Feminist Constitutionalism for Africa

an emancipatory quest to reaffirm women's rights

Abstract

This article demonstrates the setback of African constitutionalism in accompanying the evolution of women's civil and political rights on that continent in an egalitarian manner, to the extent that the law has presented itself as an instrument for maintaining power; that guarantees social and political privileges to men, who use cultural pretexts to reaffirm their hegemonic position as the only universal subject and that simultaneously determines means of legitimising a patriarchal, sexist and misogynistic normativity that continues to oppress women's dignity, conveyed by a phallocentric discourse that limits various rights to women, victims of a policy and legal narrative linked to compulsory maternity, the reducibility of negative freedoms and the non-inclusion of women in the democratic process;  which ends up affecting reproductive rights, the right to development, the right to work, the right to political and economic participation at the state level, etc. On the other hand, there is a naturalisation of the androcentric and macho culture, which has contributed to high levels of domestic and sexual violence. And in this sense, the article calls for legislative, hermeneutic and public policy communication that can be triggered by African constitutionalism, with a view to achieving gender justice in African states, reversing the structural dimension of naturalised sexism.