‘Thank you for being’/’the worst woman in the world’: reading Sylvia Tamale

abstract

This article reviews and discusses the critical writing of Sylvia Tamale, a legal scholar based at the University of Makerere. For the past 30 years, Professor Tamale has been a leading feminist theorist and activist, working at the intersections of law, sexuality, culture, and gender. A prolific and provocative writer, Sylvia Tamale's oeuvre has been critical in galvanising debates on the scope of feminist theories and theory's implications for driving continental activist agendas.

keywords:

• African feminists
• law and gender
• Sylvia Tamale

Notes

1 STIAS Lecture Series 2019: Yvette Christinase - “Untold Wealth for the Benefit of the World”: Liberated Africans and the Cost of Freedom, August 13th, 2019, University of Stellenbosch.

2 Sylvia Tamale was, in 2003, one of the legal experts invited to draft the terms through which the then proposed Equality Opportunities Commission of Uganda was to be constituted.

3 Julia Sebuntinde went on to become the first woman judge in the International Court of Justice.

4 Bibi Bakare-Yusuf, the founder of the internationally award-winning publishing house, Cassava Republic, challenges this approach from Oyewumi.

5 I am thinking of organisations such as WILDAF (Women in Law and Development in Africa), WLSA (Women and Law in Southern Africa), and the more recently established ISLA (Institute for Strategic Litigation in Africa).

6 In 2005, Urgent Action in Nairobi published ‘The True Test for Human Rights Defenders’, a review of the need for lgbti activism and solidarity-building in Eastern Africa.

Additional information

Notes on contributors

Jane Bennett

Jane Bennett, located at the University of Cape Town, works as a feminist writer of both fiction and research-based work, and as an activist in engagement with NGO feminist cross-continental feminist work advocating for the sexual and reproductive justice, the integration of feminist analysis into policies and planning, and in support of queer justice advocacy. Email: [email protected]