Transnational feminism: despite Africa's continued woes, great strides are being made in women's participation in decision-making structures

Catholic New Times, April 9, 2006 by Aili Mari Tripp

Aili Mari Tripp examines the continent's feminist movement and its contributions to global pressure groups,

The term "transnational feminism" is sometimes used as shorthand for Western involvement in and influence on feminist movements globally. This is only one element of transnational linkages--and one that is increasingly diminishing in importance--as movements in the South have begun to claim much of the momentum of feminist and women's rights organizing globally.

In Africa, contributions to transnational women's rights activism have been especially important concerning violence against women, women and conflict, the girl child, financing women's entrepreneurship, resistance against female genital cutting, the role of government versus NGOs in service provision and, increasingly, in discussions about women andpolitical decision-making. Continental and sub-regional influences serve as a critical conduit for changing international norms. In this sense, they are perhaps more important than global transnational influences as a vehicle for changing the status of women. Prior to the emergence of these continental and sub-regional alliances in the 1990s, African leaders frequently disparaged women's activism as a product of corrupting Western feminist influences. Today, most of the impetus for change comes from within Africa and from regional-level networks.

The growth of the new continental and sub-regional networks, especially after 2000, followed the rise of the new domestic women's movements. From the mid-1980S onwards, and especially after the early 1990s, women's organizations increased greatly throughout Africa, as did the arenas in which women were able to assert their varied concerns. During the 1990s, as single-party rule was replaced by multi-party systems, autonomous women's mobilization increased.

A cadre of better-educated women then emerged with new leadership and organizational skills, further facilitating the growth of the NGOs. Changing donor strategies targeted NGOs and women's NGOs in particular, as states appeared increasingly corrupt and unaccountable. New funding was directed both towards domestic NGOs and towards regional networks.

Cell phones and e-mail sped up communication between women's organizations within Africa and beyond, facilitating their growth and their capacity to carry out advocacy. In the last decade, women in many countries have aggressively used the media to demand their rights in ways that were not evident in the early 1980s. In some countries, they have taken their claims to land, inheritance and associational autonomy to court--also something rarely seen in the past.

Women have been challenging laws and constitutions that do not uphold gender equality. In addition, they have increasingly moved into government, legislative, party, NGO and other leadership positions that were previously almost exclusively the domain of men.

Diffusion of Norms

There is no doubt that the 1979 Convention on the Elimination of All Forms of Discrimination against Women (CEDAW) and other international treaties and conventions have been essential in shaping the norms driving the women's movements in Africa, as have the various international conferences--such as the UN conferences on women in Mexico City (1975), Nairobi (1985) and Beijing (1995), as well as the UN conferences on population, the environment, education, human rights and others.

Nevertheless, much of the actual mobilization and diffusion of ideas, norms, and strategies took place at the regional level in Africa, especially after the 1990s. Chidi Anselm Odinkalu, a senior legal officer at the International Centre for the Legal Protection of Human Rights (Interights), once observed that "the successes of the women's movement in international policy-making have not been exactly replicated for regional African institutions." Today, however, this statement no longer holds true with respect to women's political representation, as key continental and sub-regional bodies in Africa have begun to implement quotas for female representation and to encourage member states to promote women leaders. Women's political participation is one of the clearest examples by which to gauge the spread of regional norms more generally.

Africa has some of the highest rates of female representation in the world today. Over the past four decades, the average number of women legislators in Africa has jumped from one per cent of all legislators in 1960, to more than 14 per cent in 2004. Rwanda became the country with the largest percentage of women parliamentarians in the world after women claimed almost 49 per cent of the seats in the country's 2003 parliamentary elections. Women held 46 per cent of parliamentary seats in Seychelles between 1991 and 1993. Today, women in South Africa, Mozambique, and Seychelles hold one-third of parliamentary seats; women in Swaziland hold one-third of the seats in the upper house of parliament; in Namibia, women hold 42 per cent of seats in local government; and in Uganda, they hold one-third.