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This film looks at the Sierra Leonean women's movement's campaign for increased participation for women in Sierra Leone politics and their aim to achieve legislation for a minimum 30% quota. The film explores this issue through the stories of Dr Bernadette Lahai of the Sierra Leone People's Party, Barbara Bangura, National Coordinator of the Women's Solidarity Support Group, and Salamatu Kamara, a prospective parliamentary candidate. …

A witness account from Abbia on the politically motivated sexual assaults targeting female protestors of the Arab revolt in Cairo. These have been taking place since the revolution in 2011 which deposed President Mubarak. …

The 2010 UK general election presented a rare opportunity to significantly enhance women's representation in the UK due to the larger numbers of vacant-held seats following the parliamentary expenses scandal of 2009. However, despite encouraging words and commitments from the main political parties, the opportunity was missed. The proportion of women's representation in the UK parliament remains at around 22 per cent, comparing unfavourably with countries as diverse as Rwanda and Sweden, and leaving the UK ranking 52nd in the global league table. Although there is no one single answer for achieving sex parity in politics, many factors can increase women's opportunities. …

The system of reserved seats with direct elections to local government bodies has been in place for women since 1997. This article investigates how perceptions have changed about the role of women representatives in local government. By exploring the accounts of women's views, experiences and how they negotiate various structural and attitudinal obstacles, and the changes in the wider sociopolitical context, the article shows that women representatives have gained greater voice and social legitimacy in representing specific types of‘women's issues. ’These gains were partly a result of the supportive policy directives and mechanisms created by the state. …

Creuza is a former domestic worker and president of the National Federation of Domestic Workers. Put into domestic service without pay at the age of 10, Creuza received her first salary at 15 and suffered years of abusive treatment in the houses of her employers. According to the last census, Brazil has 8 million domestic workers, the majority of whom are black. Creuza has always felt it was wrong that domestic workers did not have the same rights as other workers. …

This chapter makes an attempt to probe into the politics of women’s voice in Bangladesh. The chapter argues that there are structural factors within the state and society that act as barriers for women in Bangladesh to vocalise their opinions in the public sphere. Yet parallel forces are at work at national and international levels that enable women to create their spaces and voices despite these structural limitations. …

Sholkamy discusses the paradox of provenance for ‘women’s empowerment’ and explains how this has clear implications for policies and programmes on the ground. The strategic approach to women’s empowerment has yielded great gains and has punctured some taboos by making women’s empowerment a public good that can deliver welfare and development. This operational definition of empowerment has limited utility in addressing questions of basic injustices and inequities. On the other hand the more politicized and to some extent westernized and purist meaning of empowerment as a right for women has created distances, misunderstanding and animosities and has in many parts of the world failed to convert the sceptics and create popular support. …

This chapter aims to critically understand the ‘positionality’ of Elected Women Representatives (EWRs) in India and more specifically in the state of Rajasthan at multiple levels - political, social, economic and personal with the aim of analysing factors enabling and constraining women’s political pathways through the intersections of gender, caste, class and ethnicity. …

The debate about the relationship between paid work and women’s position within the family and society is a long standing one. Some argue that women’s integration into the market is the key to their empowerment while others offer more sceptical, often pessimistic, accounts of this relationship. These contradictory viewpoints reflect a variety of factors: variations in how empowerment itself is understood, variations in the cultural meanings and social acceptability of paid work for women across different contexts and the nature of the available work opportunities within particular contexts. This paper uses a combination of survey data and qualitative interviews to explore the impact of paid work on various indicators of women’s empowerment ranging from shifts in intra-household decision-making processes to women’s participation in public life. …

For many countries, despite their adoption of quotas, women's political participation remains low. Costa Rica, however, presents a success story in terms of increasing women's descriptive representation and, as a country which has tried a variety of quota systems, it represents a unique case study. This article looks at the processes which have influenced the evolution of the Costa Rican experience, and the struggle to achieve effective quota law highlights the importance of clear, unambiguous legislation that leaves no loopholes for those resisting its implementation. However, there is also a cautionary note that although quotas can be effective in increasing numbers, the quest by women's organisations to seek transformation can be co-opted by others leading perhaps to undesired outcomes. …

Most of the literature on women in politics and political empowerment in Bangladesh has either focused on the elected women representatives at the union level in rural areas and the constraints they face or on the ineffectiveness of women Members of Parliament (MPs) in reserved seats. In this chapter, we shift the focus from rural areas and women MPs to women councillors in urban government. …

A witness account from Farah Shash on the politically motivated sexual assaults targeting female protestors of the Arab revolt in Cairo. These have been taking place since the revolution in 2011 which deposed President Mubarak. …

In this chapter the authors discuss how feminists in Brazil have responded to the challenge of dealing not only with tensions from existing inequalities within their ranks, but also with the task of devising strategies to channel very diverse women’s demands. They look at the national conferences for women held over the last decade  - the Conference of Brazilian Women (2002), and the I and II National Conferences of Public Policies for Women (2004 and 2007, respectively) – and examine their products: the Feminist Political Platform and the I and II National Plans of Public Policies for Women.  …

In contemporary post-conflict Sierra Leone, women have managed to secure 13. 5 per cent of seats in parliament – without affirmative action in place, thanks to women's groups' and coalitions' mobilisation and activism. While the political resistance to Sierra Leone having a quota was high, the women's movement has succeeded in forcing the political parties and the government to recognize that it is no longer politically viable to sidestep women's rights, should they wish to capitalise on women's voting power. As women's organisations, in particular the 50/50 group, continue the struggle to introduce a quota, the challenge for Sierra Leonean women is how to ensure that the quota project is not hijacked by the male-dominated political establishment. …

This paper presents an overview of the processes, interventions, policies and personal experiences that lead to, or are associated with the somewhat ambiguous concept of women's ‘empowerment’ in Ghana. The task the authors set themselves was to find out from existing literature and key civil society organisations in Ghana today what kinds of actions have been implemented, and the policies and processes that seem to be associated with women's ‘empowerment’. …