Wipe out patriarchy in the ivory towers of learning

One of the most contentious and longstanding debates on the African continent, besides the push towards black economic empowerment in several Southern African countries, has been the ?gender debate?.

One of the most contentious and longstanding debates on the African continent, besides the push towards black economic empowerment in several Southern African countries, has been the ‘gender debate’.

Universities are among the many players that have sought to engage with the gender debate beyond gesture politics often associated with states. As an academic, my experience in teaching a course rooted in the impact of gender difference from a legal perspective, reveals that there are key issues centred on approach that need to be addressed if universities are to play the crucial role of producing graduates who have an understanding and the necessary skills of how gender impacts on every facet of our lives, including our vision for Africa’s development. The content of gender courses is of course also vital given that as with virtually every other ideology that impacts on development, the success or failure thereof has everything to do with the ability or non-ability to strike a responsive chord in terms of our own experiences.

The Law Faculty at the University of Zimbabwe has had a course entitled “Women’s Law” on its curriculum for the last 15 years. Informed by the understanding that equal laws do not necessarily produce equal results for everyone, at the heart of the course is getting students to appreciate the way in which law is often biased in favour of men in its outlook, and how women’s lived realities are often marginalised or virtually invisible in most legal formulations. The aim is to explore ways of making law more meaningful for women by identifying areas where the law is strong, where it is weak, and where it needs to be changed.

The course is optional and can be taken by students in their third or final year. This element of making gender courses optional is of course one of the serious limitations in terms of approach. Given societal attitudes towards women’s issues, in early years, the course was lucky if it attracted a handful of souls, no doubt some drawn by what seemed to be the prospects of an easy option that would help them clinch a coveted degree.

Although levels of interest have improved over the years, the course, despite its significant implications from a jurisprudential perspective, can hardly be said to hold the magnetism of the Piped Piper.

Considering that there are at least 180 third and fourth year students in any given year, 35 students a year are about the maximum magnetic pull the course has had since its inception. The stark reality therefore is that only a handful of law students get to shed their blinkered lenses in terms of how they understand the law.

One reason for the increased interest is that for law graduates, other avenues of employment particularly in non-governmental and international organisations have opened up. The nature of work carried out by some of these bodies often requires a knowledge of how gender in its various facets, impacts on people’s lives. There is also the fact that the numbers of students enrolling at the law school has also increased significantly over the years meaning that the numbers of students taking any particular optional course have also increased. The emphasis on human rights and gender equality at the global level has also helped to increase student interest in a course such as this.

A central point is that marketing is everything especially where one is seeking to introduce new concepts. A key reason for the initial limited attraction of such a course had to do with its name: “women’s law”. This raises the issue of whether naming is important, yet at the same time, there is a strong argument for sticking to calling a spade a spade.

However, for many students, a subject thus titled seemed an unnecessary distraction – at best a finger pointing course that did not rank highly among the options that are likely to increase a student’s brownie points with prospective legal employers. Yet over the years, students who have done the course have been amazed at how much it goes to the very core of their understanding of law and have formed the view that it should be compulsory.

Understanding the impact of law from a gender perspective is clearly not a luxury that a law student can willy-nilly afford to choose not to have. It is fundamental to the creation of a critical lawyer who appreciates that every subject of the law produces different results when examined with gender lenses. Clearly, if universities are to play a crucial role in producing law graduates who have social justice at heart, then the way in which we seek to instill these values calls for a major re-think.

I would argue that while a course such as women’s law should certainly be compulsory within the legal profession, it is also vital that that gender be mainstreamed in every course in any given discipline. Courses should have components that effectively illustrate the differential impact of the subject matter on the lives of both men and women. The problem of course is that many lecturers do not have the necessary gender analysis skills called for by such an approach and therefore cannot be expected to incorporate perspectives that they themselves do not understand.

Despite the centrality of grappling with gender for African development, it is of concern that university lecturers often display some of the most disturbing patriarchal tendencies for a group entrusted with churning out Africa’s critical change agents. Continuing education through compulsory courses for lecturers on gender could be one solution.

Dr Amy S Tsanga is a lecturer in Law at the University of Zimbabwe and Deputy Director of the Women’s Law Institute. Her email is: tsanga@law.uz.ac.zw

This article is part of the GEM Opinion and Commentary Service that provides views and perspectives on current events.

janine@genderlinks.org.za for more information.