Resources

This chapter attempts to give an overview of the trends in research, thinking and programmes in Pakistan from 1975 onwards in the area of women’s empowerment and bodily integrity in order to understand what makes change happen. It also identifies drivers of change and enabling factors, and discusses what women in Pakistan have done to establish their rights and the implications of this. Secondly, it seeks to identify areas that need to be explored through further research. The author considers the concept of empowerment, the definition of bodily integrity, and examines the social constructions of the woman’s body in Pakistan. …

This paper deals with two related themes: bodily integrity and women’s empowerment in the Indian context. Delving into both the politics of gendered culture and sexual politics (the politics of the body) it argues that the dichotomy between the woman’s body and the mind is a synthetic one and socially constructed. The identification of women with their physical bodies is the root cause of their oppression in a patriarchal culture and society like India. Most often women are denied the rights to emotional, mental, psychological and physical spaces. …

Within the last decades, feminist movements in Brazil have advanced significantly beyond borders, gaining increasing recognition in global spaces, UN ones in particular, for positively influencing Brazil’s official position. Unsurprisingly, Brazil has served four terms in the CSW and, in the eyes of more progressive delegations, is a much needed presence to ensure no lost ground on what has been achieved in previous conferences. However, the actual presence of Brazilian feminist activists in the delegations and the NGO Forums has dwindled considerably. What have been the strategies and mechanisms at play in maintaining a radical vein in our official position? Can it be sustained without the more active involvement of feminist activists – say, throughout Brazil’s new role as president of the 60th CSW session? These are some of the issues I address in this article, sharing the views of activists present at those events. …

This article discusses a state-run economic empowerment initiative Chapeu de Palha Mulher which is having a transformational effect supporting women to follow pathways into jobs which were once considered to be ‘men’s jobs’. …

Brazilian feminists have made steady progress at both national and regional levels with establishing sexual and reproductive rights, and they have an important stake in the discussions at 2010's UN Commission on the Status of Women (CSW). Cecilia Sardenberg calls on them to be alert against retrogressive steps. …

The Chinese NGO Pink Space organises exchanges to build solidarity between people marginalised because of their sexuality and challenge the sources of their oppression, as He explains. Pink Space brings together HIV positive women, lesbians, bisexual women, female sex workers, transgender men, and women married to gay men. Fun, laughter and discussions of sexual pleasure are always part of the agenda. He describes how a focus on sexual pleasure promoted solidarity between women. …

This report follows research which aimed at investigating and analysing strategies of articulation – from local to global and back – of Brazilian feminisms, and the ensuing challenges, with a special focus on the global spaces created by the United Nations Organizations. This includes not only the influence of Brazilian feminisms and the participation of activists in international conferences, but also in specific commissions and committees, such as CSW (Commission on the Status of Women) and CEDAW (Commission on the Elimination of Discrimination Against Women). As part of this project, Cecilia Sardenberg participated in the 52nd, 53rd, and 54th CSW meetings. …

This article examines the experience of mobilizing for the right to safe, legal abortion in Brazil. It focuses on exploring the strategies pursued by the feminist and women’s movements to ‘win hearts and minds’ both within these movements, and beyond them, through collective struggle, dialogue and coalition building. Tracing the trajectory of the Brazilian campaign for the legalization of abortion, Jornadas pelo Direito ao Aborto Legal e Seguro (Brazilian Journeys for Legal and Safe Abortion), the article looks at avenues of action and modes of activism. It describes how the efforts of campaigners have focused not only on engaging support from the public and the media, but also on working with the Ministry of Health and health professionals to guarantee the availability of services for abortions that are legal under current restrictions, monitoring changes in public opinion and the media, and on legislative change, which has recently become especially difficult in the wake of increased activism by the Church. …

This case study presents the events and outcomes of a workshop on Media, Gender and Representation which was organised by the Pathways of Women’s Empowerment Research Programme Consortium (RPC), based at the BRAC Development Institute of BRAC University in Dhaka from 11th to 15th November, 2007. The purpose of the workshop was to equip researchers, practitioners, journalists and students to develop a conceptual framework to analyse media as well as equip them with practical tools to decipher its many meanings. …

This chapter uses rhetorical analysis to analyse the Clitoraid campaign, an American initiative started by the believers of the Raelian religion that set out to raise funds to build a ‘pleasure hospital’ in Burkina Faso that would perform operations to ‘restore’ the capacity of excised women for clitoral orgasm. …

McFadden argues that societies in the South have been approached from a particular research gaze that is derived from a liberal epistemology that focuses on the individual; it simplifies women’s lives and is both methodologically and politically inadequate and deeply problematic. Empowerment as a notion is, too, embedded in liberal and neo-liberal worldviews and is ideologically flawed. With this liberal and neo-liberal development discourse in mind, McFadden looks at empowerment, MDGs, gender and human rights, and citizenship, entitlement and rights and analyses how they are embedded in this ideology. …

Kate Raphael of KPFA Radio speaks with with Brazilian feminist Professor Cecilia Sardenberg about Dilma Roussef, Brazil's first woman president (35:45). …

In this chapter, Sharma writes about a workshop programme by her organisation, Nirantar, aimed at building perspectives on sexuality in a manner that was both positive and political. The programme constitutes one of the first efforts in the Indian context to do this, with women from rural, poor communities as well as the organisations that work with them, in an intensive manner. …

This paper, presented to 'Pathways: What are we Learning?' Analysis Conference held in Cairo, 20-24 January 2009, seeks to interrogate the extent to which change has occurred in the lives of three generations of Ghanaian women. This is to assess the extent of changes and continuities in the lives of women as a social group. Change here is being used as an indirect indicator of empowerment when it involves improvements. The significance of the various indicators in the lives of the different generations of women will also be explored. …

In moving away from prescriptive one-way communications exercises, participatory development communications use better strategies to engage communities and capture nuance. This article examines a communications case study in Egypt: a photography competition aimed at understanding how local photographers depict women and empowerment in their images. Opportunities for discussion and self-reflection provide cultural producers the space to delve into how they see women and how they then choose to represent them. This type of communications initiative actively courts a richer understanding of empowerment, leaving room for the complexities this might entail. …