Resources

The downfall of Suharto's regime in 1998 has been marked by the increasing visibility of Islamic piety in a form of popular culture. Tracing the emergent new genre of sinetron religi (religious TV series/serials), this paper analyses the discourses of Islamic piety in several different series/serials, the construction of the public and the wider implication of these discourses for the position of Islam culturally and politically in Indonesia. This article argues that religious melodrama series/serials are a site of contestation of incoherent concepts of piety. As cultural texts, they interpellate their public and allow us to see how the visibility of religious discourses in public becomes a subject of negotiations and confrontations, while at the same time they trigger the politicisation of piety as national identity. …

Rwanda has one of the highest representations of women in parliament in the world. This article examines, from the perspective of a female MP in parliament, the dynamics behind the process of supporting more women assuming leadership positions in parliament. The article argues that the implementation of an electoral gender quota certainly carves the space necessary to allow more women to enter politics, nevertheless, a constellation of factors is needed to work together in order to create the enabling environment necessary for the quota to be effective. Some of these factors include (but are not restricted to) challenging the hierarchical gender relations in post-genocide Rwanda; the political will on the part of the government to engender politics; the role of national machineries in monitoring and pressing for gender-sensitive national policies, as well as the strategic mobilisation of female parliamentarians backed by the progressive new Rwandan constitution. …

Thirty-five years on from the abortion rights victory of Roe vs. Wade, abortion proponents in the USA continue to battle political opposition and the formidable abortion opponents that seek to overturn legal abortion in the long-run, and limit access to services in the short-run. This article outlines the many battles over national and foreign aid policies, legal changes, attacks on and limits to access that have characterized the on-going abortion debate in the USA. Beyond the political, it further illustrates how, despite the legal and human rights discourse the politicians and advocacy bodies pursue, deficient access and funding and stigma are overwhelmingly the critical barriers for the poor and ethnic populations, demonstrating that the ‘choice’ debate is not a realistic one in a context where poor mothers can neither afford to have an abortion, nor mother another child. …

Jerker Edström argues that common interpretations of vulnerability in gender and development discourse, policy and practice tend to reinforce essentialisms about men and women. These interpretations compromise our ability to think clearly about the structural influences on HIV and sexual health, as well as its relations to gender inequity and women’s empowerment. He examines some predominant constructions of women in the AIDS response, based on the notion of vulnerability, and suggests how unhelpful the notion of vulnerability is to the political project of women’s empowerment in redressing inequality and injustice. …

The 1995 Beijing conference was a pivotal moment for legitimating women’s rights work in Ghana, and served as a powerful framing for women’s empowerment. This article explores the Beijing conference and examines its influence on popular notions of and efforts to promote women’s empowerment. We argue that the discursive context provided by the conference shaped popular narratives about women directly and also through its influence on the ideas and practices of public institutions and civil society. There is greater acceptance that women have rights that should be promoted and protected, and that there should be institutions and systems to which they have recourse. …

This article argues that to understand the conditions that enable effective participation by women in politics, analysis is needed not just of the characteristics and performance of elected women leaders but also the extent to which village communities are engaged through collective processes, in demanding accountability from those elected. The article presents the experiences of a women's movement in the Uttarakhand that has evolved from a programme of environmental education in the region. Over the years, this movement has developed a strong political consciousness. Women's participation in Whole Village Groups has paved the way for active engagement with local governance institutions. …

Diasporic Somalis are increasingly leading a transnational life in which family members are sustained through networks of relations, obligations and resources that are located in different nation-states. These networks and relations enable diasporic Somalis to seek safety for themselves and their relatives, minimize risks and maximize family resources. In this article, Mulki Al-Sharmani examines three key dimensions of such a way of life, namely: migration; remittances; and transnational family care. She focuses on the roles that women play in this family-based support system. …

Twenty years since the landmark women’s conference at Beijing, and as the post-2015 agenda is concluded, it is clear that there has been a significant increase in rhetoric from governments and even some notable achievements in the field of women’s equality and rights.  But a failure to tackle underlying causes – particularly the persistent unequal power relations between women and men - has thwarted real, sustainable progress.  A report by the Gender and Development Network has identified four areas in need of far greater political focus and resources: working with marginalised women to build their own agency; supporting women’s collective action; promoting positive social norms; and reassessing macro-economic policies and the role of the care economy. …

There are rising numbers of single women across the Arab world. While this is usually connected with delayed marriage, Palestine shows a unique pattern of early but not universal marriage. This article looks beneath the statistics to investigate the stories behind this trend. How do young unmarried women negotiate boundaries and understand and enact choice in the context of a society experiencing prolonged insecure and warlike conditions, political crisis and social fragmentation and where the high number of unmarried women can be an increasing locus of moral panic? In conducting focus groups with two generations of women, my research looks at the prevailing importance of education, civil society and security in negotiating space within women's lives and uncovers a long tradition of unmarried women leading full and significant lives which needs to be recovered from the past. …

Despite 80,000 female deaths a year due to unsafe abortions and a higher prevalence of them occurring in developing countries, abortion remains a women’s reproductive health problem instead of a development problem. In fact, it calls for a stronger advocacy strategy for greater consciousness-raising and sensitization. The Campaign Against Unwanted Pregnancy in Nigeria seeks to employ a multi-pronged strategy that seeks to break the silence on unsafe abortion to create climate for discourse, conduct reliable studies to provide data for debate, and employ the data as a tool to rally support for action on women’s sexual and reproductive health and rights in general, and safe abortion specifically. Undertaken primarily through partnering community and faith-based organisations, CAUP seeks to engage policy-makers, the media, CBOs and religious and traditional leaders as part of a strategy to build up a critical mass of advocates that will fight to reduce high levels of mortality caused by unsafe abortion. …

In spring 2006, the Vagina Monologues was staged in Serbia for the first time. Performed by well-known actresses, including a celebrity soap star, the show attracted a wide audience of people beyond those usually interested in the women’s movement. Hundreds of young girls came to see the soap star, but at the same time they heard about pleasure and orgasm, and how to love their bodies, as well as about sexual abuse and domestic violence. Men in the audience cried with emotion. …

This article describes the annual gathering of over a thousand women rural workers from the Brazilian state of Bahia, to share their experiences in the struggle for land and in the struggle against all forms of violence but especially domestic violence; and to remind themselves that, as women, they need to demand to be treated with respect by both their colleagues in struggle and by society at large. …

The paper examines the challenge of feminist engagement in the South today. The analysis proceeds from the position that feminist engagement has registered multiple successes with a major break through in the ways in which it has made considerable dents into dominant development discourses. However, I argue, that this very success has created inherent vulnerabilities, with success appearing as a double edged sword whose disintegrative effects are much fiercer and much more anchored, in terms of power regimes. By trying to have a command into the development arena feminism had to reshape itself – even at the basic level of being understood. …

In this article Suzette reflects on her personal experience from being at the Beijing conference, and the study and work she has done since this time on the implementation of the Beijing Platform for Action through the United Nations, NGOs and her active role in the global women’s movement. She looks at strategic ways the document could have been used in a policy context to lead global and national dialogue and draws from her PhD titled ‘Beijing - Transformation and feminist politics: From the personal to the international. She links the process of the Beijing Conference and Platform for Action back to the accountability within the UN itself, identifying opportunities lost through lack of clear commitment, planning and resourcing. She concludes by highlighting the importance of this event and document on the lives of women who were a part of the process and the value of a future NGO Forum for women for the global women’s movement. …

Rosalind Eyben describes her participation in a high-level international meeting on women’s economic empowerment. She examines how the concept of empowerment is being constructed, contested and shaped in international aid policy. …