© 1999 A B Academic Publishers. Printed in Great Britain IMPLEMENTING THE PRINCIPLE OF GENDER EQUALITY THROUGH THE LAW: SOME LESSONS FROM SOUTHERN

The adoption, on 18 December, 1979, of the Convention on the Elimination of All Forms of Discrimination Against Women marked a historic development in the struggle for gender equality. The Convention has subsequently been ratified by a record number of African states, forty-six in all. All these states are also parties to the African Charter on Human and Peoples ' Rights which, in Article 18 (3), con-firms their commitment to women's rights and gender equality. Yet only a few of these states have taken the necessary measures to implement this commitment in their respective municipal legal systems. Arguably, the major obstacle in the efforts to implement the principle of gender equality is the institution of patriarchy, which underlies African customary legal systems. However, Southern African countries have taken the lead in addressing the institutionalized inequality to which African women are still subjected. Thus, the fairly recent constitutions of Lesotho, Malawi, Namibia and South Africa, for example, all contain bills of rights entrenching fun-damental human rights, including the right to gender equality and non