Dow, Unity (1959–)

Unity Dow, Botswana lawyer and human rights activist, was appointed as the first woman judge on the High Court in 1998. She established a women's rights center in her home village, was a cofounder of the Botswana women's rights organization Emang Basadi! (Stand Up, Women!) and of the Women and Law in Southern African research project (WLSA). She is a member of International Women's Rights Watch, and became well-known in Botswana for the Citizenship Case in 1991.

Dow grew up in Mochudi, a large village north of the capital, Gaborone. She received law degrees from the University of Botswana and from the University of Edinburgh. She worked in the Botswana Attorney General's office before going into private practice with a woman partner. In 1986 she joined with other women lawyers, academics, journalists, and political activists, including Athaliah Molokomme, to found Emang Basadi! as an advocacy group for women's rights, and with women lawyers and researchers from the region to form WLSA. She founded the Methaetsile Women's Information Center to provide legal information and counseling for women who could not afford to pay for legal services.

Emang Basadi! launched a campaign to educate women about their rights and to advocate for reform of laws regarding child support, rape, and married women's property and citizenship rights. From the nation's independence in 1966, citizenship in Botswana's multiparty democracy had been based on birth in the territory. The new law passed in 1984 based citizenship on descent in terms that discriminated against women. Men who married noncitizens could pass on their citizenship to their children, but women who married noncitizens could not. Citizenship carries many educational and economic entitlements in Botswana as well as legal rights. In frontline Botswana in the 1980s, children of women who married exiles from apartheid South Africa would be left stateless.

Advocacy to change the law failed and women's rights groups shifted to a judicial strategy. They supported Dow in filing suit against the law in 1990, based on her marriage to a U.S. citizen and the denial of a passport to their younger daughter, born after passage of the new law. The suit argued that the citizenship law violated the Botswana constitution. The case was decided in her favor in 1991, a victory that was a catalyst for the women's rights movement and led to extensive further reforms of discriminatory laws and to greater inclusion of women in political activism and in public office.

In 1998 Dow was appointed as the first woman judge on the High Court. In addition to her legal work, Dow has written four novels strongly expressing the struggles of girls and women in Botswana for equality and justice, Far and Beyon', The Screaming of the Innocent, Juggling Truths, and The Heavens May Fall.