Search Results

Recent behavioral HIV prevention interventions that take gender relations into account focus on two separate tracks of work—one on “women’s empowerment” and one focused on “work with men.” No research has considered the points of overlap, synergies between, tensions and contradictions of these two approaches. Chapter 3 analyzes the promises and limitations of both tracks of work in order to show how these lines of work can be easily complementary and not at odds. Significant time is spent in this chapter underscoring how and why a sole focus on women’s empowerment or a sole focus on men in HIV programming can limit the benefits of a relational analysis of gender relations and HIV.

This chapter describes programmes to empower women, documentsevidence on women’s situation, and outlines socio-cultural, programmatic, and policy level challenges impeding women’s empowerment. Gender inequities persist in educational attainment, and participation in wage work and political life.Women continue to have limited access to money, control over economic resources, freedom of movement and decision-making authority; gender-based violence, son preference and sex selection persist.Efforts to break down patriarchal norms and women’s social isolation, raisewomen’s awareness oftheir entitlements, build marketable skills among them andaddress menhave been limited. Promising actions, including conditional and unconditional cash transfers have not been well-evaluated or scaled up. Laws and acts are unevenly enforced, as are programmes intended to prevent early marriage, gender based violence and crimes against women. Notwithstanding a range of well conceptualised policies and programmes,inter-sectoral coordination necessary to promote gender equity and equality is limited.

Departing from professionalization explanations, this chapter demonstrates how the level of inclusiveness of the political settlement in each case shaped the impact of donor assistance on the women’s sectors. The chapter examines how the women’s sector was reconstituted in each case, focusing on the relationships that transpired with grassroots constituencies, as well as between the different tendencies of the women’s sectors. It also assesses the women sector’s engagement with legislative and local bodies of government in each case. It concludes with illustrations of donor-funded programs in each case.

This chapter provides a critical review of the roles of women in the Egyptian revolution and of the place of feminism in Egyptian politics. On the one hand the imagery of the revolutionary moment is replete with scenes and signs of gender justice, camaraderie, equality, mutual respect and liberation. The transformative event that we call Tahrir Square did change the gender imbalance! But on the other hand the post revolutionary space is disturbingly similar to the way we women used to be. The chapter reviews the recent history of gender justice gains, state sponsored feminism and attempts to challenge formal politics and formal feminism and presents an interpretation of what happened in Egypt, why the roar of revolution only yielded an ripple of modest gains for women and what is needed for a way forward for women as social and political partners in the future. Key to this argument is a distinction between personal and formal freedom and rights. The case of Egypt shows a dis-juncture between the rights and equality enjoyed by powerful women in the public domain and their own inability to realise equality for themselves and for other women in the realm of the personal and the private.

Sushmita Dev’s family has a long history of public service. Her grandfather was a freedom fighter and minister in the Assam government, her mother a Member of the Legislative Assembly (MLA) in the Assam assembly. Her father was a cabinet minister and Congress stalwart. She is president of the All India Mahila Congress, the Congress party’s women’s wing, Sushmita is acutely aware of the challenges that women face, arguing that a woman’s journey in politics is more difficult than that of a man at every step of the way. Yet, she rejects a lot of measures aimed at women empowerment as pure ‘tokenism’.

This interview revolves around Vivian Wenli Lin’s use of participatory arts-based methods in order to encourage and teach women in marginalised communities to empower themselves by making documentary film. Lin also talks about the development of a ‘cine-feminist’ framework which in many ways extend feminist film studies by introducing ‘rare materials of women’s self-representations’. These films thus give way to documentary narratives of overlooked groups of women, and results in a documentary practice that is framed by social politics and activism.

Bangladesh provides a successful example of a country that has been able to support sustainable and inclusive growth through the creation of jobs that are productivity enhancing and poverty reducing. Jobs have had significant positive social and economic externalities even in the face of the relatively low governance typical of low-income countries. This chapter delves into the long-term dynamics of sectoral transformation—underpinned by the modernization of agriculture supported by vibrant outward-oriented non-agricultural growth. Bangladesh’s story also involves the growing economic participation of women, youth, and the extreme poor. Bangladesh’s success has been premised on a realistic policy mix of blending domestic factors of modernization with a relatively open stance on the role of manufactured exports, international labor migration, and rapid urbanization. It provides important insights as to how to promote inclusive growth through sustained and diversified job creation in the context of an industrializing low-income, high-density, labor-surplus economy.