From the Women's Media Center: The Ground We Stand On

Earlier this month, the Women's Media Center featured an excellent "exclusive" written by Kenyan feminist and scholar Achola O. Pala.  Presenting a perspective too often unheard within women's activist communities, Pala argues that feminists from formerly colonized countries should look to their own cultural heritage for guideposts in creating greater justice in their communities.  Here are two gems to whet your appetite:

I realized once again in a dramatic way that—in the guise of the “rule of law” and a concept of human rights derived from a supposed universalized Western culture—Africa is still looking to a distant and top-down recourse to justice instead of our lived reality, and to a colonized version of our history instead of our own existential authenticity, which has so influenced our own childhoods and our identities.

AND

As a young anthropology scholar, my early work led me to conclude that African women, by and large, had greater recognition, more rights, greater security of tenure in land and protection, and greater control over their reproductive lives under their original political and economic systems than under the systems adopted from European colonial models.

To read the entire article (which we strongly recommend), click here.