Women in Sudan

Still, gender inequalities in Sudan, particularly as they pertain to female genital mutilation and the disparity of women to men in the labor market, have been met with concern in the international community.

Due to its geographic situation, the population of Sudan is both "Arab" and "African", with much complexity that involves terms of ethnicity and identity politics.

[5][6] Although there is only scant information on gender relationships before and during the Turkiyya and the Mahdiyya, some sources claim that women served as couriers in the opposition against the Ottoman government.

Moreover, they took care of wounded people, informed about enemy movements as spies for the Sudanese opposition, and incited men to act with bravery.

Following Mahdist religious interpretations, women had to cover their heads and avoid personal contact with men outside the family.

[9] Before the independence of South Sudan in 2011, the Interim National Constitution in the Darfur area explicitly prohibited discrimination based on gender.

However, according to the 2009 Human Rights Report published by the U.S. State Department, the Sudanese government did not effectively enforce this provision.

[11] This separation was the result of Sudan's failure to democratize and the flawed implementation of the 2005 Comprehensive Peace Agreement (CPA).

Ever since the decolonization of Sudan in the 1950s, the "predominantly black and Christian or animist South had sought either autonomy or independence from the Arabic-speaking, Muslim-dominated North".

[12] The early stage, characterized by the neglect of women as a research priority, can be related to development conceptions in the post-independence period, from 1956 until the 1970s.

Women-related issues were seldom given research attention and, when studied, were dealt with in a cursory and superficial manner that neglected some of their fundamental dimensions.

This research, however, aimed at using the funds pouring in from international agencies to set up 'women's projects', rather than actually seeking to improve the welfare of the women in a sustainable way.

In November 2019, Abdalla Hamdok's transitional government repealed all laws restricting women's freedom of dress, movement, association, work and study.

[14] On 22 April 2020, the Sovereignty Council of Sudan issued an amendment to its criminal legislation, which declares that anyone who performs Female Genital Mutilation (FGM) either in a medical establishment or elsewhere will be punished by three years' imprisonment and a fine.

The gender parity index is calculated first by determining the population of official school age for each level of education.

"[18] A lot of educational and classification information is needed for this calculation, thus as of 2012 there are eight United Nations countries that do not collect the necessary data to compute the gender parity index.

Although the desire to educate oneself is a primary motivation, the need for additional income in an economic context where the income of the head of the family is no longer sufficient pushes women to go to university in order to find a job afterwards[20] One example is for the discipline of archaeology, as Ghalia Garelnabi has commented to The Guardian, gender diversity in archaeology in Sudan has increased in her lifetime: during her studies there were three women on the course, but in 2022 there were 20.

[5] In 1989 there was a consolidation of Islamist power that changed the "formal and informal national and local debates" about gender, law, and labor.

According to Afshar however, her studies indicate that it is the ideologies of male supremacy rather than any specific religion that affects women's lives more directly.

[22] Afshar's main argument is that women should have a more productive role in the development process to "counteract the destructive politics of food, and the spread of hunger to the rural areas.

[26] A primary limitation to gender equality in Sudan is the necessity of obtaining the credit which is needed to manage a farm.

Credit (shail in Sudan) is extended culturally only to men by shopkeepers and merchants, and males are termed 'farmers' with women called 'farm workers' even though both work on farms.

[22] Women are publicly and culturally relegated to a position inferior to that of men and there is an assumption that division of work along sex lines prevails, according to Haleh Afshar.

[33] For females, circumcision comprises a variety of ritualized surgeries, including clitoridectomy, excision, and infibulation, all of which have been performed for thousands of years.

[36] In 2018, a 19-year-old girl named Noura Hussein was sentenced to death by hanging for fatally stabbing her husband after he attempted to rape her again.

[37] A social media campaign by liberal activists both in and outside of Sudan was initiated to pressure the Sudanese government to overturn the sentence, with the hashtag #JusticeForNoura trending on Twitter.

[40] On November 26, 2019, the government abolished the law on public order and morals which prohibited, among other things, women from wearing pants.

The 2013 United Nations Development Programme (UNDP) report ranks Sudan as the #129 country out of 147 on the gender inequality index.

[4] The figures from the 2012 UNDP report of Sudan compared to the average of the countries in the "Low Human Development" category are below.

Sudan ranks lower in all of the categories than the average low human development country except for the adolescent fertility rate and in female seats in the national assembly.