The South African transition to democracy enabled successful claims for gender equality and reproductive rights in the Constitution and in law. This article explores that transition with a focus on the enactment of a progressive abortion law; the feminist, rights and public health narratives that justified it; and the manner in which it transformed constitutional and legal norms about women and reproductive choice, despite a broadly conservative society. Then, it discusses twenty years of the Act in practice, highlighting its uneven implementation in the face of significant normative resistance and changing narratives. It also describes the ebb and flow of rights protection in changing social and political conditions, and demonstrates the importance of constitutional and legal guarantees to abortion as a bulwark against their erosion. At the same time, it illustrates the importance of political will, feminist narratives and civil society activism in maintaining effective access to safe, legal abortion for poor, black, working class and rural women.

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Post-apartheid South Africa has seen the extensive use of law to address the inequalities of the past. This article looks at the role of law in addressing gender-based inequalities, considering how it has addressed “recognition” in terms of women's status and social subordination, as well as questions of redistribution and economic inequality. South Africa has been particularly successful at extending legal rights and benefits of recognition, and at entrenching in law powerful normative frameworks that challenge traditional gender roles. Redistribution, on the other hand, has been primarily race-based, with limited policies and substantive rights that address gendered economic inequalities. The law and courts have played a lesser role here. The ability of law to redress inequality through transformative social and economic change is limited. However, it can be an important site of struggle in the engagement of cultural norms and social attitudes, as well as economic policy. The article concludes that, apart from concrete rights and benefits, the normative frameworks of law offer significant strategic opportunities for pushing at the boundaries of inequality and exclusion in the public and private spheres.