“Debating Incentives and the Politics of Gender EquityPolicies in the South: The Case ‘Domestic’ Legislation in Uganda”
Josephine Akihire, Makarere University
Ever since women made inroads into the policy making arenas of the state, focus has tended to be on what they able to do or not to do, whether as individuals or as a collective, but largely in isolation of the countries’ context of state making and policy formation. Secondly failures and gaps have been often narrowed to the lack of political will. Such conceptions often tend to foreclose the analysis to the level of individual actors thereby blurring the broader context within which these key decision makers operate. The focus on individuals hence overlooks the gender politics of policy making, ignoring the real obstacles in generating support for gender inclusive development.Using the case of legislation around the domestic space, i.e. the Domestic Violence Act passed in Uganda in 2010 and the Marriage and divorce Bill which parliament has failed to debate /pass over the decades, this paper will seek to move from the now dominant question of, whether or not women’s presence is making a difference, and will instead map out the incentives informing formulation and implementation (or lack of it). Through a rapid process tracing approach, the paper will examine the organization of political power and how this animates the nature of gender policy outcomes within the current political trajectory in Uganda. The argument will therefore be structured around the politics of recognition- recognition in a sense, referring to what has been made possible in the form of gender sensitive policy outcomes, the incentives for the different courses of action, and what influences the ability of the political system to channel women’s interests into effective policy formulation and implementation.
“Becoming ‘MSM’ and ‘WSW’: The value of vulnerability in NGO worlds in Malawi”
Crystal Biruk, Oberlin College
In June 2013, a facilitator at the first ever meeting of lesbians in Malawi—women who have sex with women (WSW), in public health parlance—told a group of 50 women: “ It’s difficult to have others know who you are if you don’t know who you are.” These words resonate with the post-Stonewall project of “ coming out” as form of self and social liberation. However, in being transplanted to Malawi, counted among Africa’s “ homophobic” nations, the rhetoric of coming out enfolds new meanings, politics, and value. Following the 2009 arrest and conviction for “ unnatural offence(s)” of two male-bodied individuals in Malawi, the plight of men who have sex with men (MSM) in Malawi has attracted international attention and resources, allowing the major LGBT rights NGO in Malawi to increase programming and education for this population. More recently, the NGO has begun to provide support for a less visible vulnerable population: WSW. Drawing on recent ethnographic work, this paper analyzes, first, the ways in which this NGO works to “ make” MSM and WSW, and, second, how these men and women come to occupy, perform, and know their own vulnerability in the context of transnationally circulating frames and language for discussing LGBT rights and identities. Anthropologists have illustrated how individuals take up discourses or categories of vulnerability to access NGO, state, or other resources. This paper provides a comparative case study for thinking about the work of self-presentation—“ making” vulnerable populations and selves—as a new form of labor amid circuits of NGO resource distribution in sub-Saharan Africa. The larger project seeks to foreground the co-production of culture, value and sexual selves in encounters and transactions in NGO worlds in southern Africa.
“In Whose Interest? Connecting Gender Gaps in Elite and Mass Policy Preferences in Sub-Saharan Africa”
Amanda Clayton, Vanderbilt University
Do female legislators represent women’s interests? This question has been at the heart of theory-building and empirical work on women’s substantive representation, and has experienced renewed interest with the rapid global diffusion of electoral gender quotas. This article is the first to explicitly connect cross-national gender gaps in issue areas that citizens prioritize with gender gaps in elite level political priorities. We do this through mass and elite survey data from eleven countries in sub-Saharan Africa. Cumulatively, we find preliminary evidence that female parliamentarians prioritize issues related to poverty alleviation, health care and women’s rights, while male parliamentarians prioritize infrastructure and agriculture projects. These findings are largely consistent with aggregate gender gaps at the citizen level across countries, but less so with variation in gender gaps between countries. Finally, although we find evidence of gendered legislative priorities, female parliamentarians report significantly higher levels of party discipline, casting doubt on whether female representatives will be able to translate divergent policy preferences into legislative gains for women under male dominated party structures.
“The Problem With Gender Equality: Contextualizing African ‘Success’ in a Global Context”
Kara Ellerby, University of Delaware
This paper seeks to problematize the ways in which ‘gender equality’ is conceptualized and pursued both globally and in Sub-Saharan Africa (SSA). It begins with an interrogation of the meaning of gender equality and the ways in which gender has become synonymous with women, and equality has come to mean a variety of low thresholds. It offers a new framing—women’s inclusion—and examines how women’s inclusion has been pursued globally via a technocratic policy deluge aimed at increasing women’s inclusion in governments, economies and anti-violence efforts. It problematizes SSA’s ‘success’ in adopting such policies by exposing how they fail at gender equality in five interrelated ways: persistently poor implementation and lagging outcomes, the pervasiveness of informal beliefs and practices for full implementation; the way in which gendered binaries remain rigid and powerful; the lack of engagement with gender as an intersectional identity, and how such policies are consistently co-opted by states and IOs and ultimately reinforce a gendered (neo)liberal world order.It concludes with a discussion of the costs of treating gender and women as interchangeable and the possibilities for new meanings of equality.
“Saviors, survivors, and role models: Gender and transnational humanitarianism”
Amal Fadlalla, University of Michigan
There is no doubt that the Islamists’ rise to power in the 1980s has put Sudan at the center of transnational media attention. The resurgence of conservatism and right wing politics in the West and the East reanimated a politics of fear and reproduced new clashing discourses and practices about national and transnational belonging. This paper examines in particular the gendered nature of these discourses and practices and asks how do processes of history and power figure into the repositioning of women (and men) in the emerging politics of national and transnational territoriality. I take as my case study the gendered humanitarian representation of Sudanese women (and men) as victims and survivors whose stories of suffering are transformed into powerful narratives that won them the status of role models within the human rights and humanitarian fields. I look into how such powerful narratives and practices shape the activism and transnational imaginings of these novices but elide the post-Cold War politics and confrontation among different national and transnational actors over the meanings of rights, liberties, and transnational affiliations.
“Do Men and Women Have Different Policy Preferences in Africa? Determinants and Implications of Gender Gaps in Policy Prioritization”
Jessica Gottlieb, Texas A & M University
Policies designed to increase women’s representation in Africa are often motivated by the assumption that men and women have different policy preferences. We find that gender differences in policy priorities are actually quite small on average, but vary significantly across policy domains and countries. We leverage this variation to show that economic and social empowerment of women influences the size of gender gap in the prioritization of two important domains. In particular, women’s participation in the labor force – an indicator of economic empowerment – narrows the gender gap in the prioritization of infrastructure investment and access to clean water, while social vulnerability widens the gap on infrastructure investment. Finally, we show that the places where women and men have the most divergent policy preferences – and thus formal representation is most important – are precisely the places where women are currently the least represented and active in formal politics.
“The Effect of Ebola on Maternal Health in Liberia”
Sabrina Karim, Emory University
Maternal health in West Africa has been steadily improving. However, exogenous shocks to healthcare systems in the form of conflict or health epidemic crisis in countries with already poor health infrastructure risk reversing these positive trends. In order to understand the effect of these exogenous shocks on maternal health, we focus on the 2014 Ebola crisis in Liberia. We use three surveys conducted before, during, and after the Ebola epidemic and extensive qualitative interviews to assess whether the epidemic led to a decrease in accessing contraception, antenatal care, government services, and vaccinations. Our results are mixed. We find that access did decline during the Ebola epidemic, but that patterns of service use did not much change. We attribute this finding to the fact that there does not appear to be a clear division between public and private goods provision. During the epidemic, individuals routinely used the services of ͞doctors͟ and ͞nurses͟ that work in government health facilities even when government services were shut down by approaching them privately at their homes. The results suggest that resources to shore up health institutions should be provided at the community and at the state level during times of crisis.
“Economic Rights and Women’s Access to Executive Power in Africa”
Martha Johnson, Mills College
While a growing number of women are becoming cabinet ministers in African governments, there is considerable cross-national variation in the extent to which women are able to access influential cabinet positions. We argue that this variation is the result of enduring national differences in women’s economic rights. Where women are legally subject to male authority in accessing economic resources, they are less able to build the political capital needed to compete for leadership positions. Using an original dataset on the allocation of ministerial portfolios in 38 African countries, we show that women have less diversified policy portfolios and are less likely to be appointed to high prestige portfolios in countries where they face legal coverture constraints. Our results are robust to controlling for relevant factors such as female labor force participation, legislative quotas, and customary law.
“Re-inscribing Patriarchy? Reflections on Gender and Sexuality in the time of AIDS”
Sanyu Amimo Mojola, University of Colorado
This paper examines the ways in which the HIV pandemic that has ravaged the African continent has contributed to shifts in dynamics and meanings of gender and sexuality, and in particular, the extent to which these shifts have led to the persistence, demise or re-inscription of patriarchal systems. The paper draws on primary ethnographic and interview based fieldwork from Western Kenya as well as secondary data from other settings throughout sub-Saharan Africa.
“Nation and its Undesirable Subjects: Homosexuality, Citizenship and the Gay-“Other” in Cameroon”
Basile Ndjio, Princeton University
In general, the present paper discusses the historical process through which homosexual people became scripted as both a radical ‘other’ to and a ‘dark side’ of the officially promoted heterosexual citizens, and how the sexuality of these sexual minorities has come to be constructed as ‘foreign’ or ‘stranger’ to so-called traditional African sexual norms. The essay embodies above all our effort to shed light on the continuities and discontinuities in the forging of sexual nationalism, the making of sexual boundaries, and the political management of the so-called ‘homosexuality peril’ by the Cameroon government since 1967. More concretely, the present study proposes to bring some insights into the different legal dispositifs and juridical procedures devised by both the regime of president Ahmadou Ahidjo(1960-1982) and that of his successor Paul Biya, in order to format a certain type of (national) sexual citizenship, and especially to prevent their citizens from indulging in homosexuality seen as a threat to the government-promoted heteronormativity. The paper also plans to provide some empirical data on the various tactics deployed by many gays and lesbians in order to evade the state’s repressive sexual politics, which have taken a more dramatic turn since 2005. The main argument developed in this essay is that the anti-gay policy promoted since the 1960s by the Cameroon government has locked gays and lesbians into a particular form of citizenship that ends up depriving them of their legitimate rights to enjoy the state’s protection, or to define and control their own bodies and sexualities. Moreover, this state-condoned homophobic policy has made sexual minorities moral alien citizens who are generally portrayed as agents of western imperialism and readymade conspirators against the state power. Yet, although the exclusion or marginalization of gay ‘other’ has been central to the political invention of ‘good’ and ‘civic’ heterosexual citizens by both regimes of Ahidjo and Biya, they have, however, adopted a distinctive sexual govern mentality that embodies their different perception of the so-called homosexuality threat.
“States of Violence: Democratic transitions and the politics of gender, ethnicity andsexualityin Africa”
Lyn Ossome, Makerere Institute of Social Research
Why does gendered and sexual violence persist in spite of democratization, which is valorized as being able to stabilize politics?Sexual violence has historically plagued societies the world over, and presently is one of the most highly legislated forms of gendered violence. While there would surely be higher levels of violence in societies without rules, experience in many African countries shows that the formal presence of laws does not necessarily mitigate violence. Equally perplexing is that the formal installation of democracy and support for the increased participation of women in politics has not significantly reduced the incidence of violence against women. Indeed, experience in severalAfrican countries show that sexual violence has increased during periods of electoral campaigning. Multiparty democracy is valorised in literature on transitions to democracy as a means of containing violence and stabilising political contestation, yet paradoxically in countries such as Kenya,on which I shall focus my paper,neither ethnic nor sexual violence has diminished and sexual violence attached to politics has increased.This paperdraws links between the democratization process and sexual/gendered violence observed against women during electioneering periods in Kenya.Taking a historical perspective,I argue that the re-introduction of multi-party politics in Kenya in 1991 was accompanied by a forceful convergence of diverse groups, who congregated around certain interests, goals and ideas thatwere/are not always congruent with ideals of gender equality, and which for reasons owing to women’s already existing subordinate status in the postcolonial state, tended to exclude or marginalize feminist interests. My analysis highlights thedialecticalways in which the liberal democratic pactis undermined by ethnic politics, and howin that context,the politicization of ethnicity specifically deploys sexual violence in the electoral context. I show these dynamics as being largely influenced in the first instance by the capitalist interests vested in the colonial state and its imperative to exploit labouring women; secondly, in the nature of the postcolonial state and politics largely captured by ethnic, bourgeois class interests; and in the third instance, influenced by neoliberal political ideology that has remained largely disconnected from women’s structural positions in Kenyan society. From a feminist historical materialist theoretical position, I put forward arguments explaining these three factors as the main reasons why feminist engagements with the democratizing state have so far failed to engender substantive spaces for women’s political participation.
“The Political Use of Homophobia”
Graeme Reid, Women’s, Gender, and Sexuality Studies Program at Yale and Human Rights Watch
The political use of homophobia has become a ubiquitous part of the contemporary political landscape, with ruling elites from countries including Gambia, Malaysia, Egypt and Russia using anti-LGBT crackdowns for short-term political gain. A recent spate of vague and sweeping laws are proving particularly popular as political tools. Legislation that bans “propaganda,” “promotion” or even expressions of support for LGBT groups effectively bans ideas, affiliations, and social activities, as well as public expressions of identity and affection. And these laws give sweeping powers to governments wishing to curb the opposition by accusing them of sympathy or support for homosexual causes. The intensification of the political use of homophobia shows a world divided in an increasingly intractable rhetorical debate on the rights of LGBT people. This paper will examine the political context in which Uganda’s Anti-Homosexuality Act and Nigeria’s Same Sex Marriage Prohibition Act emerged.
“The Effects of Matrilineally and Matrilocality on Gender Differences in Political Behavior: Evidence from Sub-Saharan Africa”
Amanda Robinson, The Ohio State University
Discriminatory gender norms are known to constrain women’s involvement in the civic and political life of their communities, particularly in developing societies where traditional gender roles are more likely to bind. While the literature documents such constraints, we do not yet fully understand where discriminatory gender norms come from and how they change. Anecdotal evidence suggests that gender gaps in political engagement may be less severe in matrilineal (and/or matrilocal) groups – but this has not been examined systematically. If matrilineal/matrilocal groups indeed exhibit different civic and political behavior across genders, the may offer insight into the sources of discriminatory gender norms. As a first step, thispaper examines existing data on civic and political behaviors and attitudes of men and women in sub-Saharan Africa using the most recent round of the Afrobarometer (27 countries). Reported ethnicities are matched to Murdock’s Ethnographic Atlas which includes information about historical matrilineality and matrilocality by ethnic group. We find that the gender gap in many political behavior and attitudes is smaller in matrilineal/matrilocal relative to patrilineal/patrilocal societies, suggesting there is indeed an effect of matrilineal descent patterns/matrilocal residential customs on gender norms. Particularly striking is that while women in matrilineal/matrilocal societies are more likely to engage in civicparticipation relative to their female counterparts in patrilineal/patrilocal societies, men in matrilineal/matrilocal societies are the ones responsible for closing the gap when it comes to perceptions of women, as they are more likely to support women’s rights than men in patrilineal/patrilocal groups. We also find that even patrilineal/patrilocal societies in matrilineal/matrilocal-dominant countries look different than those in patrilineal/patrilocal dominant countries, suggesting inter-communal rather than just intra-communal effects. Finally, we propose a research strategy to further understand the mechanisms driving these apparent differences. In particular, we aim to distinguish between four potential pathways of direct and indirect effects on gender norms: educational investment–matrilineal/matrilocal societies invest more in girls schooling, political experience– matrilineal/matrilocal societies provide women with more opportunities for decision-making and thus greater political efficacy, property rights– matrilineal/matrilocal societies give women greater property rights which translate into political security, and egalitariangender norms– matrilineal/matrilocal societies simply hold more egalitarian viewswith respect to gender. Our existing data analyses provide support in favor of the mechanisms of political experience and egalitarian gender norms, but we are unable to sufficiently disentangle these or test the other potential mechanisms. Thus, we propose in-depth case studies and original data collection among members of three different types of societies –a matrilineal non-matrilocal group, a matrilocal non-matrilineal group and a matrilineal and matrilocal group — as well as the most geographically proximate patrilineal/patrilocal groups to each, both within the same country and across national borders.
“Rethinking Durable Solutions for Refugee Women in Africa”
Olajumoke Yacob-Haliso, Babcock University
This paper contends that it is time to re-evaluate and rethink the classic durable solutions and practices being applied to refugee women in Africa, foregrounding gender considerations in the processes of selection of solutions to apply, the access that women have to these processes and with sensitivity to the specific (African) context. As persons protected by international law, refugee women’s protection challenges – physical, social-psychological, legal, economic, political – have been well-documented in the refugee literature by scholars, practitioners and activists. Equally well-established in the practice are the three so-called “durable solutions”to the refugee problem, namely, repatriation, local integration and resettlement in a third country. However, little attention has been paid to mainstreaming gender in the selection and application of the “durable” solutions; the particular implications for, and experiences of refugee women; and the specific interaction of refugee women in Africa with the international refugee regime with respect to durable solutions is even less visible in the literature. Relying mainly on existing literature and secondary sources of data, but also drawing on primary research I have conducted between 2004 and 2012 in Geneva, Liberia, and Nigeria, I attempt an exploration of three things in this paper: First, I do a critical gender analysis of durable solutions as currently applied by the United Nations High Commissioner for Refugees (UNHCR) and States in the international system; secondly, I analyse the specific practical and gender implications of applying each of these solutions in Africa to refugee women (specifically in the context of protracted displacement and lingering long-standing conflicts, severe economic dislocations in the aftermath of a global recession, and the collapse of North-South burden-sharing signalled most spectacularly by the current migrant crisis in Europe); and, thirdly, I assess the future of the classic “durable solutions” as options for refugee women in Africa in light of all the above. Ultimately, I propose the adoption of hybrid solutions that reflect a cognizance of current international realities, as well as flexible, gender-sensitive and context-specific application of these solutions in such a way that they empower women and give them a voice in determining their own future and that of their families.