Napoleonic Legacies, Postcolonial State Legitimation, and the Perpetual Myth of Non-Intervention: Family Code Reform and Gender Equality in Mali

Abstract

In May 2018, the African Court on Human and Peoples’ Rights held that Mali’s 2011 Family Code violated women’s and children’s rights. Widespread protests halted the adoption of a more progressive draft Code passed by the Malian National Assembly in 2009. In Francophone Africa, family codes are legacies of the patriarchal 1804 Napoleonic Code whose reform has been contentious. Drawing from the work of Frances Olsen and Roland Barthes, anthropology of the state, African feminist thought, and critical comparative family law, I argue that by emphasising that the Code ‘reflect[s] socio-cultural realities’, Mali mobilises a myth of non-intervention of the state in the family. This myth serves to legitimate the postcolonial state which faces challenges concerning diversity, democracy, development, and secularism. Tracing the myth back to the Napoleonic Code and through French colonialism, I conclude that it helps to bolster the state while distorting the possibilities for more egalitarian reform.