10 Anyangwe/Extrajudicial killings of women in Africa and by categories of violent killings. They also do not deal with the specific problem of women and extrajudicial killing in Africa. 3 FACTORS CONTRIBUTING TO VULNERABILITY The subject of extrajudicial killings is a worldwide and complex problem that reveals a consistent pattern of violations of human rights. In acknowledgement of this fact, the universal human rights system established the thematic procedure known as Special Rapporteur on Extrajudicial, Summary or Arbitrary Executions in 1982. The procedure was established to undertake studies of the situation, paying special attention to cases concerning children and women. For its part, the African Commission on Human and Peoples’ Rights (African Commission) in 2012 expanded the mandate of its Working Group on the Death Penalty to include a focus on the problem of extrajudicial killings in Africa. Extrajudicial killings of women undoubtedly take place. However, its form, shape and magnitude still needs to be researched. In this section I consider the factors that predispose women to extrajudicial killings in Africa. In this regard, I hypothesise that culture, tradition, socialisation, socio-economic and political contexts, and the dual or plural legal dynamics prevailing in African countries, all conspire to create an environment in which women are treated as subordinate to men. These factors constitute the backdrop and provide the social environment that make women vulnerable to extrajudicial killings. The theoretical and analytical perspectives that inform the identification of these factors are feminist scholarship,30 gender studies, and jurisprudence and legal theory which is a study of political theories with legal implications. Many feminist jurists have over the years argued that patriarchy31 is at the root of the subordination of women to men and the unequal power relations between both.32 They posit that gender roles are socially constructed, and that patriarchy and gender roles can therefore be socially deconstructed.33 Unequal gender relations in African societies are rooted in socially-defined roles of men 30 Feminism is a term coined by women’s movement to signify the revolutionary changes it advocates to the status of women in society. 31 Patriarchy is the term coined by feminists to describe the social structures which allow men to dominate women, that is, the pervasive dominance, in and of society, by the male hierarchy. See Bonthuys & Albertyn (n 25 above) p. 19; A van Blerk Jurisprudence – an introduction (1998) 171. 32 K Bartlett & R Kennedy (eds) Feminist legal theory: readings in law and gender (1991); J Rifkin ‘Toward a theory of law and patriarchy’ (1988) 3 Harvard Women’s Law Journal 3; C MacKinnon ‘Difference and dominance’ in C MacKinnon (ed) Feminism unmodified: discourses on life and law (1987) 32. 33 K Bartlett ‘Feminist legal methods’ (1990) 103 Harvard Law Review 829; L Finley ‘Breaking women’s silence in law: the dilemma of the gendered nature of legal reasoning’ (1989) 64 Notre Dame Law Review 886; S Okin ‘Is multiculturalism bad for women?’ in J Cohen, J Howard & MC Nussbaum (eds) Is multiculturalism bad for women? (1999); J Oloka-Onyango & S Tamale ‘The personal is political, or why women’s rights are