, as African feminists – especially the younger generations – are redefining feminism in African terms. After independence, some were wary that such a competing ideology would detract from the pressing project of national development. Even government leaders who supported gender equality often argued that they could not attend to women's rights concerns until development had been achieved. Feminism was sometimes seen as an individualistic ideology that pitted men against women. For others it was seen as a challenge to indigenous values and traditions and a form of cultural imperialism (Tripp et al. 2009).
However, today there is a younger generation of self-identifying feminists emerging throughout Africa who are redefining feminism from an African perspective. Organisers of the first African Feminist Forum, held in Ghana in 2006, issued an open challenge to women's organisations that were focusing on reforms to improve the conditions under which women live and work but were not challenging discriminatory and patriarchal structures and institutions that might bring about more major transformations in gender relations. They criticised the 'hypocritical' and 'sexist' defence of 'African culture and tradition' to justify discrimination against women; the practice of giving women token positions of power; sexist attitudes when it came to sexual and reproductive health and rights; the use of notions of motherhood in state policies to minimise women's contributions; and the feminisation of HIV/AIDS and poverty.
The forum came up with a 'Charter of Feminist Principles' that articulated this perspective. It represented a deliberate departure away from the ambivalence and defensiveness about using the term 'feminism' in Africa, while recognising that there is a plurality of views within both women's and feminist movements regarding strategy, ideology and priorities, and that these differences are markers of the vitality and breadth of these movements. However, as the Feminist Forum organisers pointed out, there was consensus on the need to address issues such as 'poverty, illiteracy, health and reproductive rights, political participation and peace'.
This first Feminist Forum meeting reflected a shift in thinking that by 2010 was evident as feminist discourse became commonplace on online websites, blogs and journals, on Twitter, Facebook and YouTube. Journals such as Feminist Africa provided new perspectives. New feminist novels, including Dust by Yvonne Adhiambo Owuor (Kenya), Kintu by Jennifer Nansubuga Makumbi (Uganda) and Americanah by Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie (Nigeria), offered new ways of imagining women. Adichie issued a clarion call to women in her video We Should All be Feminist, which received international acclaim and in which she explores what it means to be an African feminist today. In Kenya today there are vigorous new debates about gender-based violence, lesbian, gay, bisexual and transgender (LGBT)rights, the policing of women's dress, and women in pop culture, particularly music videos. Facebookand Twitter debates about African feminism abound: for example, #FeministWhileAfrican, #WhenWomenSpeak, #MyBodyMyHome, #MyDressMyChoice, and #BringBackOurGirls.
The range of issues being debated and addressed by feminists today goes well beyond the concerns of the movements that emerged in the 1990s, as many taboos are being shattered. The rights of LGBT people, which were visible primarily in South Africa and Namibia in the mid-1990s, emerged after2010 in countries such as Uganda and Kenya as a concern of some women's rights organisations. Abortion – which, like LGBT rights, is still largely taboo – has also gained increasing prominence in countries where large numbers of women die from unsafe self-abortions. Marital rape, the working conditions of domestic servants, the plight of single mothers in North Africa, and other such concerns are gaining recognition as self-identifying feminists become more influential.
African influences on women's rights globally
Margaret Snyder has characterised the UN as the 'unlikely godmother' of the global feminist movement. Women the world over have relied on the UN to help define and coalesce women's concerns, to put forward programmes for legislative change, to provide forums for meeting across borders, and to participate in discussions on issues of concern to women's lives (Snyder 2006). The UN, starting with the 1975 First World Conference on Women in Mexico City (1975) and the subsequent conferences in Copenhagen (1980), Nairobi (1985) and Beijing (1995), coupled with the declaration of the United Nations Decade for Women (1976–85), offered opportunities for African women to bring their unique experiences to the rest of the UN community. African women attended the conferences in various capacities as NGO representatives, serving on official national delegations, as members of UN agencies, and as professionals and organisers. They served as a stimulus for many programmes for women's advancement on the continent, but they also provided forums for African women to share their experiences and influence the global women's movement.
African women activists were visible in planning and running key UN conferences on women. Aida Gindy from Egypt held the first meeting on 'Women in Economic Development' in 1972. From the outset, at the time of preparations for the first UN conference on women, Kenyan women sought to hold the conference in Kenya. Phoebe Asiyo, who had been a delegate to the UN Committee on the Status of Women, had unsuccessfully lobbied the Kenyan government to have Kenya host the first World Conference on Women, but Kenya ended up hosting the 1985 conference ten years later (Snyder 2015). Tanzania's Gertrude Mongella was general secretary of the UN Beijing Conference, while Sierra Leonean Filomina Steady was one of the key convenors of the Earth Summit (1992). The Kenya Women's Group helped in the planning and running the Nairobi UN Conference in 1985. The Egyptian National Preparatory Committee for NGOs, led by Aziza Hussein, helped organise the International Conference on Population and Development that was held in Cairo in 1994. The Cairo Conference was important because it shifted the debate over population control away from the traditional family planning focus on quotas and targets to one that emphasised women's rights and women's health.
In the preparations for the 1995 Beijing Conference, many African-based and/or African-oriented organisations formed part of the NGO Forum Planning Committee; these included the African Women's Development and Communication Network (FEMNET), which was also charged with the overall coordination of the African regional input. In addition, African women were members of international bodies on this planning committee, such as Women's World Banking, Young Women's Christian Association, Girl Guides Association, International Federation of University Women, among many others.
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Table of Contents
1. African Influences on Global Women's Rights: An Overview - Aili Mari Tripp and Balghis Badri2. The Evolution of the Women's Movement in Sierra Leone - Nana Claris Efua Pratt
3. Market Women's Associations in Ghana - Akua Opokua Britwum and Angela Dziedzom Akorsu
4. Tunisian Women's Literature of Denunciation - Lilia Labidi
5. The Moroccan Feminist Movement (1946–2014) - Fatima Sadiqi
6. Women's Rights and the Women's Movement in Sudan (1952–2014) - Samia Al Nagar and Liv Tønnessen
7. The Women's Movement in Tanzania - Aili Mari Tripp
8. The Women's Movement in Kenya - Regina G. Mwatha
9. Women Organising for Liberation: South Africa - Sheila Meintjes
10. African Women Activists: Contributions and Challenges Ahead - Balghis Badri