Women’s rights and critical junctures in constitutional reform in Africa (1951–2019)

Women’s rights are being enshrined in African constitutions today to an unprecedented extent. African countries have on average more constitutional provisions addressing women’s rights than any other region of the world. This longitudinal cross-national study shows that constitutional reforms in African contexts are increasingly evident in the areas of gender equality, customary law, discrimination, violence against women, gender quotas, and citizenship rights, and they sometimes reflect gender-inclusive language. By analysing a novel data set of constitutional reforms across all African countries over 68 years (1951–2019), this article identifies four critical junctures when the adoption of women’s rights reforms arose, namely (i) after independence, particularly in Muslim-majority countries; (ii) after political opening in the 1990s; (iii) after the end of major civil conflicts; and (iv) after the 2011 Arab uprisings. At each juncture, women’s movements capitalized on political openings to advance constitutional reforms that are unmatched on a global scale. This article goes beyond the existing explanations of cumulative gains, international influence, diffusion, learning, and borrowing to show that a ‘critical junctures’ approach may help explain when, why, and how women’s rights reforms occur in constitutions.