Regional gender governance in Africa? The African Union in perspective

The study analyses the normative agreements, internal and external actors, and the regional context of the African Union gender governance. The African Union has an impressive portfolio of legal and policy frameworks which largely align with global gender equality agreements adopted at the United Nations. Some of the norms adopted by the African Union are even considered to exceed the aspirations of those of the United Nations and other regional intergovernmental organizations due to explicitly addressing issues like female genital mutilation, abortion and gender parity among the African Union commissioners. The dissertation analyses those normative frameworks in depth and demonstrates that with the exception of its legal framework, the Maputo Protocol, the African Union approach to eliminating violence and discrimination against women largely builds on the culture vs rights debate. In doing so, it reproduces the discourse of African cultures as incompatible with women’s rights and in need of progress. The study then investigates why the African Union gender agenda finds little resonance in the member states. In my research I found that the institutionalization of a pan-African gender agenda at the African Union was the outcome of the efforts of a rather small network of femocrats, UN experts and civil organizations. Since the establishment of a ‘women’s desk’ the emergence of femocrats created new opportunities for accessing regional governance structures. The dissertation demonstrates that femocrats became brokers of access, information and resources, which in turn led to the institutionalization of the gender agenda. In this dissertation I operationalize aspirational politics in conjunction with political brokers to unpack the paradox of foot-dragging and contestation of this regional normative agenda. I argue that it is the aspirational politics of the femocrats and their allies that have led to an ambitious, but also unattainable and contested gender agenda.