How does the women gender and development directorate of the African Union promote its gender agenda?

Abstract

The purpose of this dissertation is to evaluate how the Women, Gender and Development Directorate of the African Union promotes its Gender Agenda. This dissertation is contributing to a niche as gender and the African Union is an underexplored area. The Gender Policy in pursuit of the Gender Agenda of the African Union is evaluated through the tenants of Stiwanism, an African Feminism by Ogundipe-Leslie, in order to uncover the root causes of gender disparities and hindrances to women?s empowerment in the African context. The qualitative research method of a „single case study? design and secondary analysis of pre-existing data is used to evaluate the promotion of the Gender Agenda. The findings of this dissertation are that women remain systematically and very significantly under-represented despite their inclusion and involvement within political institutions. Thus, institutions in Africa increasingly need to reflect and promote the interests of both men and women whereby their diverse objectives are equally represented in order to achieve gender mainstreaming. For the reason that African feminists contend, institutions which are not representative of gender compositions and interests have shortcomings in the promotion of gender in high politics. Last but not least, the dissertation concludes with the argument that the African Union Gender Policy is a well thought out policy and framework for gender mainstreaming as the AU seeks to deal with a complex contemporary phenomenon and challenge, which is gender.