Voices of African Women: Women's Rights in Ghana, Uganda, and Tanzania (review)

Accomplished women's rights lawyers in Ghana, Uganda, and Tanzania, along with international women's rights activists, have teamed up to discuss the challenges faced by women in achieving the rights guaranteed to them under national laws. The essays in Voices of African Women are grouped into five categories that address the most pressing legal and human rights issues faced by women in the three countries: women's rights to participate in public life; violence against women; women's rights within the family; health issues; and women's economic empowerment. Ghana, Uganda, and Tanzania were selected because their statutory law is rooted in the British legal system but is significantly influenced by local customary and religious laws. One gains a clear understanding of the challenges that women encounter where statutory, customary, and religious laws all intermingle in an extremely fluid tripartite system.

The book is nicely organized so that a researcher can easily select individual chapters and essays of interest. Each of the five chapters begins with an overview that summarizes major arguments and defines specific terms. Individual essays by legal experts make up the remaining subsections. The collection has many strengths. First and foremost, it provides a wealth of information on the numerous documents written in the last fifty years to support women's rights in Africa. The primary sources cited include country constitutions and documents from the African Union and United Nations. All are carefully cited throughout the text. The work also complements a growing literature by African women experts on the challenges faced by African women in achieving their fullest potential. I was especially pleased to note that the authors hope to institute sexual harassment training in their countries. Such actions could help weed out the gender biases that are unfortunately endemic in these countries.

Nevertheless, a number of strategies could have made the book more effective. Case studies from the lawyers' practices would have enlivened the reading by revealing what happens at the grassroots level when women go to court seeking judgments. The essays are strongly prescriptive, which is reasonable, but one wants to know if there are some documented actions taken by the legislative or judiciary bodies in these countries that really make change occur. In other words, what is the track record for the legislative and judicial systems where women are concerned? Who is holding the court systems accountable for supporting laws that give women equal rights? In the same vein, the authors need to address such themes as accountability, transparency, corruption, and inefficiency, that is, all the roadblocks placed against women by legal systems and their minions. These are the realities of life in Africa and cannot be ignored.

Further, while the book provides a wealth of information, redundancies are common across the essays within each chapter. For students assigned the book, such redundancies could become tedious. Perhaps a stronger summary in each chapter's introduction could replace many of these without sacrificing valuable information.

The book's audiences are many. It would be a fine resource for a graduate level course on African women or even women in the developing world. Lecturers will find it very useful in preparing topics on the legal systems in Africa in general and specifically the legal status of African women. Nongovernmental organizations or bilateral/multilateral aid agencies working for (or in) Africa will find useful information for grant proposals and policy advocacy. The book is well worth space on any of these professionals' bookshelves.