Women's rights and culture in Africa: a dialogue with global patriarchal traditions

Drawing on findings from field research in Ghana, analyses of the 2003 Maputo Protocol on women's rights in Africa and other human rights instruments, this article discusses the challenges of advocating for individual women's rights in African states. The article examines the strategies women's rights advocates employ in navigating cultural hindrances to women's rights and negotiating women's individual rights within Ghana's socio-cultural and political terrain. It argues that advocates must advance a type of 'specific relativism' that is based on a fine balance between universalist and cultural relativist claims within the human rights discourse. Further, it argues that African women's rights issues, considered in the context of Africa's post-colonial environment, highlight the manner in which global economic inequalities reinforce oppressive cultural customs that marginalise women and contribute to rights violations. Therefore, women's advocates must also take into account the global economic system when articulating claims for African women's rights.