Marked by millions of people on 8 March, International Women’s Day (IWD) celebrates the social, economic, cultural, and political achievements of women. The day also marks a call to action for accelerating gender equality, and a platform to engage with communities, reflect on progress, and commit to positive action.
African nations including Angola, Burkina-Faso, Guinea-Bissau, Eritrea, Madagascar, Uganda, and Zambia are among dozens of nations globally who have declared IWD as an official holiday. While much progress has been made since the first IWD in 1911, there is still a long way to go when it comes to gender equality.
According to the World Economic Forum’s Global Gender Gap Report 2024, which measures benchmarks the current state and evolution of gender parity across four key dimensions (Economic Participation and Opportunity, Educational Attainment, Health and Survival, and Political Empowerment), at the current rate of progress it will take until 2158, roughly five generations from now, to reach full gender parity.
As noted by the United Nations, 2025 is pivotal as it marks the 30th anniversary of the Beijing Declaration and Platform for Action, “the most progressive and widely endorsed blueprint for women’s and girls’ rights worldwide that transformed the women’s rights agenda in terms of legal protection, access to services, youth engagement, and change in social norms, stereotypes and ideas stuck in the past.”
One of the overarching aims of IWD is to celebrate women’s achievements through recognising and appreciating the contributions of women in various fields, highlighting their influence and successes throughout history and in the present day.
At Africa Legal we’re proud to help shine light on the stories and successes of many brilliant women lawyers and leaders, and the entire African legal profession, all throughout the year. In the lead-up to IWD25, our CEO Scott Cowan celebrated the impact and influence of our COO and co-founder Wendy Bampton, while I shared some of the many women leaders and interviewees who’ve taught and inspired me throughout my globe-trotting legal and writing career.
To mark IWD 2025, we’re taking a look back at some of the pioneering women of African legal practice, alongside some outstanding modern leaders and rising stars.
BREAKING THROUGH CENTURIES OF PREJUDICE
Readers may be familiar with Irene Antoinette Geffen (nee Newmark), who became the first female lawyer in South Africa when she was admitted to the Transvaal bar as an advocate in 1923, immediately following the passing of the Women Legal Practice Act. As noted by Lusanda Ntuli of the Office of the Chief Justice when South Africa celebrated a centenary of women in law in 2023, prior to that Act, women were not considered to be "'persons' who could be admitted to legal practice".
"It did not take long for women to take active steps to become legal practitioners,” said Ntuli. “The first woman to be admitted as an advocate in South Africa was Irene Geffen in 1923. The first woman attorney was Constance Mary Hall in 1926. For historic apartheid reasons, it took longer for black women to join the ranks, with Desiree Finca being enrolled as the first black woman attorney in 1967.”
But while Geffen and Hall, then later Finca, broke new ground in South Africa, they weren’t alone - or even first - in terms of being pioneering women successfully practising law, or laying the groundwork for others to do so, on the African continent.
More than a decade before the Women Legal Practice Act was passed, Sonja Schlesin, who was born in Moscow but moved with her Jewish family to Pretoria in 1892 when she was four years old, attempted to become a lawyer. Schlesin, a clerical assistant and social activist, filed articles for clerkship in 1909, supported by her employer, an Indian lawyer working in South Africa, named Mohandas Gandhi.
The High Court in Pretoria denied her application, stating “the articling of women is entirely without precedent in South Africa and never was contemplated by the law".
Three years later, Madeline Wookey got even closer, taking her case to the Cape Town courts after the Law Society denied her attempt to register her articles. In a ground-breaking decision, the court held Wookey was entitled to be articled as an attorney’s clerk, and upon obtaining her qualifications, be enrolled as an attorney.
But that decision was overturned on appeal, with the court not willing to overturn centuries of Roman-Dutch practice excluding women from the legal profession.
So it was not until Irene Geffen and Constance Mary Hall in the early 1920s that South Africa had its first female advocate and attorney, following the Women Legal Practice Act. Elsewhere across Africa, in many cases it took until the 1960-1970s - or even more recently in some cases, such as Botswana, Chad, The Gambia, and others - for women to officially begin to join the legal profession in other African nations.
With some exceptions.
PRE-WAR PROGRESS IN NORTH & WEST AFRICA
Fifteen years before South Africa began allowing women to become lawyers, and a year before Sonja Schlesin was denied by the High Court despite Gandhi’s support, Blanche Azoulay likely became the first female lawyer in all of Africa when she was called to the bar in Algeria in 1908. As reported in the New York Sun newspaper and other US media, an elaborate ceremony was held with the leader of the Algerian bar and the President of the Court appeal making speeches welcoming Mlle (Miss) Azoulay. Also present was Miss Rieder, a prospective barrister who had recently won first prize in the general exams of the students at the law school in Algiers.
In neighbouring Morocco, Hélène Cazes Benatar became the first Moroccan female lawyer in 1933, after studying law by correspondence through the University of Bordeaux, passing the French bar, and opening a law practice in Casablanca. A leader in local Jewish affairs, during World War II she helped rescue thousands of refugees, aided by close contacts in the French colonial administration.
That same year that Benatar made history in Morocco, 1933, Naima Ilyas al-Ayyubi graduated in law from Cairo University and would go on to be regarded as the first women lawyer in Egypt. Munira Thabit had been the first woman to enrol in Cairo’s law school, and to earn a license en droit (French undergraduate law degree) in 1929, enabling her to practise law in Egypt, but the barriers to practising law as a woman reportedly led Thabit to pursue a writing career instead of a legal one.
Likewise in 1933, Stella Thomas, born in Lagos in 1906, became the first black African woman called to the bar in the UK, after she studied law at Oxford. She practised in Middle Temple in London, then upon returning to Africa, she enrolled in the Sierra Leone bar, then in 1935 set up her own law firm in Nigeria as the country’s first female lawyer, working on criminal and family cases.
In 1943, Thomas became West Africa's first woman magistrate. She served in several courts during her pioneering career. While working as a newly qualified lawyer in London, she’d famously challenged imperial approaches to Africa after a speech by anthropologist Dame Margery Perham at the Royal Society, saying:
“Progress shall come from real understanding and cooperation, not by your dictating to African nations. We do not need you to send anthropologists to advise on development. We Africans with education, are able to develop our own systems and determine what is best for us.”
Elsewhere in West Africa, other pioneering women were soon breaking through, too.
Frances Claudia Wright was the second woman in British West Africa to become a lawyer. After being called to the bar in London in 1941, she returned to Sierra Leone to take over her family’s legal practice in Freetown, later served as President of the Bar Association, and established a law office that only employed women.
In 1945, Essi Matilda Forster became the first female lawyer in what is now Ghana, having likewise been educated in England and first called to the bar in London, before returning to West Africa to practise. She also practised in Gambia, and served as President of the International Federation of Women Lawyers (FIDA) in Ghana.
A few years after Forster, in 1949, former Keta teacher Annie Ruth Jiagge earned a law degree in London and was admitted to the bar, before returning to West Africa where she practised as a barrister then became the first female magistrate in 1953.
Jiagge would go on to fight against the oppression of women and the developing world, serving for three decades at various levels of the Ghanaian judiciary, including as President of the Court of Appeal in the early 1980s. She also drafted an early version of what would later become the United Nations Convention on the Elimination of All Forms of Discrimination against Women (CEDAW).
LOOKING TO A FAIRER FUTURE
While the first steps were taken more than a century ago, the story of women in the African legal profession is still evolving, as it is around the world. In recent years, top African law firms have reported around a third of their partners being women, which while comparing favourably to the UK and US legal markets (where more than 50% of law graduates entering the profession are women but barely one quarter of partners), still shows there is ongoing work to be done.
Encouragingly, African-based firms were leading the way for international counterparts operating on the continent: Webber Wentzel in South Africa and Alukyo & Oyebode in Nigeria reported 45% or more female partners, in 2022.
Webber Wentzel’s drive towards gender parity in the partnership has been spearheaded over the past decade by Sally Hutton and Christo Els, who recently stepped down as Managing Partner and Senior Partner, respectively.
Speaking to City News in South Africa a year after she became the first female senior leader of a major South African law firm, Hutton confessed she’d initially underestimated the symbolism of her new position as well as the important contribution she could make as a role model for other women lawyers. .
“Almost immediately after my appointment, I started receiving correspondence from young women – both inside and outside our firm – expressing what it meant to them to have me in this position,” said Hutton, back in 2016. “It struck me then that for women in senior positions within the legal profession, it is our responsibility to be role models, to be more visible and to be more vocal.”
During her decade-long tenure leading Webber Wentzel, Hutton established a Gender Strategy Working Group and formulated a multipronged gender strategy to address the high attrition rate of women in the more senior levels of legal practice.
Having decided not to seek re-election in late 2024, last week Hutton passed the baton to new Webber Wentzel Managing Partner Safiyya Patel, who Hutton praised as an inclusive leader well-placed to lead the firm through its next chapter.
Speaking with Africa Legal a few days before #IWD25, Patel shared that she felt privileged to be taking over the stewardship of Webber Wentzel alongside new Senior Partner Gareth Driver, while realising it was quite monumental as she’s the first woman of colour to be in a senior leadership role among major South African firms.
“I think this is a moment we should not be overlooking, because it’s taken a long time to get here and we should be treasuring it from that perspective,” says Patel. “There’s a lot to be done, a lot to look forward to in the future. We’ve got a legacy to build on as an extremely successful firm, while looking to adapt to an evolving legal landscape, which includes transformation in the legal industry, not only from a racial perspective but also embracing innovation and technology in a way that enhances our service offerings and provides much more strategic value to clients.”
Patel is the latest example of African women lawyers increasingly stepping into senior leadership roles, continuing the legacy of the likes of Desiree Finca, Stella Thomas, and Essi Matilda Forster, and Annie Ruth Jiagge from decades past.
Last month, TripleOKLaw LLP announced that Marysheila Onyango-Oduor, FCIArb, who has risen through the ranks of the leading Kenyan law firm since joining as a pupil in 2002, would replace longstanding Managing Partner John M. Ohaga, SC, and lead the firm into its next chapter of growth and innovation. Onyango-Odour also serves as a member of the High Court (Family Division) Bar-Bench Committee and Convenor of the Chief Magistrates Court’s (Children Division) Bar-Bench Committee.
“Marysheila’s appointment marks a new chapter in TripleOKLaw’s commitment to breaking barriers and setting benchmarks in legal leadership,” said Ohaga.
Elsewhere around Africa, brilliant women such as Johanne Hague at CMS Prism in Mauritius, Lerisha Naidu at Baker McKenzie, Bola Tinubu at Olajide Oyewole LLP in Nigeria, Rosa Nduati-Mutero at ALN Kenya, Anjarwalla & Khanna, and Taiwo Afonja at Dentons ACAS-Law in Nigeria are all raising the bar and helping lead not only their firms but the African legal profession as a whole into an exciting future.
It is important for young women lawyers who are looking to become future leaders to develop self-awareness alongside a sense of service, says Asmahaney Saad, the Managing Partner of leading Ugandan firm KTA Advocates, part of Alliott Global Alliance, an elite coalition of top legal and accounting experts in 100 countries.
“The number one advice I always give women and young girls who are aspiring to be here is to just know yourself and your personality,” said Saad. “Self-awareness allows you to bring out your best, your strengths, and it also allows you to accept your weaknesses as a human. Embrace who you are, build your capacity – all of that helps you work out where you want to go so you can live purposefully, in service.”
You can find more information on International Women’s Day here.