The Pan-African Women’s Organisation

Pan-Africanism, a movement built on the belief that Afro-diasporic people share a common heritage, culture and destiny, was originally driven by Africans in the Americas who wanted to establish a relationship with their mother continent. After the Second World War, Pan-Africanist ideals spread to Africa, where they were adopted in the struggle against colonialism before becoming the political vision of newly-independent states in the 1960s. Since its inception, Pan-Africanist thought was formulated by thinkers and activists of all genders but represented mostly by Black men of the elite.

Afro-diasporic women spent decades working towards the movement's goals whilst lobbying their fellow Black men to address gender issues within their movement and societies. The first five Pan-African Congresses (PACs) between 1900 and 1945 heavily relied on women's administrative and financial support yet scarcely allowed space for their visions and demands. So, African women decided to create their Pan-African organisations to connect their struggles for liberating African peoples and ending gender inequality. In 1962, a group established the Pan-African Women's Organisation (PAWO), Africa's first collective women's organisation.

2022 marks the 60th anniversary of PAWO, which, according to the African Union (AU), “has contributed to the struggle for the continent’s liberation from colonialism, the elimination of apartheid and the eradication of gender inequalities, discrimination and injustices against women”. But, given the many issues that African women and girls face today, it is worth asking: how successful has PAWO been in achieving a better Africa?

The Union of African Women

In 1960, the Pan-African dream of liberation started coming true as new flags began to unfurl over parts of Africa. Inspired by Pan-Africanist philosophy, the Organisation of African Unity (OAU), the predecessor of the AU, was established in Addis Ababa, Ethiopia, in May 1963. Meanwhile, women activists organised the All African Women’s Conference (AAWC) in Conakry, the People’s Revolutionary Republic of Guinea, in July 1961 to address the dual violence of colonialism and patriarchy they faced as African women.

Anticipating that men would soon ‘forget’ their contributions to the anti-colonial struggle and exclude them from nation-building processes, they founded the Union of African Women in Dar es Salaam, then Tanganyika, in 1962. They proclaimed an African Women’s Day, to be celebrated on 31 July annually in all member states, and pronounced their goals: to mobilise women in still colonised countries to fight for their liberation, to ensure that new government policies prioritised girls’ education and female literacy, to regulate early marriage and require women’s consent, and to provide health infrastructure.

Furthermore, they wanted to advocate for the right to vote, the adoption of family legislation to ensure greater respect for women’s rights, legal protection for women, better conditions for rural women, access to land, progress on customary rights, and women’s involvement in public governance. The main drivers of these goals and conferences were Aoua Keita from Mali, Pauline Clark from Ghana, and Jeanne Martin Cissé from Guinea, who became the union’s first Secretary-General and served for twelve years.

In 1974, the Union of African Women held a congress in Dakar and was subsequently renamed the Pan- African Women Organisation (PAWO). The name change was in line with its mission to fully integrate women’s concerns into Africa’s liberation agenda by enabling women to participate equally and effectively in the political, economic, social and cultural life of the continent.

The union has provided a platform for women to connect, exchange ideas, and raise awareness in continental and international fora. On its website, PAWO names its main achievement as the contribution to the “total decolonisation of Africa around the 60s and participating in the formation of the Organisation of African unity (O.A.U), today’s AU”. Since then, the organisation has been implementing further programmes to mobilise women and youth.

PAWO holds a congress every five years. The union is made up of a council, a general secretariat, and five regional secretaries. Its regional offices are in Tanzania, Tunisia, Niger and Equatorial Guinea, and its headquarters is in Pretoria, South Africa. In 2017, the AU granted the status of a specialised agency to PAWO. In a speech addressing the ministers responsible for Gender Equality and Women's Empowerment, Secretary-General Eunice Ipinge said that "PAWO's status of a specialised agency of the AU strengthens the efforts to ensure that women remain in the top most agenda of the continental body. This position enables PAWO to actively influence policy and decision-making in favour of women and young women who comprise most of the African population."

The Decades of African Women

Following the global movement towards gender equality, the AU named 2010-2020 the first African Women’s Decade (AWD) on “Grassroots Approach to Gender Equality and Women’s Empowerment”. The End of Term Review Report of this first AWD details “considerable progress...in translating commitment into measurable action as most African countries took giant steps to elevate the status of women through legal and constitutional means, institutional gender mechanisms as well as creating conducive environments for women to realise their potential”.

Most notably, four AU Member States (Rwanda, Namibia, South Africa and Senegal) were ranked in the top ten countries in the world with the highest number of women’s representation in Parliament; a further sixteen Member States surpassed the thirty percent threshold of women’s representation in national parliaments. However, despite these improvements, gender inequality in Africa remains high, and progress toward gender parity has been slow.

The report identifies continuous barriers of ”resource constraints; disparities between norm-setting and actual implementation; socio-economic and cultural constraints; sexual and gender-based violence; harmful cultural practices; HIV/AIDS; lack of property ownership including land and inheritance, among others”. As a result, 2020-2030 has been named the second AWD of African women’s financial and economic inclusion, entitled “Towards the African Women’s Decade: Realising Women’s Human Capital through accelerated social and economic development, addressing the scourge of violence, food insecurity and good nutrition on the African continent”.

As a specialised agency with a presence in all 55 member states, PAWO, in accordance with the vision of the AU agenda 2063, pledges to “lead the continental agenda for women and participate in all AU decision making platforms and events of AUC [African Union Commission] on Gender Equality and women empowerment.” Their focus is to address maternal health, education, food security, poverty elimination, moving the Nairobi Declaration forward, and securing the active engagement and commitment of AU Member States that have not yet ratified the Maputo Protocol.

An exclusive club?

PAWO is rooted in a long history of noteworthy Pan-African women's solidarity and action. Still, it's difficult to grasp its specific projects and achievements beyond its provision of a platform. In her article "Pan-African Women Organising for the Future: The Formation of the Pan African Women's Liberation Organisation and Beyond", Zaline Makini Roy-Campbell critiques PAWO's elitism, claiming that it "essentially embraces wives of heads of state, ministers and other women with high ranking associations." According to Roy-Campbell, the average woman on the streets of African countries or in rural areas has never heard of PAWO.

She goes on to caution activists against the co-optation of their movements by becoming "part of the jargon of institutions that seek only to capture the productive capacity of women and stifle their independent initiatives." She warns of "femocratisation", meaning women's absorption into bureaucracies to 'fight the struggle from within'. The organisation's actual programmes are difficult to research as most speeches and statements frequently commemorate events rather than outline concrete actions.

The little information that is available online remains vague. At the 10th Congress of PAWO held in Windhoek, Namibia, in 2020, the organisation adopted a new declaration and key resolutions focusing on issues of peace and security, technology in agriculture, increasing female land ownership, and focusing on "the boy child as well as the youth". However, no further details can be accessed online. All efforts to contact representatives of PAWO for an interview about their work were fruitless.

Rethinking institutional Pan-Africanist feminism

At the 2020 conference, Ipinge stressed the importance of integrating young people into PAWO’s structures. “Madame Assetou Koite, whom I took over from, is an old person. I am also getting old. That’s why Congress decided to tap into the power of the youth. We have to groom them, so they take over when we get old.

We decided to have a youth desk in all our structures.” While this is an important step towards ensuring the continued relevance of institutional Pan-Africanist feminism, PAWO will need to radically change its activism and priorities by engaging a wide variety of women across the continent instead of grooming just a few. Sixty years after its formation, the expectations of PAWO have shifted from simple rhetoric to measurable actions. The organisation must rethink its approach to campaigning for gender equality in a rapidly changing Africa.

Pan-Africanism, a movement built on the belief that Afro-diasporic people share a common heritage, culture and destiny, was originally driven by Africans in the Americas who wanted to establish a relationship with their mother continent. After the Second World War, Pan-Africanist ideals spread to Africa, where they were adopted in the struggle against colonialism before becoming the political vision of newly-independent states in the 1960s. Since its inception, Pan-Africanist thought was formulated by thinkers and activists of all genders but represented mostly by Black men of the elite.