Publication Title

Africa Spectrum

Document Type

Article

Department or Program

Politics

Publication Date

6-19-2025

Keywords

gender equality, gender parity, gender quota, Islam, religion, Senegal, women's organisation

Abstract

How do Muslim women balance their religious agency and political aspirations? Gender quotas have been used across the African continent to improve women's political visibility since the 1990s. Senegal's own experiment with gender equality in 2010 faced political barriers as well as religious ones. The author sheds light on how Muslim women activists in Senegal shaped women's place in their communities through the gender parity law. Based on multiple fieldwork visits from 2016 to 2018 and individual interviews with activists and scholars involved in the movement to make gender parity the law in Senegal, the author argues that while Islam may not always be the most adequate tool to dismantle patriarchal norms, it remains a valuable framework for women activists in Senegal to achieve secular change.

Comments

Original version is available from the publisher at: https://doi.org/10.1177/00020397251344304

This is an Open Access article published under a CC BY 4.0 License.

Copyright Note

© The Author(s) 2025

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