Call for Papers: Special Issue of the IDS Bulletin on Beijing Plus 20

To mark the occasion of the 20th anniversary of the Beijing Platform for Action and in association with UN Women, the Pathways of Women’s Empowerment programme are planning a special issue of the IDS Bulletin. Drawing together leading international feminist scholars, advocates and practitioners, the special issue aims to reflect on progress since Beijing and create a space for reflections from people of all genders from different generations on their ideas of possible feminist futures.

Contributions of any length between 1,500-4,500 words might include:

- reflective essays looking back on what’s been achieved since Beijing in any of the 12 areas of the Beijing Platform for Action – focusing on gains for women’s rights and on areas of intensifying contestation

- analyses of the current conjuncture – what’s different about the times we’re in and what’s changed since Beijing, whether in relation to geopolitical shifts or changing configurations of development actors with the growth of corporate engagement and the rise of the BRICS or any other significant change

- the contribution of activism to the achievement of women’s rights – this could be focused on particular women’s rights struggles (i.e. reproductive rights, recognition of unpaid care) or in relation to a particular issue (i.e. global health crises, climate change, the environment)

- creative communications and women’s rights - the growth of the internet and new ways of sharing information and popular culture since Beijing, how this has affected women – opportunities within the digital age, but also how this can impact adversely in terms of reinforcing cultural restrictions

- feminism: what has “feminism” come to mean? What is the new feminism being seized by a new generation of icons such as Beyonce, Emma Watson and Taylor Swift and how does this relate to older feminisms? What’s the relevance of feminism in today’s world?

- feminist futures: dreams and possibilities for women’s rights in the future – what might we look forward to?

Please email Jenny Edwards (J.Edwards@ids.ac.uk) with a short expression of interest and a very brief description of your proposed article by Friday 23rd January 2015. We will respond to you by Friday 30th January and the deadline for submission of accepted papers is Monday 2nd March 2015. These tight deadlines will allow us to produce the special issue in time for a launch in July, and to feed into post-2015 agenda conversations over the last half of 2015.

We look forward to hearing from you.