Feminist legal theory, human rights, and culture in Africa

Abstract

This chapter asserts the centrality of a paradigmatic shift in understandings about culture to invigorate the analysis of feminist legal theory for the purposes of African Women's Studies. Drawing on cumulative lessons learned from evolving knowledge and experience vis-à-vis gender reform through law in Africa, the article elucidates pragmatic considerations for privileging culture as a conducive technology to advance the global governance agenda to safeguard women's rights. A meaningful discussion of feminist legal theory within the context of Africa will not be complete without a critical assessment of the international human rights regime which irrigated possibilities for gender reform, especially for many African countries struggling with grave governance challenges and seemingly bereft of the necessary infrastructure to undergird the rule of law. Accordingly, a focal point of this chapter features the Maputo Protocol which is Africa's distinctive contribution to enhance the gender responsiveness of the human rights ecosystem. Exploring the fundamentals for an organic way to help rationalize the efficiency and creativity of ongoing legal efforts to amplify women's welfare and agency, the article posits the indispensability of identifying and tapping into what is right with Africa as a research frontier that demands uncompromising attention for feminist legal theory in particular and women's studies in general. In keeping with the categorization of the Palgrave Handbook of African Women's Studies as a major reference work, this chapter begins with a comprehensive overview of the subject of feminist legal theory to lay the groundwork for delving into novel argumentation about a decisive next step forward for scholarship and teaching. Hence, historicizing the emergence of feminist scholarship in the legal academy, the article addresses salient theoretical perspectives and delineates important doctrines, discourses, institutions, and practices that provided the impetus for feminist theory in the field of law. Foregrounding the limits of gender as an analytic category, the article underscores major debates that have contoured and broadened the frame of feminist legal inquiry. Building on these precursors, the piece canvasses pivotal lessons of measurable efforts targeted at the efficacious elimination of gender discrimination through law as a springboard to proffer a profile becoming of the future of African Women's Studies.