Chapter 10, the final chapter of the book, compiles all the qualitative and quantitative trends and patterns identified throughout the detailed analysis. It shows, through a comparative analysis, facts such as the total number of cases with violations against the state and those without violations, the most common rights issues in the Maputo Protocol that have been contested, the nature of these rights and those still to be adjudicated by the Court, the defendant states involved, the types of applicants, the remedies awarded, the reliefs denied, and the duration from case filing to judgment. These elements form the quantitative aspect of the trends and patterns. The qualitative part addresses each of the book’s research questions, presenting findings from all analysed cases. This discussion culminates in the chapter’s final section on the structure of women’s rights jurisprudence in the ECOWAS Court, outlining the Court’s current position and potential future developments. It recommends measures for the Court and its users to further develop its women’s rights jurisprudence.

This introductory chapter provides the background and contextual information to ground the book, including its objectives, significance, and relevance of the subject matter, the guiding research questions to be addressed, the nature of the ECOWAS Court’s human rights mandate, the normative and analytical frameworks used, and the methodology employed in selecting the cases analysed.

Chapter 2 examines the ECOWAS Court’s jurisprudence on gender-based discrimination in light of the judgment in Dorothy Njemanze and 3 Ors v. Nigeria. This case is the pioneering decision of the ECOWAS Court that pronounced on the Maputo Protocol and held the Republic of Nigeria responsible for gender-based discrimination against a marginalised group of women – alleged sex workers. The decision significantly influenced the African women’s rights legal framework on holding states accountable for violations of women’s rights. I argue in this chapter how the principle of due diligence made its debut, albeit implicitly, in the Court’s use of the letter and spirit of the Maputo Protocol. The chapter also highlights the ripple effects of the Njemanze decision in other regional courts, such as the African Court, which took judicial notice of the case and expressed its opinion on vagrancy laws across Africa.

Chapter 3 parallels the Njemanze and the Collectif Cri de Coeur Pour Le Mali v. Republic of Mali cases. While the Njemanze decision was ruled in favour of the women victims, the Collectif decision was not. The applicants in Collectif relied on Njemanze to support their claims against the Republic of Mali. The Court further clarified its jurisprudence and limitations regarding holding states accountable for violations against women. The Collectif case raised important questions about when a state discharges its obligations under the Maputo Protocol to punish acts of violence against women and to implement programmes for the rehabilitation of victims. The chapter shows how the Court’s reasoning largely echoes the principles of the due diligence doctrine, which is why it rightly found Mali not responsible for the victims. However, it also reveals two jurisprudential faults in the Court’s reasoning. One involving the use and application of a decision of the African Court out of context, and another concerning its interpretation of when the due diligence principle applies in relation to healthcare services. It demonstrates how this flawed reasoning conflicts with the operation of the ECOWAS Court’s human rights mandate, especially its rule on local remedies.

Chapter 4 compares two domestic violence cases: Mary Sunday v. The Federal Republic of Nigeria, and Mrs Sarah Kingsley Odoro v. ECOWAS Commission and 2 Ors. Although the Maputo Protocol safeguards the rights of domestic violence victims within international law, holding states accountable for such violations occurring in the private sphere remains a significant challenge. In Mary Sunday, the ECOWAS Court clarified its stance regarding the types of evidence needed to establish a state’s liability for domestic violence. Meanwhile, in the Sarah Odoro case, the Court reiterated the scope of defendants over which it would have jurisdiction in domestic violence matters. This chapter highlights the potential of the due diligence principle at the individual level to broaden the Court’s perspective on holding states accountable to individual victims, while also considering the implications of such an approach for domestic violence cases in international forums.

The extent of the ECOWAS Court’s intervention in holding states accountable for violating women’s rights to the protection of their person and family is examined in Chapter 6. In Aminata Diantou Diane v. République du Mali, the Court ruled that Mali had infringed upon the rights to protection, a fair trial within a reasonable time, and an adequate remedy for the applicant and her children, but it declined to grant other systemic remedies related to gender-based discrimination. The chapter evaluates the key aspects of the Diane decision, focusing on how the Court’s reasoning aligns with the five Ps of the due diligence principle, while also overlooking the opportunity to hold Mali responsible for gender-based discrimination and to mandate legislative reforms.

This chapter provides a detailed analysis of the UK Suprme Court’s decision in For Women Scotland v The Scottish Ministers, the landmark case which considered the definition of sex in the Equality Act 2010. The Court set out a test for determining when a Gender Recognition Certificate will not modify an individual’s legally recognised sex. In so doing, the Court reiterated the default common law position that sex is binary, biological, and immutable as a matter of fact. The Gender Recognition Act will not modify an individual’s legally recognised sex where the terms, context, and purpose of another enactment show that sex was intended to mean biological sex, because of a clear incompatibility between a certificated reading of sex and another enactment or where an enactment’s provisions are rendered incoherent and unworkable by a certificated sex interpretation. Applying this test to the Equality Act 2010, the Court concluded that a biological meaning of sex prevails. In concluding as such, the Court maintained equality of status for those protected under the characteristic of gender reassignment and reiterated that transgender people remain protected from associative or perception-based sex discrimination. While doctrinally a modest clarification, the judgment has significant social impact, correcting widespread misinterpretations of sex and gender in law.

This Chapter outlines the position in both anti-discrimination law and workplace health and safety law as it relates to the provision of women-only spaces and services, including sanitary, showering, and changing facilities. Within the workplace, there is limited discretion afforded to employers: single-sex toilets, showers and changing rooms must be provided if such facilities are offered on a communal basis, i.e. where more than one person uses the facility at the time. For services to the public, things are more complex. The default position is one of non-discrimination, meaning that unless there is some exception, it is unlawful to provide a service for men but not women or women but not men. Where there is an exception, a service provider must operate within the bounds of that exception to avoid liability. It has long been established that there is no entitlement to access single sex services for the opposite biological sex purely based on self-identification. This chapter considers whether and under what circumstances it may be lawful to offer ‘trans-inclusive’ services.

The introduction traces the history of legal discrimination against women in the UK, from exclusion in university education and voting rights to the legal profession. Courts presumed sex-based distinctions as default, requiring parliamentary intervention for reforms including women’s suffrage, equal pay, and the protection of women from sex discrimination and sexual harassment in the workplace. The Sex Discrimination Act 1975 prohibited discrimination while allowing exceptions for protection of women, including single-sex spaces. These legal developments operated on a tacit understanding of sex as biological sex, which can be distinguished from emerging concepts of gender as a system of social norms overlayed on biological sex and gender identity as an individuals internalised experience of these norms. The chapter then provides a descriptive overview of the Equality Act 2010 as a resource for readers unfamiliar with its structure and core principles.

This chapter traces the legal development of trans rights advocacy away from a medical model towards one based on gender identity. This shift resulted in an expansion of both terminology and concepts to encompass a broader cohort of individuals than previously envisaged. This eventially led to attempts by activists to reform the law towards a self-identification model. Both the Scottish and the UK government proposed gender recognition reform. After consultation, the UK government abandoned the project, concerned about the impact on women’s rights, but the Scottish government pressed ahead, ultimately leading to a legal dispute when the UK government used a power within devolution law to prevent the Scottish Gender Recognition Reform Bill from obtaiingn Royal Assent. This Chapter analyses the impact that self-identification of sex would have had on women’s sex-based equality rights and the resulting legal challenge brought to the lawfulness of the UK goverment blocking Scottish gender recognition reform.

Martina Barros Borgoño (1850–1944) was a pioneering Chilean who advanced women’s rights in significant ways, not least in terms of advocating for suffrage, but also in terms of a critical approach to nineteenth-century thinking on gender distinctions. Born in a socially distinguished milieu, Martina Barros encountered John Stuart Mill’s The Subjection of Women (1869) at a young age and embarked on the translation and commentary of the source by 1872. Barros’ prologue celebrated some aspects of Mill’s work, but bemoaned others. She acknowledged the role of her husband, the liberal physician Augusto Orrego Luco, in the writing of the prologue, but affirmed that the ideas were her own in her autobiography. Both had previously read Mill’s On Liberty (1859), and shared his condemnation of the tyranny of customs, challenging gender traditions and participating actively in publications and intellectual circles. Her views, however, were far from radical. As she stated in her autobiography, “my aim in promoting the independence and culture of women was not to make them rivals of men, but rather their dignified companions.”

This essay explores the deep and longstanding relationship between African Americans and the Declaration of Independence. From the 1770s to the present, black activists and thinkers have consistently excoriated the paradox of an American democracy that proclaims inalienable rights while systematically denying black citizens’ rights. Drawing on figures such as Frederick Douglass, Sojourner Truth, Frances E. W. Harper, Anna Julia Haywood Cooper, and Shirley Chisholm, the text illustrates how African Americans have employed the Declaration as a foundation for their demands for the abolition of slavery, civil rights, and equality. It examines black protest rhetoric’s critique of white supremacy, hypocrisy, and the failure of the United States to live up to its foundational principles. And it emphasizes the crucial role black women have played in advancing black liberation and expanding the scope of equality to include gender and race. Through the centuries, African Americans have called for the United States of America to reconcile its practices with its founding document’s principles of equality and justice for all.

Chapter 6 shows how the history of land reform in central Kenya, dating back to the late colonial period, has shaped a situation of scarcity in which access to land, and contestation over it, has become highly gendered. Engaging with regional literature on land, kinship, and economic change, it discusses the micro-politics of ‘intimate exclusion’ that plays out in inheritance disputes, with young men trying to exclude their sisters from inheriting precious land. Meanwhile, older men try to argue for their daughters’ ability to inherit, citing wider legal change and the rising rates of divorce. The chapter discusses the intimate politics of envy and competition, exploring ‘zero-sum’ family disputes over wealth, demonstrating the moral arguments for ‘inclusion’ that are made by senior men, and attempts to control and mitigate greed-fuelled conflicts in the future through fair distribution.