Women\u27s Legal Rights, in Oxford Research Encyclopedia of African History (2019)

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.https://scholarlycommons.law.wlu.edu/fac_books/1011/thumbnail.jp

Culture, Dissent, and the State: The Example of Commonwealth African Marriage Law

This is an explosive time for those seeking to define the meaning and parameters of marriage. The subject has generated heated debate worldwide. In June 2010, the European Court of Human Rights declined to extend marriage rights to a gay Austrian couple, but the Court carefully laid the foundation for the recognition of such rights when a European consensus on the issue emerges. In July 2010, Argentina extended to same-sex couples the right to marry, joining nine other countries that legally recognize same-sex couples\u27 right to marry. In August 2010, a United States district judge struck down a California ban on same-sex marriage. Marriage, as a legal status and a social construct, continues to evolve. In recent years, some theorists have questioned the continued salience of marriage as a legal category and advocated a minimal role for the state in marriage regulation. Those challenging marriage as an institution and the state\u27s role in marriage regulation do so for legitimate and compelling reasons, primarily related to the role of the institution in perpetuating sexism and heterosexism. This Article is the first to explore the transnational applicability of this critique of marriage. In light of this critique, the Article interrogates the role of the state in marriage regulation in the particular context of Commonwealth African states. In contrast to those arguing for a limited or nonexistent role for the state in the ordering of private, intimate relationships, the Article argues strongly for expanded, rather than reduced, state intervention in marriage. Robust state regulation will promote equality within individual relationships and among relationships, including same-sex relationships. The Article proposes a three-part strategy for promoting equality in marriage. First, states with plural legal systems, such as those in Commonwealth Africa, should preserve the plural legal architecture of marriage but integrate the relevant laws by establishing a legislative core of rights within marriage. Second, states should promote equality among intimate relationships by building on the existing marriage menu options, adding options for same-sex couples when the political climate is ripe for such reform. Third, states should explore traditions and customary law that support broader understandings of family and caregiving, moving the focus of family law beyond the heterosexual spousal dyad

A Decade After Abu Ghraib: Lessons in Softening Up The Enemy and Sex-Based Humiliation

Not available

Honor as Property

This Article is the first to use a property lens to explore the social construction of honor within legal systems around the world. The Article makes the claim that the law in many countries has implicitly treated honor as a form of property and has made legal and social allowances for men who seek to reclaim honor property through violence. The Article expands the boundaries of the existing scholarship concerning honor-related violence by exploring the intersections between social constructions of honor and social constructions of property. Using a property lens to analyze the relationship between honor, patriarchal control, and law provides a deeper understanding of the motivations for this form of gender-based violence. The Article also assesses the implications of this new theoretical model and concludes that honor must be reframed to position women as potential holders of honor property and to disassociate honor from the social regulation of women\u27s sexuality

Pluralism in Ghana: The Perils and Promise of Parallel Law

Many states have recognized that minority groups require accommodation to protect them from domination by the majority. Some states have responded by implementing accommodationist policies that cede jurisdiction over certain matters, such as family law, to the minority group. Many multicultural theorists have embraced accommodation as the best way to protect minority groups from oppression by the state. A number of feminists, however, have raised concerns that these accommodationist policies actually increase the vulnerability of women within those accommodated minority communities. In her book Multicultural Jurisdictions, Ayelet Shachar has made a valuable contribution to the theoretical debates surrounding state accommodation of multiculturalism. Shachar\u27s theory is grounded in the important insight that women have complex identities and multiple affiliations, including the state and the community. Because any theory is best evaluated as applied in specific cases, this Essay explores the application of Shachar\u27s theory to the Ghanaian legal system. As a post-colonial plural legal system, Ghana provides a useful case study that includes both state accommodation in some areas of family law and uniform state laws in other areas of family law. Although only one example, Ghana has attempted to reconcile the needs of its ethnic communities to enjoy some level of self-regulation and the need of the state to protect the individual rights of all Ghanaians

Gender, Discourse, and Customary Law in Africa

Around the world, efforts by states to accommodate cultural pluralism vary in form and vigor. Some multiculturalist states cede to cultural minorities the authority to govern in certain substantive areas, such as family law. Not surprisingly, feminists have raised concerns that a state’s reluctance to govern in areas traditionally seen as “private,” and leaving those areas of law to customary legal systems, leaves women within those minority communities vulnerable to discrimination. Many women value cultural identity, even as they work to eliminate discrimination within their cultural communities. The international human rights community, however, has not always viewed women as committed, active members of their cultural communities. By viewing African women almost exclusively as victims of their culture, the international human rights community has historically undervalued the potential for African women to reformulate cultural policies within their communities. The two primary human rights treaties for the promotion of gender equality in Africa, the Convention on the Elimination of All Forms of Discrimination Against Women and the African Charter on Human and Peoples’ Rights are dismissive of culture and gender equality, respectively. The Protocol to the African Charter on the Rights of Women in Africa attempts to remedy the shortcomings of CEDAW and the African Charter and offers new hope for promoting gender equality on the continent. In addition to strong substantive rights, the Protocol provides important procedural rights to ensure that women have a voice in the ongoing examination and reformulation of cultural practices and customary law

CEDAW in Sub-Saharan Africa: Lessons in Implementation

Article published in the Michigan State Law Review

Design of 280 GHz feedhorn-coupled TES arrays for the balloon-borne polarimeter SPIDER

We describe 280 GHz bolometric detector arrays that instrument the balloon-borne polarimeter SPIDER. A primary science goal of SPIDER is to measure the large-scale B-mode polarization of the cosmic microwave background in search of the cosmic-inflation, gravitational-wave signature. 280 GHz channels aid this science goal by constraining the level of B-mode contamination from galactic dust emission. We present the focal plane unit design, which consists of a 16$\times$16 array of conical, corrugated feedhorns coupled to a monolithic detector array fabricated on a 150 mm diameter silicon wafer. Detector arrays are capable of polarimetric sensing via waveguide probe-coupling to a multiplexed array of transition-edge-sensor (TES) bolometers. The SPIDER receiver has three focal plane units at 280 GHz, which in total contains 765 spatial pixels and 1,530 polarization sensitive bolometers. By fabrication and measurement of single feedhorns, we demonstrate 14.7$^{\circ}$ FHWM Gaussian-shaped beams with $<$1% ellipticity in a 30% fractional bandwidth centered at 280 GHz. We present electromagnetic simulations of the detection circuit, which show 94% band-averaged, single-polarization coupling efficiency, 3% reflection and 3% radiative loss. Lastly, we demonstrate a low thermal conductance bolometer, which is well-described by a simple TES model and exhibits an electrical noise equivalent power (NEP) = 2.6 $\times$ 10$^{-17}$ W/$\sqrt{\mathrm{Hz}}$, consistent with the phonon noise prediction.Comment: Proceedings of SPIE Astronomical Telescopes + Instrumentation 201

Pointing control for the SPIDER balloon-borne telescope

We present the technology and control methods developed for the pointing system of the SPIDER experiment. SPIDER is a balloon-borne polarimeter designed to detect the imprint of primordial gravitational waves in the polarization of the Cosmic Microwave Background radiation. We describe the two main components of the telescope's azimuth drive: the reaction wheel and the motorized pivot. A 13 kHz PI control loop runs on a digital signal processor, with feedback from fibre optic rate gyroscopes. This system can control azimuthal speed with < 0.02 deg/s RMS error. To control elevation, SPIDER uses stepper-motor-driven linear actuators to rotate the cryostat, which houses the optical instruments, relative to the outer frame. With the velocity in each axis controlled in this way, higher-level control loops on the onboard flight computers can implement the pointing and scanning observation modes required for the experiment. We have accomplished the non-trivial task of scanning a 5000 lb payload sinusoidally in azimuth at a peak acceleration of 0.8 deg/s$^2$, and a peak speed of 6 deg/s. We can do so while reliably achieving sub-arcminute pointing control accuracy.Comment: 20 pages, 12 figures, Presented at SPIE Ground-based and Airborne Telescopes V, June 23, 2014. To be published in Proceedings of SPIE Volume 914

A mitogenomic timetree for Darwin’s enigmatic South American mammal Macrauchenia patachonica

The unusual mix of morphological traits displayed by extinct South American native ungulates (SANUs) confounded both Charles Darwin, who first discovered them, and Richard Owen, who tried to resolve their relationships. Here we report an almost complete mitochondrial genome for the litoptern Macrauchenia. Our dated phylogenetic tree places Macrauchenia as sister to Perissodactyla, but close to the radiation of major lineages within Laurasiatheria. This position is consistent with a divergence estimate of B66Ma (95% credibility interval, 56.64–77.83 Ma) obtained for the split between Macrauchenia and other Panperissodactyla. Combined with their morphological distinctiveness, this evidence supports the positioning of Litopterna (possibly in company with other SANU groups) as a separate order within Laurasiatheria. We also show that, when using strict criteria, extinct taxa marked by deep divergence times and a lack of close living relatives may still be amenable to palaeogenomic analysis through iterative mapping against more distant relatives.Facultad de Ciencias Naturales y Muse