African Women Judges: Storytelling as Judicial Freedom

This edited volume centers the voices of African women judges as agents of justice and equality. The legal and personal narratives approach in the book privileges the contributors’ lived experiences, professional trajectories, contributions and challenges. The legal narrative storytelling approach also contributes to oral histories of African indigenous knowledge production and transfer. By highlighting the substantive representation of women in African judicial leadership, the chapters examine their impact on the development of jurisprudence, judicial administration, and contributions to the rule of law, access to justice, and women’s rights in contemporary Africa. This book significantly contributes to the diversity of knowledge and representation in the global discourse on gender and judging, offering a novel contribution to the growing literature on African women judges.

J. Jarpa Dawuni is an Associate Professor of Political Science at Howard University, Washington D.C. She is a qualified Barrister-at-Law before the Ghana Superior Courts. She holds a Doctorate in Political Science from Georgia State University. Her primary areas of research include judicial politics, women in the legal professions, gender and the law, international human rights, women’s civil society organizing, and democratization. Her recent books include: Intersectionality and Women’s Access to Justice in Africa (Lexington, 2022), Gender, Judging and the Courts in Africa: Selected Cases (Routledge, 2021), International Courts and the African Woman Judge: Unveiled Narratives (Routledge, 2018) co-edited with Judge Akua Kuenyehia and Gender and the Judiciary in Africa: From Obscurity to Parity? (Routledge, 2016), co-edited with Gretchen Bauer. She is the founding Director of the Howard University Center for Women, Gender and Global Leadership, and the founder and Executive Director of the non-profit organization, the Institute for African Women in Law. She is a two-time Fulbright Specialist Scholar, a Fellow of the French Institute for Advanced Studies (IMERA-Marseille), a Fellow of the Stellenbosch Institute for Advanced Studies (STIAS) South Africa, and a Carnegie African Diaspora Fellow. She has held Visiting Professor positions at Queens University, Canada; University of Jaume I, Spain; and Kings College, London. She is a multi-award-winning scholar, including the 2020 Justitia Awards-Academic Category by the Women in Law Initiative Vienna, the WOZA Women in Law, South Africa, and Outstanding Assistant Professor, College of Arts and Sciences, Howard University.