Resources

Cecilia M. B. Sardenberg reflects upon the experience of NEIM – the Nucleus of Interdisciplinary Women’s Studies of the Federal University of Bahia – in engaging with ‘empowerment’. NEIM has been involved in 27 years of activism in order to bring about changes, both structural as well as in women’s individual lives, towards insuring greater autonomy for women and our increasing participation in decision-making. …

The author presents a case study of the digital storytelling (DST) project at the Pathways for Women’s Empowerment Research Consortium. Pathways undertook DST as a new research tool to articulate how women strategize and experience positive change in their daily lives in Bangladesh. She analyses the relation between DST and feminist research, and evaluates its capacity to represent women’s diverse experiences given the genre’s formalities and narrative preoccupations. This study aims to counteract the tendency within the DST movement to propagate digital stories as complete, “authentic” voices. …

This report, presented to the 'Pathways: What are we Learning?' Conference held in Cairo from 20-24 January 2009 is based on a study of women in Local Government in Bangladesh, and seeks to examine the levels, margins and boundaries of the re-definitions and contestations of the existing values, traditions and spaces of women both in the private and public sphere. The obstacles faced by women in doing so and their responses, as well as struggles, to overcome those also constituted a major focus of the study. The challenges of breaking into a restrictive system and the strategies and paths adopted by the councillors in carving out spaces are presented in this paper. Finally the report trenched out the emergence of new voices, spaces and the march of women towards the creation of structures, more amenable to social justice, equity and human needs. …

This panel session from the AWID Forum in Cape Town, November 2008 on engaging men in feminist struggles and movements sought to address how to engage men in feminist movements, why men question or give up their masculine images, and what is needed to mobilize men in feminist and social movements. …

Representations of men as perpetrator and patriarch have profoundly shaped the terms of gender and development’s engagement with masculinities discourse and practice. Many of those working in the field have remained hesitant, tentative, and often hostile to the notion that men might be potential allies in the struggle for gender justice. Even feminists broadly sympathetic to the principle of working with men tend to set out from the notion that all men everywhere are inherently part of the problem. And so efforts have focused on involving men, engaging men, inviting men in – usually on our terms. …

Revisiting foundational feminist work on the concept of empowerment from the 1980s and 1990s, this paper draws on the findings of a multi-country research programme, ‘Pathways of Women’s Empowerment’, to explore pathways of positive change in women’s lives, in diverse contexts, and to draw together some lessons for policy and practice. It begins with an account of women’s empowerment in development, tracing some key ideas that have shaped feminist engagement with empowerment in theory and practice. It then introduces the Pathways programme and its methodological approach, before turning to each of Pathways’ themes, exploring key findings from our research and highlighting examples of ‘what works’. It goes on to narrate a series of stories of change that illustrate some of the dynamics and dimensions of change identified in our key conclusions. …

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. …

Dzodzi Tsikata focuses on the progress of women’s organizing in Ghana over the last ten years. It argues that although hampered by challenges of state society relations and organizational weaknesses arising from NGOization, women’s organisations have experienced growth and enjoyed some successes. These can be attributed to the establishment of three women’s rights networks to consolidate their work. …

What lessons can be learnt from successful experiences of affirmative action to enhance the numbers of women in high political office? This was the topic of an international seminar ‘Women's Pathways into Power - International Experiences of Affirmative Action', held at the Brazilian National Congress on 20 June 2007. …

The goal of this research project was to understand the experiences and contexts of women‘s rights and feminist movements in Ghana, how different kinds of resources have shaped their mobilizing strategies, and how changing aid modalities are affecting women rights work. The report covers background, context, donor relations, organization profiles, contexts and impacts of the WROs before donor assistance, and analysis. The key findings of the study are that securing adequate resources for women‘s rights work in Ghana remains a great challenge. WROs are compelled to enter into partnerships with organisations whose gender agendas are unclear and who may not share in their feminist politics. …

This article focuses on the historical trajectories of women's empowerment in Sierra Leone, taking three entry-points as a means of exploring the dynamics of change over the pre-conflict, conflict and post-conflict periods: voice and political participation; work and economic participation; and bodily integrity. Looking at pathways of empowerment in pre-conflict Sierra Leone, at experiences of women during the time of conflict over the course of a long and brutal civil war from 1991–2002, and at post-conflict possibilities, the article highlights some of the changes that have taken place in women's lives and the avenues that are opening up in Sierra Leone in a time of peace. It suggests that understanding women's pathways of empowerment in Sierra Leone calls for closer attention to be paid to the dynamics of conflict and post-conflict reconstruction, and to the significance of context in shaping constraints and opportunities. …

A summary of the changes that have taken place in Sierra Leonean women’s lives in the last 20 years in the three thematic research areas of voice and participation, work and access to resources, and bodily integrity entails a situation analysis of women’s pre-conflict, conflict and post-conflict reconstruction activities in these fields. This is because the primary defining feature of the period 1986-2006 is the civil war years of 1991-2002. Armed conflicts, whether inter or intra state, leave behind not only human carnage, massive destruction of physical and socio-economic infrastructure (the Sierra Leone civil war was no exception to this reality), but also at the political level a weak and collapsed state. At the socio-cultural level, war also destroys the patriarchal structures of society like morals, traditions, customs and community, that confine and degrade women and opens up and creates new beginnings. …

Globalisation is transforming the lives of women workers. Civil society campaigns over workers' rights in global production have begun to open up global spaces for women's organisations. Examples can now be found where women's concerns have been given some voice in mainstream commercial corridors of power. This paper examines this process. …

Young women are increasingly experiencing greater visibility and mobility in Bangladeshi society. The new public spaces they occupy together with the more traditional private spaces are greatly mediated by the narratives beamed on television. This chapter looks at how Bangladeshi women engage with television and the meanings and choices they derive from it. …

Women have increasingly taken on new roles over the past two decades within Bangladeshi society, occupying positions not previously seen such becoming wage earners. This shift is thought to have been influenced by urban culture and popular media. This case study details research which has sought to explore how media is affecting Bangladeshi women’s lives by shaping their aspirations. …