Wanjiru Kamau-Rutenberg

Hello and welcome to my job search website.

I am currently on the market for a tenure-track Assistant Professor position within a Political Science, African Studies or Women's Studies department.

My research and teaching interests are located at the nexus of African Studies, Political Science, and Women’s Studies. I have an M.A. degree in Political Science from the University of Minnesota and I anticipate completing my Ph.D. by May of 2008. I am willing and able to teach both introductory and graduate courses on African Politics, African women’s politics, Ethnic Politics, Human Rights, Social Movements, Nationalism, and Development.

My dissertation asks why women in Africa have successfully mobilized and obtained protective legislation in certain areas but not others. How can we explain the successes and failures of women's mobilization? Based on the Kenyan experience, I contend that ethnicity and ethnic politics provide the key to understand the ability of women to advance their goals. In a continent where democratization has opened up the political space and allowed increasing political mobilization by both women and ethnic groups, I argue that the very production of ethnic identity is gendered and has rendered the struggle for women’s rights on a collision course with ethnically-based political competition. Attempts to secure women’s rights face resistance especially from enterprising politicians. These politicians seek political mileage within their ethnic group by painting struggles for women’s rights that challenge harmful cultural practices as external threats to the ethnic group identity.

However, I find that the discourse of human rights provides women’s rights activists with successful alternatives to the ethnic script. Still, the human rights discourse has its shortfalls. Because of its biased focus on rights to bodily integrity, the human rights discourse has contributed to the success of struggles for women’s rights that focus on bodily integrity, such as the struggle against female genital cutting (FGC). The human rights discourse has not, however, proven to be an effective tool for securing gains on women’s property and inheritance rights. The implications of my research on ethnic identity production as a gendered process are important not just to women’s rights activists working in the context of ethnically politicized societies, but also to the literatures on Gender and Politics, Human Rights, and Ethnic Politics.

This year I am a dissertation fellow in the Politics Department at the University of San Francisco. I am currently teaching a course on African politics for the Fall semester and will be teaching a course on Comparative Politics in the Spring semester.

When I’m not working on my dissertation and teaching I also run Akili Dada; an international Non-Profit organization I founded in 2005. We are working to ensure that the next generation of Kenyan women leaders includes women from disadvantaged economic backgrounds. Akili Dada offers competitive and comprehensive scholarships to bright girls from needy Kenyan families while also connecting them to a network of professional women who serve as mentors. You may visit our website at www.akilidada.org