Resources

Changing Narratives of Sexuality examines the tensions and contradictions in constructions of gender, sexuality and women's empowerment in the various narrations of sexuality told by and about women. From storytelling to women's engagement with state institutions, stories of unmarried women and ageing women, a sex scandal and narrations of religious influence on women's subjectivities and sexualities, this impressive collection explores sexuality in a wide range of national contexts in the global South. …

This ground-breaking collection investigates the relationship between feminist activism and legal reform as a pathway to gender justice and social change. …

Every day in international development organisations, feminists make use of strategy, tactics, wisdom and skill to act for their principles. Most of their strategies are invisible and their tactics subtle. They draw on networks of friendships and relationships that create ripples of effect in enabling their organisations to be pathways of women's empowerment. …

This book explores the role that religion, culture and society play in the social and political positioning of women. The collection of essays in the book aims to capture the variety of policies, discourses, debates and interventions that have influenced the lives of women in South Asia and to identify those that have led to greater empowerment of women. The contributors assess the current situation and provide a rallying call for progressive politics that is committed to universal values. The essays also review as well as show us the new directions that are opening up new pathways for women to traverse. …

Ogni O Jol is a collection of eleven short stories by young and established writers, and three papers by researchers. Two of the stories are in English and all others in Bangla. This book comes from a project conducted by Shamim Azad who gathered researchers from Nigeria, England, Ghana, Egypt, Pakistan and Bangladesh to conduct a workshop named 'Pathways of Women Empowerment'. Twenty five authors took part in the six month long workshop. …

Organizing Women Workers in the Informal Economy explores the emergence of an alternative repertoire among women working in the growing informal sectors of the global South: the weapons of organization and mobilisation. This crucial book offers vibrant accounts of how women working as farm workers, sex workers, domestic workers, waste pickers, fisheries workers and migrant factory workers have organized for collective action. What gives these precarious workers the impetus and courage to take up these steps? What resources do they draw on in order to transcend their structurally disadvantaged position within the economy? And what continues to hamper their efforts to gain social recognition for themselves as women, as workers and as citizens? …

This book provides a summary of a conference held at the Brazilian National Congress in June 2007 on international experiences of affirmative action. The purpose of the conference was to identify and analyse, on the one hand, the shortcomings of the current Brazilian quota system and potential sources of support in congress for a change; and, on the other, highlight successful experiences of increasing women’s political representation in legislative bodies in other countries. Representatives from Argentina, Costa Rica, Bangladesh, Rwanda and Palestine, and from the Inter Parliamentary Union (IPU) in Europe, were brought together to discuss “lessons learned” from mechanisms at work in their countries, in order to contribute to the development of an alternative proposal for political reform in Brazil and other countries in a similar situation regarding women’s low representation in legislating bodies. …

Voicing demands is a collection of analytical narratives of what has happened to feminist voice, a key pathway to women's empowerment. These narratives depart fromthe existing debate on women's political engagement in formal institutions to examine feminist activism for building and sustaining constituencies through raising, negotiating and legitimising women's voice under different contexts. …

Women the world over are being prevented from engaging in politics. Women's political leadership of any sort is a rarity and a career in politics is rarer still. We have, however, begun to understand what it takes to create an enabling environment for women's political participation. …

Gender and development has tended to engage with sexuality only in relation to violence and ill-health. Although this has been hugely important in challenging violence against women, over-emphasizing these negative aspects has dovetailed with conservative ideologies that associate women’s sexualities with danger and fear. On the other hand, the media, the pharmaceutical industry, and pornography more broadly celebrate the pleasures of sex in ways that can be just as oppressive, often implying that only certain types of people - young, heterosexual, able-bodied, HIV-negative - are eligible for sexual pleasure. Women, Sexuality and the Political Power of Pleasure brings together challenges to these strictures and exclusions from both the South and North of the globe, with examples of activism, advocacy and programming which use pleasure as an entry point. …