SOAS Research Online

Abstract

This is a story about struggles for equality fought on three frontiers. The first frontier was a continent-wide struggle for political liberation from colonialism and apartheid. In common with women in countless liberation struggles, African women had to confront colonial racism in concert with African men while simultaneously addressing intersectional race and gender discrimination from colonial officials and also gender discrimination within their own communities.[i] The second phase of the struggle, which is ongoing, is been about the fight by African women to be unshackled from the chains of sex and gender-based discrimination by demanding legal change while also confronting gender based stereotypes within their societies. The third, also in train, involves challenges to gender discrimination in the allocation of national economic resources. It also involves confronting global inequalities which sees the resources of African peoples exploited, depleted and misused by their own States and by external actors. It requires African and other governments to take a more gendered approach to resource use and distribution while also minimising exploitation of both people and the environment. This chapter concentrates on the last two through the prism of the African human rights frameworks.