This special edition of Perspectives reflects on, analyzes and documents the evolution of African feminisms and feminist action that African activists have taken up to address both old as well as persistent and new threats to women’s rights and gender justice. It also reflects on lessons learned from African feminist practices for current and future generations across the region.
Stella Nyanzi’s No Roses From My Mouth includes 159 poems written in 2019 and 2020 from Luzira Women’s Prison in Kampala, Uganda during a trial and serving time for cyber-harassing and offending the President of Uganda, Yoweri Kaguta Museveni in a poem where she uses his dead mother’s vagina as an image to comment on her son’s "oppression, suppression and repression" of Ugandans. This poetry collection includes poems "written by an activist who uses the space of incarceration and the time of detention to reflect on the conditions of being incarcerated itself", the position of the woman in society, and the political conditions of the Ugandan state.
Out of the eleven elections that have been held in Kenya since independence, the 2013 election will remain significant in Kenya’s electoral history. The Constitution of Kenya 2010 set the legal framework for promoting gender equality, which has seen a record eighty six woman elected and nominated to the eleventh Parliament. This number surpasses the total number of women representatives in the fifty years of independence combined. In the last ten parliaments, Kenya has had a total of eventy five women, fifty of them elected while the other 25 were nominated. With an increase from 9.8% to 19% representation, Kenya is now ranked 76th of the top 100 countries in the World Classification of Women in National Parliaments. The marked
Progress, a result of years of hard work by different stakeholders in the women’s movement, deserves celebration.
Despite global advances recognizing the principle of women’s political, economic and social equality, Kenyan women continue to be marginalized in many areas of society, especially in the sphere of leadership and decision making.
The book offers a simplified but comprehensive profile of all the elective, nominative and appointive positions in Kenya's Constitution, for women and men to make informed decisions about which offices to go for.
