Gender justice and women empowerment in Africa: a critical perspective of post MDGs

Abstract

Despite the 2015 Millennium Development Goals (MDGs) to bridge the gender gaps and promote women empowerment, prevailing cultural, patriarchal and institutional practices deepen gender inequality and injustices in Africa. Achieving gender justice is a necessary condition for societal development. In spite of the progress made in the last one and the half decade, gender injustices remained perceptible in major ways that affect women's lives in the Post-MDG era. This study examines the ways the MDGs address gender justice and women empowerment; explores agency and achievement functioning approach to gender relations, and the critical perspectives on global inequality and the structural constraints to gender justice and women empowerment in the Post MDGs agenda. Bridging gender differentials in capabilities and functioning of women are key to resolving gender inequalities. But more critical are structural drivers of gender injustices that result in the reproduction of poverty and...