ABSTRACT
This chapter discusses potential incompatibilities between women's rights and the right to development in sub-Saharan Africa. Capitalist development undermines the status of African women, putting control of the national economy into elite male hands and control of the family into the hands of its male members. Women's rights cannot be realized without changes in the political and ideological, as well as the economic, spheres. Women's rights require cultural change in all societies. Men in Africa are influenced by, inter alia, their traditional cultural beliefs about the proper role of women in society. The misogynistic beliefs found in indigenous African societies have been reinforced by several centuries of foreign influence and colonialism. Until the 1990s, there were very few voluntary organizations in Africa concerned with human rights and even fewer concerned specifically with women's rights. Aside from education, a rights-focused aid package could assist women to pressure for changes in laws in Africa.
