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Compares characteristics associated with women's status commonly used in demographic surveys with women's status, matsayi mace, as it is defined by a group of Hausa Moslem women in the northern Nigerian town of Zaria. Their assessments of appropriate gender roles and what constitutes ‘women's status’, which include the importance of respectability, mutunci, and seclusion, suggest that while distinctive cultural ideas and religious beliefs are essential in framing these definitions, there is no necessary congruence with the conventional ‘social indicators’, such as women's education and work, used in standardized surveys.

This chapter discusses the interrelationships between women's status and development. The classical approach asserts that higher economic growth rates tend to improve the status of women. A new approach adopted by the World Bank in the 1990s affirms that women's status affects the development process, that is, in order to accelerate economic growth, gender gaps have to be narrowed and women's status has to improve dramatically. Nonetheless, a reduction of gender inequalities hinges on changes in gender power relations. The Egyptian state, through its inability or unwillingness to change the personal status laws, based on a very conservative reading of the shari'a, has undermined the ability of women to gain equality. The perpetuation of unequal gender relations in the private sphere affects the theoretical equality of women in the public sphere. The status of women also represents a political card for successive regimes since Egypt's declaration of independence in 1922. The state has many times ignored issues relating to women's equality in order to mollify Islamist and conservative political groups, whether in confrontation or in alliance with them. In short, the amelioration of women's status does not depend on economic development alone but, more importantly, on the articulation of political power relations in society as a whole.

This chapter engages with three aspects of Amartya Sen's writings, applying, contesting, or extending his ideas to throw light on intra-family gender relations. First, it applies his conceptualization of family relations as relations of both cooperation and conflict, and his entitlement approach, to explain why families might breakup during famines, when the wife's fall-back position collapses while that of the husband is still partly intact. Second, it contests his claim that women in traditional societies suffer from false perceptions about their self-interest, and so become complicit in perpetuating their unequal position. It can be shown that the same behaviour could arise from women's lack of options. Third, the chapter demonstrates the importance of taking into account women's relative capabilities (and not just absolute capabilities) in determining their well-being outcomes, and uses the example of domestic violence to identify empirically perverse capability effects. It also highlights the critical role of women's property status in determining their economic and social well-being.

Rhetorical reference to the situations of women before armed conflict are abound, but there has been little detailed analysis of how women’s prewar status and experiences relate to their conflict experiences or affects the manner in which they are treated in the transitional phase. This chapter explores that terrain with some rather robust caveats rooted in overarching methodological and empirical constraints. The chapter is organized as follows. Section one commences with a focus on the importance and availability of multidimensional statistical information available to map effectively women’s status across numerous social and economic contexts. Section two explores the methods available to extrapolate women’s economic, social, and legal status from the limited quantitative and qualitative data sources available. Section three examines the gender of social capital, with some specific extrapolation from data from health and education contexts. The chapter concludes by examining various data sources setting out a state by state ranking on women’s status and well-being across multiple factors.

While denying the charge of political involvement through fiction, Staël now decides to smuggle in a critique of prevailing orthodoxies under the skirts of a novel. Delphine, which praises certain freedoms while attacking certain patriarchal orthodoxies, seems calculated to enrage Napoleon, and effectively does so. It is an exile narrative par excellence, depicting women who for a variety of reasons cannot live in society, but find protection and a degree of fulfilment outside it; yet it is a very noisy book for one dedicated to ‘la France silencieuse’. Predictably, it earns Staël renewed exile, not least because Napoleon's vague suspicions about the way she stirs up opposition to his regime start to crystallize. Just before she departs again for Switzerland she tries to renew her abortive friendship for Fanny Burney, who has crossed the Channel during the brief lull in hostilities between France and England in 1802, but Burney's timidity and prudishness foil the initiative.

This chapter offers an overview of nineteenth century Bengali society, and the prevailing condition of women, both Hindu and Muslim. Dual standards of morality—a differential code of behaviour ordained for men and women—were the order of the day. The first woman in nineteenth century Bengal to make a passionate plea for the improvement of the status of women through the medium of the pen was Kailasbasini. Hindus and Muslims took two different routes when the British rule was established. The Hindus took full advantage of the opportunities offered by the British Government. Opting early for English education, the Hindus prospered, with access to government and other employment. Moreover, social reforms accompanied religious reforms, and a new ‘Hindu identity’ was fashioned, and womanhood was redefined. Nationalism gave a further fillip to it by endowing motherhood with new roles and political responsibilities. On the other hand, the Muslims were indifferent to British rule, and turned their face against English education. Inability to secure gainful employment coupled with reluctance to engage in trade and commerce, led to the decline in the circumstances of the Muslim community. The unequal development of the Hindu and the Muslim communities, especially of their middle classes, was a great tragedy in the social history of Bengal.

This chapter discusses the status of women in education, law, health, and employment. The research findings of multiple international organizations support the fact that the empowerment of women is essential for global social and economic development. According to the International Federation of Social Workers (IFSW), since social workers are committed to human rights, they must commit themselves to helping women and girls because they have not achieved social justice in any society. Due to their ethical grounding in empowerment, social workers are an ideal group to help empower disenfranchised groups.

This chapter presents an evaluation of Sarala Devi Chaudhurani and Begum Rokeya Sakhawat Hossain. Sarala and Rokeya were both greatly concerned with women’s issues, but they saw questions of gender through the lens of their own community, class, and culture. The nationalist construction of women was a potent influence on Sarala’s thoughts. She was generally perceived as an extraordinary woman, who transcended the ‘limitations’ of most women. Like Sarala, Rokeya thought deeply about power and politics, but hers was the politics of gender, and not that of anticolonialism or of pan-Asian identity. To her, the abanati of Muslim women was the real issue; the ways of attaining their unnati and advancing their education overshadowed every other consideration. She was among the first to ask for women’s paid employment in the interest of women’s economic independence. Concluding her comparisons of the life and times of the two women, the author notes that Sarala Devi, once an inspiration to many, is nowa page in history; however, Begum Rokeya remains a reviving source of inspiration.

Over the past decade a consensus has been emerging amongst policy makers, reform groups, voluntary agencies and academics that women offenders should be treated differently by the criminal justice system and in particular by the courts. This desire for differential treatment has culminated in the call for abolishing women’s imprisonment growing louder and gaining momentum. This chapter will explore the theoretical basis for this call for reform questioning ‘why’ women should be treated differently from men and trying to refine the way in which we think about women offenders as ‘different’. This chapter will discuss how and why women offenders’ status is depicted as that of victims, carers, oppressed, and/or offenders and whether a debate based on such reduced women’s status is sufficient to justify the call for a different approach to sentencing.

Men’s superior status within Burmese society places women, nuns, and trans women in positions of subordinate status. Debate about women’s “relatively high standing” in Burmese society is best resolved by considering the hierarchical understandings that make subordination appropriate rather than oppressive in the views of many Burmese women. Women’s subordination stems from and allows for their greater readiness to forge attachments. Nuns arouse ambivalent reactions because as religious their choosing autonomy makes sense but as women it does not. Trans women are disdained because they give up the greater prestige and autonomy their biological sex makes readily available to them. But they are tolerated because they respect gender categories and behave in accordance with their feminine, thus subordinate, status.

This chapter analyzes the conflict management and verbal construction of Annette Lu Hsiu-lien, the first female vice president of Taiwan and concludes that although the roles and status of women in Taiwan have been significantly transformed in the modernization process, the symbolic aspects of the traditional gender system in modern Taiwan are still robust. It discusses Lu's verbal presentation of self in relation to changing gender roles in the shifting Chinese/Taiwanese society. This study aims to shed light on the understanding of the role of language and speech in the development of gender roles and identities in the rapidly changing society of modern Taiwan.

This chapter focuses on the transnational nature of the women's movements. “Transnational” here is referred to as the movement of ideas about women's status and rights across national borders, as well as the across-the-border organizing between women activists from different countries. The chapter argues that some activists' decisions to locate themselves in the interstices has proved to be an effective strategy. Straddling national borders allows them to have a continuing dialogue with feminists of all color, injecting Philippine perspectives into international women's movements, and in so doing affecting international feminist debates and international activism on behalf of all women. Transnational activism also has an impact on the perspectives of Filipina activists who have developed an international outlook.

The operation of a patriarchal system is not a story of unreserved male power and down-trodden women. Patriarchy is a lived system; it is a framework that people use to justify male superiority over women and it is one which survived through numerous social, cultural and political changes over the last several centuries. Understanding it as a system for organising gender and social relationships explains women's continued subordination over time, despite historical change in many other areas of life. This study demonstrates how it came about that, despite some radical transformations in how people conceptualised the world around them, women's social status remained unchanged over two centuries. This process was not about unchecked male force or an overt strategy by a group of men to keep women oppressed, but rather that the belief in a woman's subordination to her husband was so deeply ingrained within Scottish, and European, culture that people could not conceive of the world differently.

This chapter explores Marzia's and Jamila's assessments of the conditions for Afghan women in 2010. After a five-year hiatus in their meetings, the author was curious to see what the women would consider progress for their countrywomen as well as their views of continuing needs. She was both encouraged by their reports of progress for women's status and opportunities and unsurprised that almost every advance they described had a caveat, usually one that acknowledged that advances in rights, literacy, public activity, education, and health care were partial, unreliable, and often limited to women in Kabul or in other cities. It was here that the different professional foci of the two women became clearest. Marzia's dedication to the law and the legal profession necessarily kept her eyes primarily on the cities, where the rule of civil law was most likely to count. Jamila's widely networked organization also worked primarily in cities and larger villages, but her emphasis on education and skills training for women had more applicability to nonurban settings. She was therefore in touch with many rural Afghans.