Effie Owuor

Effie Owuor, born in 1943, is a Kenyan jurist who broke a succession of gender barriers in the country judiciary, becoming its first female State Counsel in 1967, first female Magistrate in 1970, and in 1982 its first female High Court judge, later sitting on the Court of Appeal. She served as a Commissioner of the Kenya Law Reform Commission from 1984 to 2000 and chaired its 1993 Task Force on Laws Relating to Women, work that fed into the eventual passage of Kenya 2006 Sexual Offences Act. In 1993, when she and Joyce Aluoch were the country only two female judges, she co-founded the Kenya Women Judges Association, and she has campaigned publicly against harmful customary practices including widow inheritance.