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Feminists continue to point out that democratic transitions continue to fail to do justice to the victims of gender-based violence despite notable advancements in international law. The gendered nature of sexual violence and its ongoing economic, social, and psychological impacts express and reinforce discriminatory public attitudes and gender inequality beyond moments of democratic transition. For this reason, sexual violence against women should figure as a special category under State-sponsored programs for reparation. However, different forms of gender bias can throw up normative and practical barriers that prevent women from accessing the benefits that reparations programs make available. Reparations programs, nevertheless, like many public policies for recovery and redress continue to be largely gender-blind. This paper explores the challenge of repairing sexual violence against women and how national reparations programs might provide short-term redress while contributing to the achievement of longer-term goals for gender justice.

This chapter examines an effect of pension reform that was largely unanticipated, or at least seldom explicitly considered, when many pension reforms were being adopted throughout Latin America: the effects of privatization on women's welfare. First, it provides a brief overview of the sources of gender inequalities and discusses elements of pension policy affecting gendered welfare. Second, it explains and critiques the insurance-based criteria for evaluating the gender effects of pension reform. Third, it offers an alternative set of criteria for evaluating gender outcomes based on three dimensions: women's ability to claim social citizenship rights, gender stratification, and the distribution of welfare responsibility among the market, state, and family. Finally, it compares interpretations of the gendered effects of pension reform in Latin America based on insurance and distributive assumptions to illustrate why disagreements in the literature persist.

Focusing on Belgium, Germany, Italy, and the Netherlands, this chapter initially presents an overview of the distinctive features of the social‐capitalist or conservative welfare state regime and their influence on gender relations. The authors go on to discuss how changing gender and family relations are putting pressure on this type of welfare state and the male breadwinner model. Similarities and differences in gender inequalities in the labour market, income maintenance programmes, and social services across the four countries are mapped out.

Addresses two major questions posed by the book. The first is the extent to which gender cuts across and fragments welfare state regimes, and the second concerns the dynamics between the policy logics of gender regimes and welfare state regimes. Subsequently, the chapter turns to policy design and politics. Drawing upon the earlier chapters, important issues in the design of policies and their impact on gender inequalities are discussed. Finally, the chapter considers political factors—such as characteristics of women's movements, industrial relations frameworks, party constellations, and state structures—that are conducive or, alternatively, posed obstacles to policies reducing gender inequalities.

The topic of this chapter is women's access to paid work and its impact on their economic resources compared to men in general and within the family. It presents a cross‐national portrait of gender inequality in the labour market in the early 1990s in 15 countries. Initially, the author focuses on labour market attachment (full‐time or part‐time work) and the earnings of working‐age women as a whole; subsequently, the analysis turns to married women and the mothers of young children. The chapter explores the extent to which welfare state regimes are associated with specific labour market outcomes.

This chapter poses the problem of the persistence of gender inequality in the face of leveling forces in the contemporary United States. It proposes the use of gender as a primary cultural frame for social relations as a general mechanism by which gender inequality is re-created in the face of transformations in the social and economic arrangements upon which that inequality seems, at any given point, to depend. It develops tools for thinking about contemporary changes in gender inequality. These conceptualize gender inequality as rooted in widely shared gender status beliefs whose persistence depends on inequalities between men and women in positions of power and resources. The relation of the proposed argument to questions about biological determinism is briefly considered.

Begins with a survey of the realities of women's global inequality, asserting that attempts at legal regulation (notably the Women's Convention prepared for the UN's Second Conference on Women, held in Copenhagen in 1980) have fallen far short of the tasks of achieving gender equality. Explanations for this enormous disparity between promise and performance involve flaws in the legal framework, defects in the concept of equality used to promote the advancement of women, and the general inadequacy of law as an instrument for changing behaviours deeply rooted in tradition and culture, and supported moreover by global economic structures. For all these reasons, the chapter concludes by doubting whether legal regulation, particularly at the international level, can ever generate fundamental societal change.

This chapter argues that individuals have the right to sell and buy sexual services. It reviews the commodification and gender inequality objections to prostitution, and outlines ways in which the practice can and should be regulated.

This chapter argues that individuals have the right to sell and buy sexual reproductive services by way of surrogacy contracts. It reviews four objections to surrogacy based on commodification, exploitation, gender inequality, and children’s interests, and outlines ways in which the practice can and ought to be regulated.

This chapter builds on Susan Okin's deep commitment to gender equality, exploring whether globalization can be “reinvented” in a way that would help to promote gender equality in developing countries. This chapter argues that feminist social movements are wise not to reject globalization but to use the opportunities it provided to promote gender equality. This chapter differentiates among institutions that may be more or less open to change. In particular it argues that the World Bank has shown itself to be more open to change than some other global institutions, and feminists might do well to engage it while at the same time maintaining a healthy critical distance from it.

The essays in Part III of the book, on liberal constraints and traditionalist education, argue for a more regulatory conception of liberal education and emphasize the need for some controls over cultural and religious educational authority. Susan Okin, in her essay on group rights, gender, and realistic rights of exit, is mostly concerned, not with the oppression of traditional groups by the liberal state, but with the oppression of individuals, and especially of girls and women, by the traditional community. She is critical of those liberal theorists who argue that a right of exit is sufficient to qualify a cultural or religious group for special recognition in liberal societies, and to counter these views, she notes that the unequal treatment of girls and women can mean that even though they may have a formal right to exit a group, their actual opportunities for doing so are far less adequate than those of their male counterparts. She holds, then, that the right of exit is not sufficient and that the liberal state should have a higher requirement, namely, that girls and women should be treated fairly within the group and thus should be able to take advantage of any formal right of exit. The chapter is arranged in three sections: Section 12.1, Gender and Other Forms of Inequality in Group Rights Theories, shows, by looking at three examples of liberal defenders (as exemplified by Joseph Raz, William Galston, and Chandran Kukathas) of group rights, that they tend not to take gender inequality seriously when considering group rights and limitations; Section 12.2, Cultural Factors Affecting Women’s Realistic Rights of Exit, specifies and discusses a number of reasons that contribute to women being significantly less able than men, in many cultural contexts, to chart their own courses of life outside their community of origin; and Section 12.3. Rights of Exit and Realistic Rights of Exit for Women, concludes that the theories examined contain several problematic elements concerning rights of exit for women.

The chapter examines the question of whether there is a relationship between women's poor access to productive resources such as land, property, income, employment, technology, credit, and education, and their likelihood of experiencing gender-based violence and abuse. It begins with a discussion of the feminist political economy method, which seeks to comprehend broader, global political-economic structures that underpin gender inequality and women's vulnerability to violence. It then illustrates with specific examples how the feminist political economy method might be used to analyse violence against women in four strategic sites: (i) neo-liberal economic restructuring and men's reaction to the loss of secure employment; (ii) economic destabilisation and transition; (iii) the growth of a sex trade around the creation of free trade zones; and (iv) the transnational migration of women workers.

At the beginning of the twenty-first century, Britain is in the process of rapid social change. There are major changes going on in the patterns of family formation, there is a growing rate of childbirth outside marriage, and the so-called second demographic transition should be noted as well. This book aims to understand and explain the social mechanisms that underlie some of the major features of contemporary social life. It discusses how sociology makes important contributions to public debate about education, gender inequalities, ethnic disadvantage, unemployment and new religious movements.

This chapter discusses from a capability perspective — how and to what extent gender inequalities in terms of time allocation between paid and unpaid work can affect income poverty and individual well-being. In the first part, the chapter illustrates the reasons for which Sen's capability approach, compared to other theoretical frameworks, seems to be particularly adequate to shed light on the complex linkages between time allocation and well-being distribution. In the second part, the chapter presents the results of an empirical analysis based on the Bank of Italy's Survey on Household Income and Wealth, giving evidence that strong gender inequalities exist both in terms of time and income allocation.

According to the Pensions Commission in its first report, the state pension system in Britain is among the least generous in the developed world. This reflects the explicit aim of both Conservative and New Labour governments since 1980 to reduce the share of pensions provided by the state and increase that provided by the private sector. This policy has reinforced the gender gap in pensions. Despite recent acknowledgement by the government's pensions minister that women's pensions are ‘a national scandal’, there is no sign of a radical shift in policy which is needed to remedy that situation. This chapter outlines the gender gap in later life income, showing how private pensions shape gender inequality in different ways based on women's marital status. It also examines gender differences in working-age individuals' employment, earnings, and private (occupational or personal) pension scheme membership, focusing on the impact of motherhood on women's position. Moreover, it considers alternative ways of protecting the pension income of carers and assesses the Pensions Commission's 2005 proposals in terms of women's pension needs.

This chapter presents findings on the impact of the Bank framework of women as ‘agents of change’ on the Bank's projects and the communities at which they are aimed, using TINP. It is a critical analysis of local understandings of TINP, specifically the tools of growth monitoring of preschool children, supplementary feeding, and health education for mothers. In addition, knowledge and practice of child care in Tamil Nadu and women's groups are discussed along with reflections on the main obstacles to addressing undernutrition in Tamil Nadu. The chapter examines the relative importance of choice and circumstance in explaining child hunger.

This chapter focuses on the gap between young men and young women in educational attainment. In several countries, young women are more engaged in their education and are completing credentials at higher rates than are young men. From the perspective of rational choice theory, this is paradoxical: if young women benefit less than men from education, they ought to invest themselves less, not more, than men. Some scholars have attempted to explain this apparent paradox through the idea of a “Pollyanna hypothesis”—the notion that young women do not perceive themselves as economically underrewarded for their credentials and, being unaware, they continue eagerly to seek education. However, testing of the Pollyanna notion using data on adolescent educational attainment in the US state of Maryland shows that it lacks empirical validity. The young women in the study are quite aware that, as women, they will face economic discrimination. Notwithstanding this perception, young women invest themselves more in education than male adolescents: they spend more time on homework, are more likely to seek assistance with academic problems, and are more involved in school activities such as clubs. The anomaly or paradox, therefore, remains. Young women do not enjoy the same labor-market benefits from education as young men do; they are quite aware of this inequity, nevertheless young women invest more in their education than do their male counterparts.