Victimization of Women in African Society: Conflict Between the Sexes and Conflict of Laws (From Comparative Criminal Justice: Traditional and Nontraditional Systems of Law and Control, P 61-82, 1996, Charles B Fields and Richter H Moore, Jr, eds. -- See NCJ-161138)

• NCJ Number: 161142
• Author(s): E Erez; R B Thompson
• Date Published: 1996
• Length: 22 pages
• Sale Source: Waveland Press, Inc.
• Publication Type: Report (Study/Research)
• Language: English
• Country: United States of America

Annotation

This paper delineates the forms of women's victimization and the normative structures that facilitate them in Sierra Leone in Africa.

Abstract

Sierra Leone is used as a case study because, like many other countries in Africa, it has legal pluralism and some degree of cultural heterogeneity. The inferior status of women in African countries such as Sierra Leone, particularly among the tribal societies that subscribe to customary law, results in various forms of female victimization: rape and sexual assaults, wife sexual and physical abuse, cliteridectomy, child marriage, and child labor. These practices are viewed as male normative prerogative; female obligation; or expected duties as daughters, wives, or mothers. The entrenched beliefs in male superiority and men's divine privileges regarding women have rendered attempts to apply Western standards to the treatment of women futile. The general (English) law, with its conception of women's autonomy and independence, is regarded as external "white-man law." It has been at best ignored, or at worst used as a weapon to enforce the indigenous customary law. The conflict between the sexes in African society is not likely to be eased so long as the balance between its dual legal systems favors traditional customary-law beliefs about women's inferiority. 3 notes and a 23-item bibliography