A Tale of Two Femocrats: Brokering Gender Norms in Addis Ababa

Abstract

This article examines the evolution of gender governance in national and regional contexts in Addis Ababa, the capital of Ethiopia and home of the African Union secretariat, by juxtaposing the life histories of two women. One was an Officer at the Women’s Unit of the Organization of African Unity (later the African Union) and the other the first State Minister of Women’s Affairs in the Ethiopian government. Introducing political biographies as a vehicle through which individual actors in normative processes can be analysed, the article conceptualises their roles and political work through the notion of norm brokers. Informed by discussions in constructivist international relations, anthropology and global histories, I demonstrate that femocrats as norm brokers use their position in a network of state actors, donors and civil society to facilitate the success of policy networks and norm entrepreneurs. The article argues that, unlike norm entrepreneurs, norm brokers enable normative negotiation and change ‘behind the scenes’.

Un conte de deux fémocrates : le brokering des normes de genre à Addis Abeba

Introduction

In combination, in institutionalisation, individuals can be more forceful than apart (to the extent that they can orchestrate their individual momentums in harmony), but the institution and the society has no life or life-force on its own. ¹

Yetunde Teriba and Tadelech Hailemikael would sit behind their desks in different parts of Addis Ababa, separated by the small dusty roads of the capital of Ethiopia in the Horn of Africa. In 1992, this was a country shaken by waves of hunger and violent conflict, governed by a transitional government. The city had been a home for the pan-African Organisation of African Unity (OAU) since May 1963 and continues to host its successor the African Union (AU) today. The two women would sit in their small offices, with no staff, and review paperwork to understand the contents of the ‘women question’. Through an informal process, Teriba would become an Officer at the OAU Women’s Unit and Hailemikael would start as a Women’s Affairs expert but soon be promoted to a State Minister of Women’s Affairs at the Office of the Prime Minister of Ethiopia. Globally, this was the end of the Cold War era, the dawn of gender mainstreaming sparked by the Third World Conference on Women in Nairobi (1985) and the emergence of human rights governance mechanisms following the Vienna Declaration (1993). In the 10 years from when Teriba and Hailemikael assumed their positions, the OAU and Ethiopia saw the creation of a gender architecture that was voluntarily adopted yet regularly undermined by those in power. Drawing on their life histories, and weaving together insights from constructivist international relations (IR), anthropology and global histories, this article outlines the role of norm brokers that facilitate norm entrepreneurship and institutionalisation of gender equality. The article demonstrates the significance of norm brokers as ‘secondary characters’ in normative change as they enable norm entrepreneurship and translation rather than lead transformation.

The opening quote by Nigel Rapport alludes to the meaning and value of Teriba’s and Hailemikael’s work in their gender offices in Addis Ababa. By juxtaposing the experiences of Hailemikael and Teriba as participants and witnesses of the development of gender governance structures in the OAU and Ethiopia, I examine their roles as facilitators in institutionalising gender equality norms. The ambition of this article is to make a twofold contribution to existing scholarship: methodologically, I explore the potential of introducing global biographies ² into constructivist norms research; and theoretically I offer analytical attention to norm brokers ³ rather than norm entrepreneurs. ⁴ The article offers an empirical example of the dynamic interplay between the structuring power of institutions and the agency of individual actors within them. In doing so, the article answers recent calls of studying the brokers’ ‘actual work in context, their negotiation and networking strategies, and their specific biographies, qualifications and skills’. ⁵ These insights, I argue, further contribute to the emerging focus on relationality, expertise and practice in constructivist IR. ⁶

The biographies of Teriba and Hailemikael came together in a pursuit to follow the ‘women’ in African regional governance mechanisms and identify the people behind the institutionalisation of gender equality in Ethiopia and Africa regional level. Yetunde Teriba, from Nigeria, was part of the OAU and the AU Women’s Unit from 1992 to 2013. She served as an interim head of the division at times and is currently retired in the United States. Tadelech Hailemikael, from Ethiopia, was a political prisoner for more than 12 years before becoming the first Minister of Women’s Affairs. She later became an ambassador and is currently retired in Addis Ababa. The two women represent (i) a person from the AU’s women’s desk for a regional perspective, (ii) a person central in developing a member state gender governance and (iii) persons who were central to the formulation of national and regional gender policies. Furthermore, the spatial and temporal specificity of their femocrat careers placed them in Addis Ababa in the 1990s – a place and time which were formative for African regional gender governance and women’s rights movements. In Addis Ababa, Hailemikael’s and Teriba’s life histories intersect at times while developing in juxtaposition.

The article proceeds as follows. Firstly, I situate the study within discussions of global gender norms and norm entrepreneurs, IR and anthropological notions of brokers and different notions of femocrats. I then discuss the use, merits and shortcomings of biographical data and methods in studying international politics. In the empirical sections, I follow Teriba’s and Hailemikael’s journey through artificially divided periods in their stories: their arrival into the femocrat position; establishing networks and then facilitating institutional change. I conclude by discussing the analytical value of working with biographies.

Situating the Study

Normative structures can be understood as processual – contested, negotiated and situated through power dynamics and historical context. ⁷ They are therefore constructed through interactions of diverse actors with sometimes contrasting ideas of what the world ought to be or ought to become. Globally agreed normative frameworks that regulate gender relations, like the Convention on the Elimination of All Forms of Discrimination Against Women (CEDAW, 1979), the Declaration on Elimination of Violence Against Women (1993) and the Beijing Declaration and Platform for Action (1995), are ‘acknowledged, but not necessarily accepted, understandings of collective ambitions’. ⁸ To better understand normative processes where collective ambitions are reached, this section conceptualises ‘norm broker’ to examine the actors that facilitate norm entrepreneurship and institute normative change.

Pioneering scholarship on the norm ‘life cycle’ explains how international norms diffuse to different localities. ⁹ Norms are understood to go through stages of emergence, socialisation, cascade and internalisation by which they become accepted by international actors. These processes play out in international organisations as diverse actors persuade, negotiate and convince political leaders regarding the appropriate standards of behaviour. This model, however, is critiqued for the assumption of unidirectionality of norm diffusion and for seeing the global and local as dichotomous. ¹⁰ Postcolonial critique has demonstrated that Global South actors and institutions ¹¹ have been consistently framed as norm-takers of universally positive global norms ¹² while the power imbalances in negotiating those have been ignored in the analysis. ¹³ African women’s contributions to global gender norms, for instance, have been eclipsed by a discourse of victimhood. ¹⁴ To address those biases, the agential turn began exploring the multidirectionality of norms travel ¹⁵ , and processes of translation ¹⁶ , vernacularisation ¹⁷ and contestation. ¹⁸

Transnational ¹⁹ and regional advocacy networks ²⁰ are recognised as the driving force behind normative change. These networks can entail state actors, NGOs, advocacy and movement organisations, researchers, churches, intergovernmental organisations, politicians and bureaucrats. ²¹ Individual and collective agency in those processes is conceptualised as ‘norm entrepreneurship’. ²² Norm entrepreneurs can range from charismatic individuals and celebrities to scientists, civil servants and institutions. In his critical reflection on the emergence of ‘entrepreneur’ as a social science concept, Pozen laments that ‘Martin Luther King, Jr. was labelled a social, policy, norm, and moral entrepreneur all at the same time’. ²³ ‘Entrepreneur’ has become a blanket term for agents of change. Critical constructivist approaches have however noted a bias in the ‘norm entrepreneur’ literature whereby non-Western actors promoting alternative normative ideas are regarded as illiberal, non-compliant and deviant. ²⁴ Broadening actor categories within the norm diffusion paradigm is a step towards empirically examining those biases. ²⁵ Considering that Western liberal norms are not universally accepted as ‘good’ or ‘just’, we rarely question what motivates actors and individuals to promote particular norms against adversity. Not least, historically Global South as well as socialist actors have promoted norms that have become considered part of global governance and Western hegemony. ²⁶ By focusing on the intimacies of becoming and being an agent of normative change, this study contributes to these debates by centring Global South women whose life stories nuance the liberal norm entrepreneurship narrative.

To do so I propose exploring the relational significance of individuals through the concept of ‘norm broker’ that enables and facilitates the success of policy networks and norm entrepreneurs. For Goddard, political brokers are well-placed to become policy or norm entrepreneurs due to their situatedness at the intersections of different networks and their ability to strategically juggle rhetoric, symbols, ideas and norms for political aims. ²⁷ However, anthropological insights indicate that the role of the broker may be more mundane and motivated by self-interest and self-preservation as much as the ‘common good’. I conceptualise norm broker by building on both of those insights. Notably, Goddard’s concept of ‘political broker’ largely overlaps with organisational research on change agents. ²⁸ Both political broker and change agent theories build on Burt’s theory on structural holes as enabling norm entrepreneurship. ²⁹ Brokers fill ‘structural holes’ in a network of fragmented actors and become ‘critical nodes, bridging the otherwise unconnected elements within a framework’. ³⁰ Such networks have been theorised as ‘cooperative constellations’ ³¹ or ‘strategic partnerships’ in feminist research. ³² At the same time, agents of change regularly face resistance and depend on their informal networks as much as the formal ones. Therefore, change agents use broad individual skills, traits and knowledge for initiating, facilitating and implementing organisational change. ³³ Femocrats could be an exemplary case of change agents who face institutional backlash and use their informal networks to facilitate and implement change. As this article demonstrates, however, femocrats are secondary characters in processes of change, and instead of spearheading change, they enable other actors to become norm entrepreneurs. Conceptually, ‘broker’ addresses this dynamic clearly and allows tapping into the particular political work, and its limitations, of femocrats and other institutional insiders.

Development anthropology has identified brokers as mediators of both meaning and power. ³⁴ Brokerage is a relational social practice that can shift the kinds of subject positions that are created, how an initiative is perceived and who benefits from it. ³⁵ Drawing on Latour, brokers are central to the ‘invisible machinery’ which creates coherent representations of ideas, policies and projects and makes them appear objective. ³⁶ Importantly, brokers are not only motivated by ‘public welfare, altruism or development activism’ but also seek power, influence and material gains. ³⁷ Brokers do not only behave as coordinators, representatives and liaisons, but they can also act as gatekeepers and exclude actors from their network. Yet, there is little contemporary research interrogating ‘networks, knowledges and spaces’ where brokers act and examining brokers’ self-descriptions, vulnerabilities, moral vagaries and limitations. ³⁸

In norms research, brokers have been conceptualised through notions of a ‘translator’ or an ‘intermediary’. ³⁹ Merry has argued:

A key dimension of the process of vernacularisation is the people in the middle: those who translate the discourses and practices from the arena of international law and legal institutions to specific situations of suffering and violation. ⁴⁰

By drawing from their network members, they can facilitate ‘cultural legitimacy’ ⁴¹ and resonance. ⁴² However, the concept of intermediaries is vague about the actors’ position within their social and political context, the kinds of power relations that shape their actions and how they navigate these strategically. The network approach is different in that the capacities of brokers are considered to be less informed by their individual characteristics or skills, than by their position within a network.

Femocrats are interesting actors to study as norm brokers because, like Merry’s intermediaries, femocrats’ allegiances are not tied to different ‘global’ or ‘local’ spaces, but borne from femocrats’ ability to move between them, their cosmopolitan networks, mindset and education. They do not only operate between and across the scales of governance, but also between the state and women’s rights activism. ⁴³ The institutionalisation of gender politics has been in some cases desired and in others the undesired outcome of women’s movements. Gender machineries are often distrusted and suspected of co-option, insincerity and detachment from ‘real’ women’s struggles. ⁴⁴ Similarly, when international organisations opened up to civil society in the 1990s, activists were torn between using these new avenues for influence and the danger of collaborating with the makers of oppressive policies. ⁴⁵ Yet, femocrats also ally with activists, as the two groups need each other. ⁴⁶ Gender machineries are often at the margins of statist bureaucracy, underfunded and lacking decision-making power, therefore, dependant on allies outside state structures for their legitimacy. ⁴⁷ When activists require allies ‘inside’ the institutions, femocrats can then link activists and groups to advocacy networks and facilitate their norm entrepreneurship.

Conceptually, ‘femocrat’ combines ‘feminist’ with ‘bureaucrat’, interrogating the idea that states can advance feminist goals through policies and institutional tools. ⁴⁸ As one femocrat proclaimed: ‘The jury is still out on what feminism can do for African women’. This aligns with the observation that femocrats do not necessarily identify as feminists or part of feminist movements. ⁴⁹ Amina Mama defined ‘femocracy’ as a version of autocracy whereby women’s empowerment work is dominated by first ladies and wives of the political and cultural elite. ⁵⁰ This resonates with postcolonial critiques of state feminism and disappointment with elite women’s lack of feminist aspirations in politics. ⁵¹ Studying women, peace and security at the AU, Toni Haastrup adopted the definition of femocrat as a ‘feminist bureaucrat’. ⁵² However, in this article, femocrats are understood as bureaucrats, technocrats and experts tasked with working on gender and women’s issues in national and international gender machineries, councils, commissions, directorates and ministries, but do not necessarily identify as feminists. ⁵³

Global and Political Biographies

Calling for decolonial and entangled perspectives in norms research, Mende et al. ⁵⁴ suggest exploring methods outside the disciplinary boundaries of IR ‘to capture the ambiguities, various sites and multiple dynamics of norm evolution, promotion, and contestation from a global perspective’. They highlight the contributions of practice approaches, critical and human geography and historical analysis to norms research, before calling for ‘innovative approaches that apply the concept of mediation’ to empirical studies. This article proposes introducing biographical methods to constructivist norms research by borrowing from the emerging field of global biographies. The biographical approach will contribute to already emerging ethnographic, anthropological, postcolonial and feminist perspectives in studying international norms. ⁵⁵ Biographies can put a human face to large macro-historical processes and interrogate the subjectivities, doubts and motivations of historical actors. This section unpacks the traditional use of biographies in IR, feminist engagements with biographical research, and the merits and challenges of the biographical approach in studying femocrats as political brokers.

IR tends to instrumentalise biographies of notable figures to complement a more aggregated analysis of international politics. ⁵⁶ Arklay argues that regardless of the contributions biographies have made to political science, they are rarely central to the analysis. ⁵⁷ It is argued that individual people have limited effects on high-consequence events, but also that biographies are a somewhat artistic undertaking and have a tendency for being ‘personal, empathetic and narrative’, rather than theoretically innovative. ⁵⁸ Historians within IR are better-versed in using microhistories and engaging the ‘particular’ for a novel perspective on global processes. ⁵⁹ For example, biographies of Global South women who proactively participated in the work of the Women’s International Democratic Federation correct the narrative of women’s rights as an explicitly Western agenda, but also reveal the actors’ complex motivations in participating in such work. Life stories then tend to be central to historical accounts of global or international events but not in theory-based analysis. That said, the ‘narrative turn’ in international studies has generated productive dialogues between historians and political scientists within IR. ⁶⁰ Autobiographical IR can be seen as part of this turn, and a response to the artificial distance between the writer and the writing in IR research. ⁶¹

Feminist researchers have used biographical methods to redress unequal power relations between the researcher and the ‘subject’. Feminist approaches interrogate whose voices are heard and who gets to construct knowledge, as well as postpositivist approaches which render research participants to numbers. ⁶² The politics of this kind of research can be summarised with ‘the personal is political’ and the aim of making invisible actors visible is explicit. The feminist biographical approach:

engages in research from a unique perspective that provides depth, meaning and context to the participants’ lived experiences in light of the larger cultural matrix in which they live. ⁶³

Feminist biographies focus on empowering the interviewee through co-constructing knowledge and dialogue. Therefore, when IR has largely used biographies of ‘big men’ to complement the analysis of international politics, feminist approaches focus on the life histories of ‘invisible women’. I propose that for studying normative change through the political work of those in the middle, the experts, bureaucrats and consultants of the world, the IR and feminist approaches to biography can meet. Femocrats in state institutions are not power-holders nor subaltern. They are also, as this article demonstrates, not the drivers of change, but rather the facilitators.

Biographies can be instrumental in nuancing transnational socio-political processes ⁶⁴ and challenge the scalarity of international politics. Commenting on the draft of this article, Teriba tells me with a look of sympathy: ‘You know, the story of Hailemikael. . . it could have been anyone, any country in Africa’. Implicitly, she shares my observation that the history of gender politics in Ethiopia is not only interrelated with that of the OAU/AU but broader historical and political processes on the continent. Biographies can also unlatch the iron gates of guarded political organisations. ⁶⁵ Research on the League of Nations and the UN shows that a closer look at transnational actors in international institutions provides insights into the inner workings of seemingly global, unfathomable processes. ⁶⁶ Studying the agency of three temporary bureaucrats at the United Nations, Bode shows that IR literature reduces individual agency to institutional or official positions, ability to frame and persuade, or personality type. ⁶⁷ She uses biographical material to provide alternative explanations of why individuals are empowered to affect change. The biographical approach then accounts for the people whose choices, networks, ideas, fears and aspirations inform the global and regional normative changes.

Yet, focusing on two individuals and platforming their views is contentious in diverse ways. The biographical data presented in this article is drawn from publicly accessible autobiographical accounts of the two women, which are supplemented with interviews, archival documents and academic literature. Teriba’s life story is available in her autobiography ‘An Enriched Life’ (2020) and Hailemikael has published a memoir about her early activism and prison life called ‘Who is the Judge?’ (‘Dagnaw Manew?’ in Amharic, 2020). Teriba’s and Hailemikael’s accounts represent particular perspectives on their role in advancing the gender agenda and are inherently subjective. ⁶⁸ However, their presence in certain institutions and their involvement in particular historical processes renders their subjective perspectives valuable and relevant for analysis.

Therefore, several interviews constituted a basic form of oral history whereby ‘eyewitness participants’ reconstructed historical events. ⁶⁹ I encountered common challenges like fickle and unreliable memories and people struggling to recall details like names, people present and who was conveying a certain argument. I also had to consider that policy-makers and experts are skilled in answering questions and often reproduce rehearsed answers. ⁷⁰ ‘Political brokers’ are particularly skilled in knowing how to address their audience. While retired and free to share their reflections and criticisms publicly, their accounts are still coloured by personal allegiances and emotions. I triangulated Teriba’s and Hailemikael’s accounts with an extensive review of the literature and archival material. I also considered interviews with over 30 gender experts across local organisations, ministries, development partners and UN agencies in Addis Ababa conducted as part of the research project ‘Global Norms on Eliminating Violence Against Women in Ethiopia’.

Finally, the biographical approach challenges the positionality of the author ⁷¹ and their subject in creating a narrative with potential political implications. ⁷² While much of this information is public, I considered the issue of consent. Unlike most global or political biographies, the life stories of these women are ongoing, which raises the question of harm and vulnerability. Both women received an early version of this article for their input and both gave details in conversational interviews. Yet, fitting someone’s life story within the structural and spatial limitations of a journal article requires making difficult decisions regarding what to include and what not. I also had to acknowledge my empathy towards the ordeals of these women and consider potential attribution bias. Stepping into the role of a researcher-biographer and exploring a new way of writing knowledge, ⁷³ I had to question my positionality and normativity. As a feminist and femme researcher, I could have taken critique of state feminism as my starting point. However, my curiosity lay in making sense of the political work of these women, and their reflections on their achievements and challenges. Staying true to this objective, the biographical approach documented the lives of pioneers in African gender institutions and produced a nuanced analysis of their roles in brokering gender norms.

Biographies of Two Femocrats

Becoming a Femocrat

The life stories of Yetunde Teriba and Tadelech Hailemikael unravelled in parallel with pursuits of African socialism and struggles for self-determination during the decolonisation era, as well as the final stages of the Cold War. These experiences shaped their careers, political aspirations and personal relationships. It was through circumstance, rather than intention, that both ended up working on women’s issues in Addis Ababa in 1992.

The two women came from a context of relative opportunity. Teriba was born into a polygamous Muslim family and had 12 siblings. She also accessed the vibrant city life of Lagos, Fela Kuti concerts and fashionable clothing. As an English student at the University of Ibadan, she was able to take trips to Europe and the United States. Hailemikael’s family also ensured her access to quality education and she went on to study journalism at the University of Fribourg in Switzerland. ⁷⁴ She participated in the Ethiopian Women’s Association, the Ethiopian Student Association and was the editor of the women’s political newsletter Tageyl (Struggle). Alongside her husband, student leader and the co-founder of the Ethiopian People’s Revolutionary Party (EPRP) Berhane Meskel Reda, Hailemikael became active in the socialist Student Movement that challenged Emperor Haile Selassie’s imperialism. While Teriba was less of an activist, she participated in President Obasanjo’s compulsory ‘Operation Feed the Nation’. ⁷⁵ During her service at Igbo Ora Village, Teriba noticed how polygamy affected women in rural areas: ‘the place of women within that and other African societies was one of subjugation and one filled with ingratitude’. ⁷⁶ Witnessing gender inequality in this context shaped Teriba’s position on polygamy later at the OAU/AU.

Teriba was drawn from Nigeria to Ethiopia by her husband Owodunni Teriba who worked for the United Nations Economic Commission in Africa (henceforth UNECA) in Addis Ababa. With years of experience as an administrator at the University of Ibadan, Teriba was reluctant to move to Addis Ababa and become financially dependent on her husband. The lack of commodities under the communist Derg regime in Ethiopia did not appeal to her either. Finally, as Nigeria was going through an austerity programme, and the communist regime in Ethiopia was on the brink of collapse, Teriba moved to Addis Ababa in 1988. By that time, Hailemikael had spent several years in prison for her activism. In 1977, the Marxist-Leninist ‘Derg’ government unleashed its Red Terror on Ethiopians and saw tens of thousands imprisoned or killed. ⁷⁷ When Hailemikael and her husband Reda returned to Ethiopia in 1977 their association with the EPRP rendered them both targets of the Derg’s regime. They were arrested within a year of their return from Switzerland. Reda was killed in prison while Hailemikael was pregnant with their third child. The highly educated political prisoners established a prison school in which Hailemikael taught. She remained in prison for 12 years and 8 months and was released in 1991.

Through these parallel trajectories, Hailemikael and Teriba arrived at their institutions around the same time with a lived experience of postcolonial dreams and disappointments. Teriba worked at the OAU Conference Services Unit from 1989 until the creation of the Women’s Unit in 1992. No formal recruitment procedures were followed. ⁷⁸ In 1992, Hailemikael was recruited as the first Head of Women’s Affairs for Ethiopia. Hailemikael believes that her outstanding story, rather than her credentials, led the transitional government to offer her the role. As Hailemikael reflected during an interview, she had a good education and 12 years of prison school teaching experience, under the worst circumstances, to offer. Teriba and Hailemikael were hired regardless of their lack of expertise in women’s affairs. This speaks to the concerns of African feminists regarding the performativity and elitism of the national gender machineries. ⁷⁹ Hailemikael and Teriba had access to elite education and cosmopolitan networks, which would qualify them as elite in early-1990s Addis Ababa. Yet Mama’s femocracy is not quite a fitting label here. ⁸⁰ Hailemikael had a solid background as a socialist activist with a demonstrated interest in the situation of Ethiopian women and a political prisoner. Teriba, on the other hand, worked to be self-sustainable and prioritised her career. Okech and Musindarwezo have brilliantly discussed the questions of elitism and feminism in gender equality work in Africa, and who has the legitimacy to speak on behalf of diverse African women. ⁸¹ They demonstrate the pitfalls of only considering the voices of the poor and powerless as as grassroots and legitimate. And argue that delegitimising capable African women can also serve a political purpose. Similarly, women’s rights are sometimes distanced from feminism in such discourses, as the latter is also labelled as foreign and elite. Not least, women’s desks were often created by authoritarian and military governments, and therefore their legitimacy was questionable. From this perspective, Hailemikael’s and Teriba’s roles in brokering gender equality norms were far from given.

Teriba and Hailemikael took on their roles as femocrats in Addis Ababa in the early 1990s while the continent was experiencing waves of democratisation, the creation of civil society organisations and the rewriting of constitutions. ⁸² OAU and the Ethiopian government were in a period of transformation too. During the UN Decade of Women (1975–85), 51 gender machineries were created across Africa. ⁸³ These included ministries, committees, councils and other institutions with a principal mandate to develop policies, strategies, action plans and other guiding principles for gender equality. Curiously, the establishment of the Women’s Unit in the OAU was perhaps the outcome of ‘femocracy’ in Amina Mama’s sense. It was promoted by first ladies Susan Mubarak (Egypt) and Mariam Babangida (Nigeria) on the pretext of coordinating African countries’ participation at the UN Fourth World Conference on Women in Beijing in 1995. The Women’s Unit was set up in the Labour and Social Affairs Division (LSAD) and involved a team of two: Teriba, the Women’s Affairs Officer, and Hirut Befekadu, the Director. The OAU agreed to fund the salaries of two people and the rest was to be covered by the United Nations Development Fund for Women (UNIFEM) and United Nations Development Programme (UNDP). This created a context for ‘knowledge transfer’ UN from gender experts to OAU.

Scholars have questioned understanding ‘knowledge transfer’ as a depoliticised and unidirectional, yet organic way of diffusing international norms. ⁸⁴ Translating knowledge, rather than transferring it, acknowledges the shifting of meanings in light of power asymmetries, existing expertise and worldviews. ⁸⁵ Teriba’s office had no budget allocation for additional staff and activities, and it became dependent on UNIFEM’s and UNDP’s financial and technical support for carrying out its mandate. Globally, gender machineries were:

[. . .] mired in an ongoing struggle for minimal authority and budgets, with organisational leaders and donors claiming that influence requires strategic thinking and practice rather than resources. ⁸⁶

Since the OAU Women’s Unit was envisioned as a PR office for the OAU participation in Beijing, the director brought in expertise in information and communication, not women’s affairs. ⁸⁷ The UN-funded consultant Ambassador Fama Joka Bangura from Sierra Leone then became Teriba’s mentor and ally. She taught Teriba to utilise any opportunity to take the floor, make presentations and ensure there is a report coming out of each meeting. Beyond technical knowledge, Teriba was informally trained in policy advocacy. That was not expected from the Women’s Unit at the time. Teriba started engaging the member states, sensitising them to gender issues and presenting her work at the LSAD and OAU summit level. Slowly, the Women’s Unit embarked on political work inside the organisation, creating pockets of feminist thinking and debate, which was a prerequisite for adopting relevant policies. ⁸⁸

In parallel, Hailemikael had been promoted to the first Minister of Women’s Affairs of Ethiopia. According to Hailemikael, she asked the Party for a ‘green light to make my own decisions and that they would actually facilitate the work I am hired to do’ before accepting the job. ⁸⁹ She got the green light, but no budget or staff. ⁹⁰ Tsikata has argued that the consistent lack of resources affirmed that the gender desks in Africa got no more than ‘lip service and peanuts’ from the African leaders. ⁹¹ There was no handover from the structures of the Derg regime and once in the office, Hailemikael was handed a pile of documents to review. She felt relieved: ‘This is something I can do [am capable of]’. ⁹² Similarly to Teriba, Hailemikael resorted to UNIFEM to learn about the status of women in her country and discovered that Ethiopia had been party to CEDAW since 1981. Briefed by the Ministry of Foreign Affairs on the implications of CEDAW, Hailemikael’s office prepared the first, second and third reports on CEDAW. She also described the decision to adopt a National Gender Policy as a way to honour Ethiopia’s commitment to CEDAW. The lack of funding and experience in the field led Hailemikael to seek out experts and consult them about the status of women across sectors. The studies and presentations that this process ignited culminated with a 1-week Symposium. According to Hailemikael, this was her chance to ask all her questions and bring relevant experts together, building networks. The Symposium sowed the seeds for the National Gender Policy of 1993.

Both Teriba and Hailemikael struggled with validating their work on women’s affairs in their organisations, regardless of their official mandate. For example, when Teriba and Ambassador Bangura created a system for reporting sexual harassment in the OAU in 1993, a response to junior women’s complaints, the women would not come forward in fear of lack of anonymity and reprisals. Teriba’s complaints of harassment were dismissed too. When the Women’s Unit created the Interdepartmental Task Force on Women’s Issues, targeting the Heads of Divisions and Managers, they started to send junior female staff instead. Additionally, due to the institutional ‘layers of authority’ in the OAU, most of the ideas proposed by the Women’s Unit never saw ‘daylight’ as they were ignored at a Division level. ⁹³ In parallel, Hailemikael partnered with the Centre for Research Training and Information on Women in Development ⁹⁴ at Addis Ababa University which put together a 150-question staff survey about women’s affairs in government institutions. The respondents emphasised the need for a technical rather than political approach. Hailemikael believes that women tried to stay out of the limelight and not be associated with the ‘women question’ to avoid individual backlash.

Teriba’s and Hailemikael’s offices lacked funding, technical expertise and legitimacy among their colleagues, which undermined any efforts of norm brokering or norm entrepreneurship. Collecting and disseminating information became a way to justify their roles and carve out a space for themselves in their organisations. The intra-organisational networks became a major resource for Hailemikael and Teriba. ⁹⁵ According to Teriba, UNDP and UNIFEM were basically the founders of the Women’s Unit, and therefore colleagues, sisters and comrades. ⁹⁶ At some point, the head of the UNDP regional bureau proposed merging the OAU and UNECA gender programmes, a move that was vehemently rejected by the OAU leadership. Similarly, UN agencies provided guidance, support and funding when the Ethiopian government was unwilling or unable to do so. Unlike the usual accounts of norm entrepreneurship, the biographical approach uncovers the complex web of informal relationships between women like Teriba and her mentor Ambassador Bangura, or the impact of mentors, friendships and ‘sisterhood’ on the translation of normative ideas. These are scarcely analysed. That said, in these initial years, the translation of normative ideas involved strong elements of knowledge transfer, shaped by a power imbalance. ⁹⁷ Curiously, it was the set-up of their offices by OAU and Ethiopian government leadership that rendered femocrats reliant on UN institutions and their intra-organisational networks and undermined efforts to develop an autonomous and grassroots gender equality discourse.

Building Networks

Through their positions, Teriba and Hailemikael became the focal points for diverse actors who were pursuing gender equality. They connected state actors, international partners and UN agencies, activist groups and experts who previously had no clear avenue to pursue their overlapping objectives – or even to figure out where their aspirations of a pan-African or Ethiopian gender agenda overlap. ⁹⁸ Their position was predominantly constituted by their ability to ‘help goods, information, opportunities or knowledge flow across that gap’ in the network structure, rather than their expertise or personality traits. ⁹⁹ The below section details the forming of those networks and the two femocrats’ increasing confidence in their network positions.

Early on, Hailemikael and Teriba were faced with the grievances of African women in post-conflict recovery and their request to be recognised in peace processes. Hailemikael found out that regardless of the contributions of 40,000 women (nearly one-third of the troops) who fought in the Tigray liberation forces, female veterans were not rewarded the same way as their male counterparts either by the society or the state. Instead, women were expected to return to traditional gender roles. ¹⁰⁰ The experience of conflict resonated with women across the continent. In this context, Teriba’s and Hailemikael’s paths crossed. In 1993, Teriba’s office at the OAU, UNECA and the Ugandan Government organised the Regional Conference on Women, Peace and Development in Kampala (Kampala Conference). The women and peace agenda was one that African women championed at the Fifth African Regional Conference on Women in Dakar in 1994 (Dakar Conference), in preparation for the 1995 World Conference on Women in Beijing (Beijing Conference). Hailemikael and Teriba participated in all three conferences. Hailemikael emotively shared how experiences of conflict created a shared purpose: ‘the African women really were united behind the peace agenda’. ¹⁰¹ This became a prominent part of African women’s agenda at the Beijing Conference and women in Africa are acknowledged for their contributions to UN Security Council Resolution 1325 on women, peace and security. ¹⁰²

Conferences like those in Kampala and Dakar generated connections and dialogue between states, NGOs and UN agencies. Gender desks became somewhat obvious avenues for follow-ups as symbolically they were the entrances to the halls of power. According to Hailemikael, the organisers of the Dakar Conference had underestimated the level of participation – there were regional ‘leads’, NGOs, civil society organizations (CSOs) and country delegations – which led to some chaos. According to the pan-African feminist network, FEMNET, Dakar Conference was one of the most challenging meetings in the organisation’s history. ¹⁰³ FEMNET cited government and donor interferences and poor leadership, but above all, the fact that instead of the expected 1500 participants, 4000 women across Africa showed up. As a result, resources like hotel and meeting rooms, printing and copying facilities, and registration forms were stretched thin. Additionally, the CSO participants felt sabotaged because several meetings took place behind closed doors. The African common position had to be finalised in a follow-up meeting in Addis Ababa. Yet it paved the way for the Beijing Conference of 1995 which is considered a ‘game-changer’ in fostering networks among African women’s rights actors. ¹⁰⁴

Hailemikael led a delegation of 25 women to the Fourth World Conference on Women in Beijing. The founder of the Ethiopian Women Lawyers Association (EWLA), Meaza Ashenafi, was appointed as the ‘Secretary’ of the delegation and compiled reports from the NGO forum every night. The participation of the Ethiopian delegation was funded by UN agencies and donors because the Ethiopian government frowned upon spending funds on meetings and conferences abroad. Regardless, the Ethiopian People’s Revolutionary Democratic Front (the ruling party known as the EPRDF) women’s wing interference with the delegation prevented some persons from joining and the government nominated their preferred ‘old timers’ instead. To my surprise, the founders of EWLA and Hailemikael were rather intimately connected. With a sigh, Hailemikael notes that these were the days when government and civil society could work hand in hand. Hailemikael recounts how she and Atsedeweine Tekle (EWLA co-founder) discussed ‘what happens when those progressive provisions on women’s rights are included in the constitution – who is there to implement and hold the government accountable?’ Similarly, evidence from the Southern Africa Development Community suggests that femocrats and women’s organisations build alliances out of need. ¹⁰⁵ The ties to femocrats provided CSOs with access to political decision-making spaces, which allowed them to participate in norm-making. The femocrats in turn rely on their partners for data, knowledge and political leverage. ¹⁰⁶

The establishment and make-up of the OAU’s African Women’s Committee on Peace and Development (AWCPD) in 1996 reflected these emerging relationships between femocrats and civil society. Approved by the OAU Council of Ministers in 1997, the AWCPD’s 16 members included Government Representatives, Eminent Individuals and NGOs. This was the first time African civil organisations had institutionalised access to the OAU. The OAU itself was represented by Teriba’s office. The purpose was to connect nationally and internationally influential actors who could lobby governments and advocate for women’s peace agenda. ¹⁰⁷ AWCPD was to support the mandate of the OAU’s Women’s Unit and to participate in OAU decision-making processes in their advisory role. The fact that AWCPD was located in UNECA became a hurdle in communication with the Women’s Unit in another part of Addis Ababa. The AWCPD was also underfunded, leading to the diffusion between the member’s personal projects and those of AWCPD. Teriba suspects that this diffusion kept the AWCPD alive. A co-founder of EWLA, Ashenafi, became a CSO member of the AWCPD.

With the formation of these loose networks whereby Hailemikael and Teriba are now working for the government(s), but with experts from UN agencies and civil society, their positions as norm brokers were solidifying. Teriba and Hailemikael’s roles were rooted in the institutionalised access to their organisations – they were the gatekeepers, coordinators, representatives and liaisons – offering a connection, a shared platform and a venue, for a fragmented network of actors working on women’s issues. As gatekeepers, they contributed to tensions between the CSOs in the loop, and those on the outside. ¹⁰⁸ While still underfunded and understaffed, they now had more relational power to source information, funding, support and legitimacy for policy influence. For Olsson and Hysling policy brokers are ‘inside activists’ who are

engaged in civil society networks and organisations, who holds a formal position within public administration, and who acts strategically from inside public administration to change government policy and action in line with a personal value commitment ¹⁰⁹

While Hailemikael and Teriba both fit this description to an extent, neither of them was embedded in the women’s rights movement beyond their official role. Rather, women’s organisations were their partners and allies in different political negotiations. In fact, it is unlikely these femocrats would have been able to stay in their role, had they been more ‘radical’ and their loyalties questionable. In their tacit position as norm brokers, they rendered the machinations of negotiation and disagreement between network actors invisible and the normative shifts as inevitable. These networks also enhanced Hailemikael and Teriba’s relative significance and power as femocrats. It is well documented that limited resources, and oversight, in state institutions can translate to the unexpected influence of technical and bureaucratic staff. ¹¹⁰ While their positions as femocrats gained some prestige and access to the African and international political elite it is quite surprising that they did not move on to UN agencies or large international NGOs like many women before and after them. Indeed, Teriba’s formal application for the position of Unit Director was ignored regardless of her having carried out the duties in 1998 and 1999. When she was offered a promotion within the administration, she decided to stay with the Women’s Unit. Hailemikael too was one of the longest-standing Ministers of Women in Ethiopia.

Institutional Brokers

The brokering of Teriba and Hailemikael contributed to numerous normative changes regionally and nationally. In the following section, I discuss the femocrats’ role in including women’s rights in the Ethiopian constitution and legislative changes in the country, as well as the emergence of pan-African gender governance tools in the wake of OAU’s transformation to the AU in the early 2000s. In both cases, Teriba and Hailemikael were not necessarily the driving forces of change, but institutional insiders who could facilitate the norm entrepreneurship of other actors.

Ethiopia’s new constitution was negotiated in the run-up to the Beijing Conference in 1995 and followed the adoption of the National Gender Policy in 1993. According to Hailemikael, 27 articles of the Constitution were all somewhat discriminatory against women. Hailemikael could bring in lawyers and experts, however, without compensation. Some women found that unacceptable and rejected the invitation. Hailmikael explained that the opportunity to shape the constitution would be once in a lifetime, and more valuable and urgent than any compensation. Both founders of EWLA got involved. Atsedeweine Tekle took up the responsibility and closed her office a few days a week to work on the Constitution. As the first female High Court and Supreme Court judge, she had the legal expertise required to represent the Ministry of Women. ¹¹¹ Meaza Ashenafi was also part of the Constitutional Commission and prepared position papers for the human rights panel. ¹¹² As a result, Article 35 of the Constitution goes into detail on women’s rights. EWLA, led by Tekle and Ashenafi, became a political entrepreneur championing women’s rights in the next few years.

During Hailemikael’s tenure, an organisation called the Inter-African Commission for Eliminating Harmful Traditional Practices (IAC) established the National Committee on Traditional Practices in Ethiopia (NCTPE, locally known as EGLDAM). ¹¹³ Its 1997 baseline survey on harmful traditional practices became the basis for female genital mutilation (FGM) eradication efforts for years to come. The founder and director of IAC was Ethiopian Berhane Ras-Work and as we will see below, IAC worked closely with the OAU/AU too. Mobilising around the intersection of women’s rights and harmful practices, EWLA took on reforming the Family Code (2000) and the Criminal Code in Ethiopia (2004). The revisions in the Family Code addressed women’s rights in marriage, including the prohibition of child marriage. The Criminal Code decriminalised abortion on certain grounds and criminalised FGM. Hailemikael makes a point of saying that her office was working hard for these reforms and supported EWLA’s efforts.

Hailemikael headed the women’s affairs in Ethiopia for nearly 10 years, until 2002 when she became an ambassador. She focused on increasing the visibility of her office’s work through media campaigns on Violence Against Women (VAW) with Fana Broadcasting, Zero Tolerance on VAW Campaign with the UN Agencies and the founding of the Ethiopian Women Development Fund, to name some. She changed positions shortly after EWLA’s suspension by the Ethiopian government in 2001.

EWLA’s suspension galvanised governmental and nongovernmental bodies. The Women’s Standing Committee of the House of People’s Representatives requested that the Ministry lift the suspension. The Women’s Affairs office disseminated information on EWLA’s suspension. ¹¹⁴

Following Hailemikael only a few people have held the post for longer than 2–3 years. My colleagues and interviewees in Ethiopia frequently implied that the Minister of Women’s Affairs is a political post whereby expertise and competence in gender issues are not required. Ashenafi from EWLA is now the President of the Federal Supreme Court in Ethiopia while Tekle is not in the public eye.

Similarly to Hailemikael, Teriba’s office increasingly engaged with CSO actors on parallel political agendas, particularly with the IAC for the African women’s rights framework (the Maputo Protocol) and Femmes Africa Solidarite (FAS) for the adoption of the Solemn Declaration on Gender Equality (SDGEA). Teriba collaborated with the IAC since 1993 and this working relationship evolved into IAC gaining observer status at the AU with some financial contributions attached. IAC, just like AWCPD, was located at UNECA’s campus. According to IAC co-founder, they and civil society in general were initially in fight mode, criticising, insulting and pressurising governments. ¹¹⁵ Through collaborating with OAU/AU and UNECA they learnt the craft of working with the official structures.

And Mrs Teriba was one very active person, who were we’re working with. . . to bring all of our ideas together, to write, to give to everybody [disseminate], to review and to correct and to submit to the government to negotiate and everything. ¹¹⁶

Teriba and IAC collaborated in sensitising member states on eliminating FGM and Teriba came to communicate it as an OAU policy in her presentations. ¹¹⁷ As a broker between the AU, CSOs and donors, Teriba could increase the resonance and legitimacy of gender mainstreaming in the halls of power and raise the stakes of contestation. One of the AUC and IAC collaborations was the development of the OAU Convention of Harmful Practices Affecting the Health of Women and Girls. This document was later merged with the draft of the Maputo Protocol developed by the African Commission for Human and Peoples Rights.

In 2000, a regional women’s rights organisation FEMNET became aware of the Protocol drafting process and shared the draft with its networks. ¹¹⁸ What transpired was that several civil society organisations requested a more inclusive process and that the Protocol be redrafted to live up to the international standard of women’s rights. The original drafters, including the IAC, had concerns about losing the advances made and going back to the beginning. The CSOs went behind the Women’s Unit to Said Djinnit from the AU Political Division and succeeded in reopening the drafting process. ¹¹⁹ EWLA was among the organisations to contribute to a new draft. This is an example of femocrats also functioning as gatekeepers. Actors beyond the existing networks had to find an alternative route to OAU/AU policy spaces.

Once the new draft was debated at the state representative level, issues like polygamy, and sexual and reproductive rights were disputed. FGM, however, was no longer an area of contention and was widely condemned. ¹²⁰ Certainly, numerous other actors were lobbying against FGM and for criminalising this practice, but the significance of Teriba promoting this policy position and working with IAC years before the normative change was formalised should not be underestimated. The Protocol is the first international legal instrument to address FGM and all forms of genital cutting.

Another ally of Teriba was the founder of FAS and a CSO member of AWCPD, Bineta Diop. AWCPD and FAS led women’s organisations to launch a campaign for gender mainstreaming as part of the AU reform in 2001:

The story of the development of the OAU/AU gender programme can never be told without looking at its relationship with FAS ¹²¹

They collectively pushed for creating a position of Women’s Commissioner and even mobilised Senegalese President Abdoulaye Wade and South Africa’s President Thabo Mbeki as champions for their agenda. ¹²² The campaign led to the adoption of the Durban Declaration on gender mainstreaming at the African Union Commission (AUC) and gender parity among the AUC commissioners. ¹²³ Instead of the Women’s Commission, which was contested and voted down, the Women’s Unit was reformed into the Women, Gender and Development Directorate and relocated to the Office of the Chairperson.

The first Chairperson of the reformed AU, Alpha Oumar Konare, set up various Working Groups. Teriba was part of the Gender Working Group and recalled how Professor Margaret Vogt from the Chairperson’s office, herself and Bineta Diop informally discussed the aims and objectives of the Working Group. The Group decided to organise a Summit Debate on Gender at the Heads of State meeting in 2004 to advance the gender mainstreaming agenda of the Durban Declaration and define the scope of the reformed Women’s Unit. The Working Group used various means of operationalising gender mainstreaming as a pan-African agenda, including information packs and state visits in member states. Teriba’s office and FAS organised a pre-summit meeting to fine-tune the Summit Debate plans with the CSOs. After triangulating drafted policy commitments with stakeholders, teams travelled to lobby leaders of Gabon, Mozambique, Libya, Nigeria, Senegal, South Africa, Kenya, Tunisia, Botswana and Egypt. At the Summit Debate, Bineta Diop (FAS) gave a presentation on the CSO perspectives. The Debate culminated with the signing of the SDGEA by Heads of State and the establishment of the civil society platform called the Gender is My Agenda Campaign (GIMAC) to keep the Heads of State accountable for their commitment. ¹²⁴ GIMAC is still hosted in the FAS secretariat and is the official CSO body to work with the current Women’s Unit. Teriba stayed at the Women’s Unit until 2013 when she retired. Bineta Diop is now part of the AUC structure as Special Envoy for Women, Peace and Security, with her own office located at the Office of the Chairperson.

As norm brokers, femocrats could access ‘multiple resonant tropes’ and ‘culturally invent by combining together these myriad symbols, histories, and rhetoric into new ideas’. ¹²⁵ The Maputo Protocol and SDGEA are excellent examples of how their bureaucratic insider position, and broad networks with diverse actors, were crucial to ‘ensure these ideas diffuse throughout fragmented network structures’. ¹²⁶ In particular, femocrats’ partnerships with women’s organisations supported the latter in their norm entrepreneurship and femocrats increased the resonance of activist agendas among state actors. They translated the ideas about legislative change, gender parity and exhibiting commitment to gender equality as appropriate for African state actors to adhere to, and facilitated opportunities for the network actors to exert pressure. The access EWLA, IAC and FAS had to Teriba and Hailemikael was embedded in interpersonal relationships and was not available for everyone. Whose ideas get platformed are therefore not decided by coincidence or objectivity. Teriba’s and Hailemikael’s work as norm brokers has highlighted the relational nature of normative processes and how actors assert individual and collective agency in the face of structural constraints.

Conclusion

The biographies of Teriba and Hailemikael untangle complex social and historical processes in which gender agenda was institutionalised in OAU/AU and Ethiopia. Centring the stories of African femocrats whose roles are usually overshadowed by accounts of high-level politics or social movements is a step towards diversifying subject positions that matter in international politics. ¹²⁷ Secondly, expanding the types of normative actors we analyse opens up new opportunities to understand the ambiguities of normative processes. ¹²⁸ Here two women enter into femocrat positions in rather un-democratic contexts, without relevant expertise nor connections to women’s movements. Yet, for more than a decade they were at the heart of some of the most potent institutional and normative changes towards gender equality in their organisations. This study therefore speaks to the postcolonial and decolonial critiquest of global norms research by analysing the normative agency of African women in institutions that would not have qualified as ‘liberal do-gooders’. ¹²⁹ As microhistories, their life stories relate to ‘ideology, class struggles and the political machinations within a particular and personal timeframe’ ¹³⁰ and address the structure-agency problem in international politics research. ¹³¹ The biographical approach has therefore been useful in recovering some of the ambiguities that norms research has been critiqued for erasing. ¹³²

Methodologically, the biographical approach is challenging because of the curatorial role of a researcher and finding a balance between detailing delicate and personal life stories and instrumentalising these for an analytical argument. Working with Teriba’s and Hailemikael’s stories was possible due to years of research that enabled me to contextualise their femocrat experiences. Yet global biographies are uniquely suited for opening up closed institutional spaces and for engaging theoretical frames across analytical scales and times, connecting the individual with societal, global with local and past with the present. ¹³³ This article has demonstrated that biographies and life stories can offer a new vantage point to unexplored tensions and intimacies of normative processes. Working with their narratives and following the unfolding of their lives shed light on details of events that have not merited much academic attention, such as the Dakar Conference, challenges African femocrats have faced in attempting to introduce change and explanations for why their offices are so often considered ‘toothless’. Importantly, the biographical approach also offers a more intimate view of the relationships between the ‘allies’ in gender equality work: friendships, mentorships and dependencies alike.

Brokers of different kinds are nothing if not ambiguous. This article is not attempting to judge Teriba’s and Hailemikael’s achievements as femocrats. Rather, drawing on the empirical evidence of the biographical approach their significance as norm brokers was conceptualised. Hailemikael’s and Teriba’s positions as norm brokers were informed by experiences of learning on the job, being held back by their institutions, being ‘foreign-funded’, gaining legitimacy over time and accessing influence and resources through networks of allies. The details of their lives also demonstrate how ‘norm entrepreneurs’ and ‘translators’ are ill-fitting to describe their relevance. The particularities of their ‘insider’ position and political work show that they facilitated political entrepreneurship and translation, rather than being norm entrepreneurs themselves. While translation is a significant part of brokerage, ¹³⁴ they lacked the expertise and institutional support to effectively generate new interpretations of global and local gender norms and therefore became reliant on the knowledge of their UN partners and civil society groups. Importantly, the examples of Hailemikael and EWLA on one hand, and Teriba’s and FAS’ and IAC on the other, show that civil society actors close to femocrats were particularly successful in driving normative change. And vice versa, there is no doubt that organisations like FAS, IAC and EWLA were able to drive the progressive gender agenda without the limitations the femocrats had. By conceptualising norm brokers as mid-level actors that facilitate change, we gain a deeper understanding of the complex subjectivities that shape how, when and why some international normative ideas gain momentum. As norm brokers, Hailemikael and Teriba facilitated normative changes that the women’s organisations in Ethiopia and Africa continue to mobilise today.