Women in judiciaries across Africa

Abstract

This chapter follows an established tradition of African women scholars who are writing and rewriting history to produce grounded empirical analyses framed within the historical and current lived realities of the African woman. By focusing on women judges across Africa, this chapter contributes to our understanding of women in African judiciaries through an exploratory overview of where women judges are, how they got there, what they do once they get there, and the challenges and triumphs they negotiate at the intersections of gender, class, and professional hierarchies, among others. The chapter builds on my earlier theoretical framework of matri-legal feminism as a lens through which we can understand the positionality and agency of women in judiciaries across Africa.