Browsing by Author "Tamale, Sylvia"

Now showing 1 - 11 of 11
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    African Feminism: How should we change?
    (Development, 2006) Tamale, Sylvia
    Sylvia Tamale gives a critical, self-reflexive analysis of the African women's movement, with her proposals for the changes she would like to see. She asks that African feminists transform themselves and societies into a more equitable, democratic and tolerant one.
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    Decolonization and Afro-Feminism
    (Journal of Contemporary African Studies, 2020) Tamale, Sylvia
    If I could, I would introduce Sylvia Tamale with singing and dancing – an aptly Afro-Feminist way to honour an author whose reputation as a thinker, scholar, and activist is renowned. She stands on the shoulders of her ancestors and dedicates her book to Wanafunzi wa Afrika (the students of Africa), for whom this is a rare and valuable gift. Decolonization and Afro-Feminism is an epic testament to Tamale’s courageous political and intellectual rigour, it imagines a world with reconfigured social institutions that restore dignity to African people. Although much of her formal training and work has been in law, Tamale’s activism and scholarship have crossed many disciplinary boundaries, notably in the fields of gender and sexuality, jurisprudence, and politics, all with an African feminist framing. Decolonization and Afro-Feminism brings together all of these interests in a textual and empirical analysis of colonialism’s effects and their potential undoing.
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    Eroticism, sensuality and “women's secrets” among the Baganda: A critical analysis
    (Feminist Africa, 2005) Tamale, Sylvia
    Sexuality is intricately linked to practically every aspect of our lives: to pleasure,power, politics and procreation, but also to disease, violence, war, language,social roles, religion, kinship structures, identity, creativity… the list is endless. The connection and collision between human sexuality,2 power and politics provided the major inspiration for this piece of research. Specifically, I wanted to explore the various ways in which the erotic is used both as an oppressive and empowering resource. In her compelling essay sub-titled The Erotic as Power,Audre Lorde (1984) argues for the construction of the erotic as the basis of women's resistance against oppression. For her, the concept entailed much more than the sexual act, connecting meaning and form, infusing the body and the psyche. Before Lorde, Michel Foucault (1977; 1990) had demonstrated how the human body is a central component in the operation of power. He theorised the body as “an inscribed surface of invents” from which the prints of history can be read (Rabinow, 1984: 83).
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    Feminist Africa 15 Legal Voice: Special issue
    (Feminist Africa, 2011) Tamale, Sylvia; Bennett, Jane
    Feminist struggles in Africa are fought from various fronts, with the law representing but one of them. While law and judicial reforms are not a panacea gender inequalities, the legal front is a central plank in this struggle as both shield and sword—a shield to protect women against discrimination and the violation of their fundamental rights, and a sword to challenge and overturn unjust sexist practices and to effect fundamental change to the status quo. While by no means a magic bullet the law can indeed be a critical game changer in the gender political landscape.
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    Gender Trauma in Africa: Enhancing Women's Links to Resources
    (Journal of African Law, 2004) Tamale, Sylvia
    The article considers the impact of the public/private divide on the lives of African women. It discusses how the “protection” of the private from legal and other scrutiny helps to conceal the burden of caring for family which is borne almost exclusively by women. Moreover, the devaluation and non-recognition of women's labour in “private” family enterprises is reinforced by the inequitable division and enjoyment of property, not least land. Indeed, often women's access to resources is, like their access to political fora, severely curtailed, thus calling into question the notion that women are full citizens. The paper calls for a transformation of gender relations on the continent. It argues that there needs to be a reconceptualization of African citizenship to embrace women's experiences and that this can only be done by addressing the socio-structural inequalities which hamper women's participation in society.
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    A Human Rights Impact Assessment of the Anti-Homosexuality Bill
    (East African journal of peace and human rights, 2009) Tamale, Sylvia
    I would like to thank the Human Rights and Peace Centre for inviting me here this afternoon toshare my views on this bill. It is great that HURIPEC organized this to be a dialogue and not a debatebecause debates have a tendency to polarize and divide along irrational gut-level responses. A dialogue, on the other hand, usefully sets the stage for people to listen to each other with understanding, tolerance and helps build bridges. I hope that this public dialogue will mark the first stepping stone for all of us to embark on a rewarding journey of mutual respect, simple decency and fairness.
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    Nudity, Protest and the Law in Uganda
    (Strategy, Voice, Power, 2016) Tamale, Sylvia
    The past few years in Uganda have witnessed several incidents of women stripping naked as a way of protesting what they perceive as gross injustice. This lecture attempts to analyze this age-old strategy from the perspectives of law, gender and power. In so doing, the institution of the law is understood broadly to include written legislation, unwritten customary law and the religious principles which underlie our legal jurisprudence. I step back in history to retrace naked protests in Africa before analyzing the local phenomenon. The analysis is guided by poststructural feminist understandings of the human body as a site of both power and control. This approach uses the imagery of bodies marked by written scripts which can be ―read‖ and interpreted by society. Of major concern to the analysis is the role played by the law in ―inscribing‖ the scripts of power and domination on men‘s bodies, while simultaneously inscribing subordination, passivity and sexuality on the bodies of women. I also examine how the law responds to naked protests. My conclusion is that, through the spectacle of naked protests, women are attempting to re-write the script on their bodies by using nakedness as an instrument of power and to subvert the law in order to effect justice.
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    The Outsider Looks In: Constructing Knowledge About American Collegiate Racism
    (Qualitative sociology, 1996) Tamale, Sylvia
    This study tackles one of the most complex and intriguing issues in contemporary society, namely, the phenomenon of racism. Instead of examining the structural dimensions of racism, it focuses on the interpersonal “everyday racism” that occurs among students. Using the University of Minnesota as a case study, the study employs qualitative research methods to offer new perspectives on everyday racism as perceived through the eyes of a Black foreign female student. Popular portrayals of the midwestern United States present a relatively liberal milieu where racism only subtly affects social relations, and where there is “zero tolerance” for the politics of exclusion. However, the findings of this study illustrate that everyday racism is alive and well in the collegiate environment. Epistemological issues are elaborated, arguing for the position of an interpretive and reflexive rather than a positivist approach to social research.
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    ‘Point of Order, Mr Speaker’: African Women Claiming their Space in Parliament
    (Gender & Development, 2000) Tamale, Sylvia
    At the close of the millennium, there is a wave of invigorating air sweeping across the African continent. The refreshing breeze can be felt in the form of women smashing the gendered 'glass ceiling' in a bid to overcome the cultural and structural barriers that impede their political careers. In this short article, I examine the relationship of African women to parliament. In the first section, I look at women's involvement in politics in pre-colonial Africa, and then examine the barriers to women's political activity thrown up by colonialism. This history explains much about women's absence from contemporary African national assemblies. I then focus on one state - Uganda - looking closely at the policy of affirmative action there, and the reality of male bias, prejudice, and sexual harassment that women MPs confront when they manage to enter parliament.
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    Profile: ‘Keep Your Eyes off My Thighs’: A Feminist Analysis of Uganda’s ‘Miniskirt Law’
    (Feminist Africa, 2015) Tamale, Sylvia
    On February 6, 2014, Uganda’s President Yoweri Museveni signed the AntiPornography Act (APA) into law. This single stroke of the presidential pen signalled a redeployment of women’s bodies as a battlefield for cultural-moral struggles, and an eruption of new frontiers in sexual political tensions in the country. Plans to draft the law date back to 2005, when the Minister of Ethics and Integrity at the time, Nsaba Buturo, set off alarm bells by announcing that the “vice of miniskirts” had taken hold of society to the extent of distracting mentally-weak male drivers on Ugandan roads!1
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    Think globally, act locally: using international treaties for women's empowerment in East Africa
    (Agenda, 2001) Tamale, Sylvia
    Women activists in Africa need to develop innovative ways to use international treaties and instruments in a way that strengthens domestic guarantees of equality for women in their countries writes SYLVIA TAMALE. She looks at the ways in which two such instruments, CEDAW and the Banjul Charter, have been used to advance women's empowerment