Drafting the gender equality script: African women between “liberal” and “liberatory” gender discourses in the 1980s

This paper examines the historical role of diverse African actors in shaping the global gender equality script, focusing on the UN World Conference on Women in Nairobi in 1985. It reconstructs contrasting positions among African women and men using scholarship on liberal feminism, Third World feminism, and the “(de)
politicisation” of women’s issues. In the 1980s, many supported women’s individual rights over socio-cultural and religious conservativism, promoted individual-led development ideas, and found the “politicisation” of Nairobi 1985 a distraction. Other women in Africa were adamant that liberation struggles (apartheid, Palestine), disarmament, demilitarisation, and unequal global economic structures are entangled with women’s oppression. African actors were drawn to both “liberal” and “liberatory” discourses on women. Through this tension, they contributed to transforming liberal perspectives on women’s rights, shaping transnational feminist movement to ensure the diversity of Southern women’s experiences and their political, economic, and social struggles were acknowledged as legitimate women’s issues.