Women’s rights and empowerment has pervaded popular discourse over the last few decades, but have women’s conditions and the ideologies that reproduce them changed? Issue 930 of Pambazuka News seeks to move beyond patriarchy to rethink gender and female-male liberation across Global Africa.

An exploration of how colonialism, austerity, and neoliberalism privatize care, turning African women's labor and resilience into an invisible infrastructure of economic survival.

A historical account of masculinity and a challenge to traditional arguments that view masculinity as benevolent versus toxic forms within patriarchal structures and hides the inherent violence in both.

Iris Kaingu’s win in Mwandi exposes Zambia’s double standard: men’s scandals fade, women’s define them. As Kaingu’s father was enlisted by a president seeking to rein her in, voters in Mwandi proved politicians do not determine or reflect the interests of everyday Zambians.   

Examining how patriarchal assumptions continue to shape Kenya’s legal system and gaps in laws intended to protect and advance women’s rights.

As a fresh wave of anti-LGBTQ+ legislation sweeps across western and eastern Africa, increased profiling of persons identifying with different sexualities in Nigeria exposes these persons to mob violence and exploitation.

The article examines how men themselves are positioned within unequal economic and political structures while asking who benefits when masculinity becomes a vehicle for restoring patriarchal authority. Ultimately, the struggle over masculinity is also a struggle over power, citizenship, economic justice and women’s liberation. 

The piece is centred around masculinity, media, violence and gender representation within South African context – exploring how media representation and culture influences and reconstructs our understanding of power and identity and can prompt violence and inequality. 

Sankara’s thoughts and intellectual traditions of women in the liberation movement find expression in womanist and Pan-African Feminist thought in envisioning women’s liberation beyond discussions about patriarchy. Kanda combines these traditions to contend that Sankarist and Feminist praxis must name and confront harmful cultural practices in the struggle for women’s liberation.

A tribute to Tajudeen Abdul-Raheem on his contributions to women’s rights and liberation, which remain as relevant as ever today. 

In this poetic prose, Opicho challenges men, fathers, gatekeepers and beneficiaries of patriarchal structures to release the girl child to unleash her potential through education instead of ongoing restrictions to the kitchen, extraction of dowry, sexual exploitation and gender violence.