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This article examines how girls’ education since 1995 has emerged as a prominent symbol within the ‘rights’ discourse coming out of the Beijing Platform for Action. By highlighting the neo-liberal and neo-colonial processes during this time, particular shifts are traced which show how girls’ education has been a symbolic part of the geo-political canvas in Pakistan and Afghanistan alongside the ‘war on terror’ and universalisation of education. The article refers to alternative voices which have attempted to disrupt the global narrative of the post-Beijing ‘rights’ agenda and points to the problems of this in the context of occupations, militarisation, and markets being used simultaneously as strategies for global governance and order. …

While security and women’s empowerment are both prominent development concerns, there has to date been little sustained analysis of the relationship between the two. An unexamined assumption appears to be that insecurity – violence and rights abuses – prevent women from gaining power over their lives through full social, economic or political participation. But how and how much does insecurity structure women’s agency? In which domains and contexts are these insecurities prominent? And what are the policy and practical implications of the relationship between women’s security and processes of empowerment in contemporary developing countries? This paper reports on an effort to derive lessons about how security and insecurity shape processes of women’s empowerment in developing countries through a thematic synthesis of a collection of research outputs from a five-year programme of research on the Pathways of Women’s Empowerment. The programme covered four broad thematic areas: voice (political mobilisation), paid work, body (or changing narratives of sexuality) and concepts of empowerment. …

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. …

This bulletin is devoted to exploring what empowerment means in the everyday lives of women in different situations and circumstances. …

In this blog for the IDS Participation, Power and Social Change Team, Mariz Tadros pays tribute to the men who choose to be positive deviants and who even put their lives at risk to support a more humane society. …

Politically Motivated Sexual Assault and the Law in Violent Transitions: A Case Study from Egypt is a new evidence report from Mariz Tadros about the use of sexual violence against women and men in order to deter the opposition from engaging in protests and demonstrations in a context of a country in transition, Egypt. …