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This article looks at the issue of domestic violence from the perspective of African experience, and examines the impact of attempts to address it by legal means. It poses three questions: 1) what are the similarities and differences in the experiences of African countries that have attempted to pass domestic-violence legislation; 2) what lessons have been learned in the process; and 3) how do attempts to pass such laws connect to the lived realities of ordinary women? …

Report in Bangla on the research which interrogated the significance and relative impact of donor funding on women organising at global, national and local levels. The researchers did not assume that successful organising by women required external funding, but rather sought to clarify the conditions under which external financial support to women's organisations and groups had a positive impact on women's empowerment as well as the conditions in which successful mobilising is achievable without such support. This was a comparative research with Ghana, where one of the components examined the role of international development agencies in supporting women's organisations. …

The women’s funding movement has contributed to and been a product of women’s rights movements around the world for over 30 years. This article looks at the history of Mama Cash, the first international women’s fund, to chart how the effort to mobilise resources for women’s rights activism has been going – before and since the Fourth World Conference on Women in Beijing in 1995. The many advances by feminist movements include how we have resourced our movements and ourselves to do this work. Reviewing Mama Cash’s efforts to continue to support and sustain feminism/ists reveals lessons about the role that resources and processes of resourcing play in organising by women, girls and trans* people, as well as what types of resourcing support women, girls and trans* people to build movements that are responsive, effective and resilient – and ultimately successful at securing the various changes we seek in the world. …

Kate Raphael of KPFA Radio speaks with with Brazilian feminist Professor Cecilia Sardenberg about Dilma Roussef, Brazil's first woman president (35:45). …

In this chapter, Sharma writes about a workshop programme by her organisation, Nirantar, aimed at building perspectives on sexuality in a manner that was both positive and political. The programme constitutes one of the first efforts in the Indian context to do this, with women from rural, poor communities as well as the organisations that work with them, in an intensive manner. …

Contemporary feminist activism in Brazil emerged in a moment of political upheaval, playing an important role in the process of re-democratization of the country and stretching the very concept of democracy in this process. Over the last three decades, feminisms in Brazil have brought important contributions, not only in terms of a change of values regarding women’s place in society, but also towards building a more gender equitable society in formal terms. However, formal power structures, such as those of the legislative, judiciary and executive branches have remained notoriously resistant to the inclusion of women, which has resulted in a major paradox for Brazilian feminists: on the one hand, the presence of a wide and well articulated women’s movement, and on the other, a notorious absence of women in decision making positions. One of the consequences of this state of affairs is that the feminist movement in Brazil still lacks a “critical mass” of women to push forth the implementation of new state institutions and policies, and there is also little support in the legislative and judiciary to guarantee greater advancements insofar as women’s sexual and reproductive rights are concerned. …

Most international development organisations include women’s empowerment and gender equality as a key objective. But what empowerment means and how best to support it remains a matter of debate. …

Successive post-independence governments have embraced women’s empowerment in one form or another, either because of their own ideological positioning, or because of demands by their ‘donor friends/partners’ and/or organized domestic groups and NGOs. What has emerged is a varied landscape on women’s rights and empowerment work comprising the state bureaucracy, multilateral and bilateral agencies, NGOs, and women’s rights organisations, with their accompanying discourses. In the Ghanaian context, Nana Akua Anyidoho and Takyiwaa Manuh look at what the discourses of empowerment highlight, ignore or occlude, the convergences and divergences among them, and how they speak to or accord with the lived realities of the majority of Ghanaian women. Given that the policy landscape in Ghana is highly influenced by donors, they ask which discourses dominate, and how are they used for improving women’s lives in ways that are meaningful to them. …

The final synthesis report of Pathways of Women's Empowerment (Pathways) - an international research and communications programme that has focused for the five years from 2006-2011 on understanding and influencing efforts to bring about positive change in women's lives. After an introduction to the themes of the research the report details 12 key research messages with cross references to the many international research projects undertaken by Pathways. Key resources and very detailed references follow. …

Women’s rights organisations have been central to progress on women’s rights and gender equality since the adoption of the Beijing Declaration and Platform for Action (BPfA). Drawing on interviews carried out in January 2015 with twelve of Womankind Worldwide’s partner organisations, the myriad ways in which women’s movement actors draw strategically on the BPfA as appropriate to their context are explored, along with universally-shared challenges in implementation. …

Report from the first National Seminar on Feminisms in Brazil Theoretical Reflections and Perspectives. …

In December 1995, when Hamas announced the establishment of the Islamic National Salvation Party, a political organization separate from its military wing, it opened the way for involvement of the Islamic movement in the political processes brought about in the West Bank and Gaza with the signing of the Oslo Accords and the arrival of the Palestinian National Authority. In speaking of the rights of different groups, including women, in its founding statement, and in setting up in Gaza a Women's Action Department, the new party opened its doors to the ‘new Islamic woman’ and to a significant evolution in Islamist gender ideology in Gaza, if not in the West Bank – where, due to Hamas' policy there of targeting only males, there exists no parallel to the Salvation Party or organisational support for women like that represented by the Women's Action Department in Gaza. Hamas' gender ideology, like that of the secularist parties, remains contradictory, and doors to women's equality only partly open; nevertheless, Islamist women have managed to build impressive, well‐organised women's constituencies among highly educated and professional women coming from poor and refugee backgrounds; and the Salvation Party shows an increasing tendency to foster gender equality and more egalitarian social ideals, while holding fast to the agenda of national liberation. These advances have been achieved both through alternative interpretations of Islamic legal and religious texts, and through positive engagement with the discourses of other groups, whether secular feminists or nationalists. …

Report by Ana Alice Costa and Cecilia Sardenberg on the creation of the interdisciplinary studies programme on women, gender and feminism at the Interdisciplinary Women's Studies Nucleus at the Federal University of Bahia in Salvador, Brazil. …

In this article, O’Connell discusses the necessary factors for meaningful, equitable and sustainable ‘development’. Speaking from her experience and from lessons learned from various commitments and approaches to gender equality, O’Connell suggests that to achieve gender equality, approaches to development should encompass feminist and alternative thinking on economics and politics, and that central to making progress towards full human rights for all women and gender equity are vibrant, inclusive, feminist and well-resourced women’s organisations and networks. …

The Pathways Middle East Team had to scope a broad territory and probe deeply so as to ground the work of the RPC in the concerns of the region and its concerned citizens. The work of the inception phase attempted to answer three questions so as to insure the future relevance and success of the RPC on Pathways of Women’s Empowerment: 1) Why is women’s empowerment un-claimed and seemingly unpopular with grass-roots women and those who are most dis-empowered despite decades of feminist activism and of state support in most Arab countries? 2) Why is women’s empowerment perceived to be an alien import despite decades of apologia that have elaborated on the just and progressive potential of Islam, of Arab social organization and institutions? And 3) Why have the projects and programs implemented not had a transformative effect on women’s daily lives? This paper reports on the scoping workshop held from 10- 12 September 2007 in Cairo Egypt. The workshop invited a variety of activists, scholars, academics and researchers to three days of presentation and discussion to imagine an informed, evidence-based agenda for future RPC work that is liberated from stereotypes and prejudice. The report reports on each session by placing the subject matter of the session in context of the concerns and development in this hub and articulating the proceedings of the session with the planned activities of the RPC. …