Women’s Legal Agency in Colonial and Post-Colonial Contexts: Implications for Gender-Responsive Governance in the United States
Year: 2026
Type: article
Abstract: In the United States (U.S.), women’s legal and political positioning in contemporary governance is shaped by historical processes rooted in colonial and settler-colonial rule. These histories produced legal systems organized around racial hierarchy, patriarchal authority, and gendered exclusions that continue to influence access to power, rights, and political participation. Understanding women’s legal agency therefore requires an approach that situates present conditions within their historical and institutional origins. This review found that many precolonial societies recognized women’s authority through collective leadership, relational governance structures, and community-based decision-making. These systems were disrupted through the imposition of Eurocentric legal norms, Christian patriarchal ideology, and colonial political economies. Colonial law and early U.S. jurisprudence formalized women’s exclusion from political life, restricted legal personhood, and entrenched structural barriers to governance participation. Contemporary mechanisms of control persist through gendered violence, reproductive governance, epistemic marginalization, and fragmented accountability structures, with particularly severe effects on Indigenous, Afro-descendant, and structurally marginalized women. Dominant gender governance frameworks continue to privilege technocratic and Western forms of knowledge, often sidelining Indigenous, experiential, and community-based epistemologies. Women’s agency is expressed through collective organization, community governance, legal mobilization, and decolonial feminist leadership, which challenge dominant models of authority and generate alternative forms of political participation and leadership. The findings indicate that gender-responsive governance cannot be achieved through formal inclusion alone. It requires structural reform, institutional accountability, and the integration of decolonial feminist approaches into governance design in order to advance substantive equality and democratic legitimacy in the U.S.
Author: Rosemary Akpan
Institution: Marquette University
Language: English
Subfield: Gender Studies
Field: Social Sciences
Domain: Social Sciences
Open Access status: hybrid
OpenAlex ID: W7172487684