Resources

In Latin America, the Fourth World Conference on Women in Beijing has been a milestone in the history of the feminist and women’s movements. Twenty years have passed and despite important achievements in gender equality, for issues of economic equality the results are still meagre and there remains a long road ahead in the fields of employment, access to resources, and social protection for women. Unsurprisingly, it is in economic matters that the feminist and women’s movements have renewed their themes and strategies. This article identifies a gender economic agenda that is broad in its transformative scope and in its determination to challenge core aspects of the current economic and social organisation. …

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. …

Meena Seshu as guest editor of this issue of Contestations suggests that by viewing 'sex work' through the framework of patriarchy and the objectification of women's bodies, feminists foreclose any discussion over whether women can actively choose sex work as a livelihood option. It is this narrow approach linking sex work with violence against women, she argues, that leads many feminists to the assumption that all sex workers are victims who need 'rescuing', which is not always the case. Seshu contends that a far better lens is the rights-based approach which recognises sex workers' rights as human beings and allows them to break out of the victim mode. …

On behalf of Meem, the community of and for Lesbian, Bisexual, Transgender and Queer (LBTQ) women in Lebanon, Nadine delivered one of the most exciting and talked about speeches at the Opening Plenary of the International AWID Forum: The Power of Movements held in Cape Town November 2008. She looks at sexuality in relation to feminism from the perspective of an activist working to have women's self-defined expression of sexuality accepted openly in mainstream culture. …

This workshop held from 26-28 October 2008 brought together participants in a reflective practice project, a small and self-selected group of feminist policy practitioners working on women’s rights and gender equality issues in the head offices of international development organisations, who aim to be more effective in their work by studying and reflecting on their own experiences. The workshop provided an opportunity for collective reflection and analysis. Some brought with them a long experience of working in global policy spaces while others are relative newcomers. Our specific responsibilities and working environments have varied considerably. …

This chapter examines the context in which diverse forms of women’s activisms thrive in Egypt today. It is a politically volatile context, in which political space expands and contracts in unpredictable ways. It is also a context in which women’s national machineries are making claims as the principle actors mediating between the international community and the state on gender matters, and between state and society. …

Meeting at a weekend-long retreat, the five women discuss what 'success' is for a feminist bureaucrat, and the challenges of gender mainstreaming. They agree on the importance of analysing and understanding the organisations they work for, and of finding opportunities to influence by 'working with the grain'. …

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. …

In Colombia on 10 May 2006, a Constitutional Court decision decreed that abortion is a constitutional right for women and should not be considered a crime in particular circumstances. In order to monitor the acceptance and take-up of this new decision, Women’s Link started a mapping exercise to identify obstacles and resources to work facing the proper implementation of the law. Many challenges were found, including: lack of information, confusion around conflicting laws, legal and moral conflicts among service providers leading to subjective decisions and lack of service provision, and the challenges of abiding by lawful requirements for access to services during armed conflict. Mapping and recording continues and women’s organisations continue the struggle to realize women’s sexual health rights through ensuring the judicial and disciplinary accountability of service providers and ensurers. …

The language of ‘gender equality’ and ‘women’s empowerment’ was mobilised by feminists in the 1980s and 1990s as a way of getting women’s rights onto the international development agenda. Their efforts can be declared a resounding success. The international development industry has fully embraced these terms. From international NGOs to donor governments to multilateral agencies the language of gender equality and women’s empowerment is a pervasive presence and takes pride of place among their major development priorities. …

This chapter will examine the contemporary legal, social and religious (jurisprudential) debates over the recent revisions to Iran's Family Protection Act (2011). By highlighting the differential tenor of these debates in various sectors of Iranian society, this chapter will reveal the tensions over women's status and rights in Iranian society, the role of law in shaping that status from 'above,' and, finally, the disparate groups claiming the authority to define women's roles in the Iranian social order. …

Despite the vibrancy of mobilisation in Egypt after Mubarak, Hania Sholkamy’s account of the 8th of March demonstration in Tahrir square to mark International Women's day bears witness to the persistent resistance to women’s political participation. …

Great strides have been made towards the realization of gender equity over the past fifteen years in Egypt. Since the last ICPD in 1994, a National Council for Women has been established, a number of prejudicial laws have been changed and over four million women have entered the labour force. This chapter not only documents the achievements but also gauges the distance left towards the realization of gender equity and justice. The case of Egypt illustrates the importance and limitations of formal and structural change. …

Susie Jolly’s chapter is a nuanced account of how Chinese activists have drawn on the possibilities afforded by international forces, agendas and discourses, to broaden openings available in the flux and ambivalence of processes nearer to home. Jolly highlights the great overlap among donors, government and activists, showing that the boundaries between these institutional spaces are in fact porous, rather than partitioned from one another. …

The Egyptian Conditional Cash Transfer Pilot Programme (CCT) is a social policy programme implemented by the Ministry of Social Solidarity (MoSS). The Egyptian CCT is designed as a pro-women cash transfer intervention, focusing specifically on aiding women’s well-being. The reason women are put at the centre of the social policy design is the unequal burden of poverty that they, married or not, carry in the context of Egypt’s urban and rural settings. The CCT is part of a raft of positive programme reforms and capacity development of social units (the smallest department of MoSS at the community level) to become community service centres, linking citizens to service providers, be it public, private or NGO. …