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Description
In the colonial and postcolonial period, African women have advocated for legal reforms that would improve the status of women across the continent. During the colonial period, European common and civil law systems greatly influenced African indigenous legal systems and further entrenched patriarchal aspects of the law. In the years since independence, women’s rights advocates have fought, with varying degrees of success, for women’s equality within the constitution, the family, the political arena, property rights, rights to inheritance, rights to be free from gender-based violence, rights to control their reproductive lives and health, rights to education, and many other aspects of life. Legal developments at the international, national, and local levels reflect the efforts of countless African women’s rights activists to improve the status of women within the region.
Publication Date
2019
Publisher
Oxford University Press
Disciplines
Africana Studies | African History | History of Gender | Law | Law and Gender
Repository Citation
Johanna E. Bond, Women's Legal Rights, in Oxford Research Encyclopedia of African History (2019),
https://scholarlycommons.law.wlu.edu/fac_books/28
Included in
Africana Studies Commons, African History Commons, History of Gender Commons, Law and Gender Commons