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The Research Programme Consortium on Pathways of Women’s Empowerment has an explicit commitment to influencing policy. Yet policy is a concept that carries many diverse and contested meanings. How feminists choose to conceptualise policy will influence their strategic choices in terms of what and how they seek to influence. This paper combines a general review of some of the current sociological and feminist literature concerning policy with a specific look at global policy processes in relation to gender equality. …

The Beijing Women’s Conference in 1995 marked a coming together of feminists from all over the world, with an end agreement on a transformative and relatively clear text – the Beijing Platform for Action. Over a decade later, words and agendas around women’s empowerment have changed as the wider international development agenda has moved away from the notion of people centred development of the 1990s. Eyben and Napier-Moore trace those changes and tease out the waxing and waning of different associational meanings attached to women’s empowerment as used in international development agencies. Their historical analysis suggests a current privileging of meanings of efficiency and growth, broadly crowding out meanings of empowerment associated with solidarity and collective action. …

This paper discusses how the concept of ‘empowerment’ and specifically women’s empowerment, has been constructed in different literatures and the insights that these may offer for Pathways’ research programme. In particular the paper explores how different understandings of women’s empowerment shape capacity for action, by women themselves as well as by diverse policy actors. …

The debate on women's empowerment in Brazil focuses primarily on the difficulty of articulating consensus around issues regarding gender equity. This is especially true regarding the formulation of strategic policies for the eradication of inequality through enlarging women's access to resources and political power. For many Brazilian feminists, “empowerment” is directly associated with international development agencies such as the World Bank. Thus it is seen as a “de-politicized” term imposed by theoretical and political “fashion” and alien to the objectives of real change toward a more equitable society. …

In this conclusion, we discuss both the advantages and disadvantages of the marginal position that feminists working in international development bureaucracies find themselves in. Using their creativity and agency as 'tempered radicals' they seek to turn the disadvantages of marginality - such as a sense of powerlessness and reduced visibility - into advantages, as they try to take forward the women's rights agenda. …

This report focuses on the application of the Maria Da Penha Law within the legal framework and structures put in place in Brazil, such as the Special Women's Police Stations (DEAMS) and the federal and district level domestic violence family courts, following the law's implementation in 2006. …

Conditional cash transfers (CCTs) have become a popular method of offering state support to ultra-poor families. They are designed to break the cycle of intergenerational poverty, with the idea that families are active participants in a scheme that has developmental objectives, rather than a ‘band aid’ mentality. The CCTs programme in Ain el-Sira, Cairo, one of the first of its kind to be launched in the Arab world, was shaped by a Pathways conference which brought together experts from Brazil, Mexico and Ecuador. The conference looked at the proposed CCTs design, discussed best practices and potential obstacles to effectiveness and, in particular, how existing programmes both empowered or disempowered women. …

Conditional Cash Transfers (CCTs) provide mothers of school-age children in extreme poverty with a cash subsidy conditional on their children's attendance at school and health clinics. This paper builds on the author's earlier gender analysis and critique of these programmes by examining evaluations of CCTs in order to assess the evidence for their claim to empower women. It analyses the assumptions underlying the definitions of empowerment used in the evaluations, questions their adequacy, and advances alternative measures of empowerment. In so doing it hopes to stimulate debate about theory, methodology and policy. …

Conditional Cash Transfers (CCTs) provide mothers of school-age children in extreme poverty with a cash subsidy conditional on their children's attendance at school and health clinics. This paper builds on the author's earlier gender analysis and critique of these programmes by examining evaluations of CCTs in order to assess the evidence for their claim to empower women. It analyses the assumptions underlying the definitions of empowerment used in the evaluations, questions their adequacy, and advances alternative measures of empowerment. In so doing it hopes to stimulate debate about theory, methodology and policy. …

This chapter looks at the challenges of creating spaces for women to engage in politics in Brazil using a longitudinal study approach spanning the period between 1988 to 2011. It shows that despite the implementation of policies intended to enhance women’s broad political representation such as the introduction of affirmative action and a comprehensive decentralisation policy, political parties, the gatekeepers, are stalling women’s entry into politics. …

In this paper Cecilia Sardenberg discusses women's examination of the constraints imposed on them historically by gender ideologies and how this can be challenged for a new order. …

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. …

Giuseppe Campuzano presents issues of identity considered important by many travestis. He places travesti issues in a ‘development’ framework discussing the difficulties of the contemporary situation of travestis in Peru. …

Women’s paid work has featured in the development literature for two main reasons. The instrumental reason relates to its potential to contribute to make a variety of development goals, from poverty reduction to human development to economic growth. The intrinsic reason is its potential to transform the lives of women and girls by addressing gender inequalities on a wide variety of fronts. However in both cases, paid work is most likely to achieve this potential if it empowers women; since it is women’s capacity to exercise voice and influence in the key arenas of their lives that provides the impetus for change. …

Women’s paid work has featured in the development literature for two main reasons. The instrumental reason relates to its potential to contribute to make a variety of development goals, from poverty reduction to human development to economic growth. The intrinsic reason is its potential to transform the lives of women and girls by addressing gender inequalities on a wide variety of fronts. …