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Western-led discussions of sexual health have foregrounded warnings of the dangers of sex. Yet, pleasure is one important reason why people have sex. Sexual health work must open up discussion of how pleasure can be experienced with less risk. There are challenges in addressing pleasure in work on safer sex. …

In this article, Koggel reflects on the various influences on her thinking on gender and development, including a research project in Indonesia to explore the possible gaps between the World Bank’s understanding of empowerment and social science theory and NGO practice prior to mainstreaming the concept; capabilities theory and the difference between empowerment and agency; and the rhetoric of empowerment. She discusses the importance of contextual analyses and of the limitations of generalized policies or principles designed to promote ‘development’ or empower women. An important lesson for development ethicists is the need to pay attention to and analyse relations of power – including the overarching factor of economic globalization in the form of neo-liberal and capitalist assumptions and structures. Another important lesson is the one she learned from Sen's complex analysis of poverty: that ethical issues of development are as relevant to ‘developed’ countries as they are to poor ‘developing’ countries. …

In this article, I examine the case of Brazil which, unlike many other Latin American countries, is an example of where quotas are not working. Drawing on over ten years of research and exploring the dynamics of a varied group of political parties, I contest that male resistance is not the only reason behind this failure. Vagueness around the quota law and a lack of sanctions, together with the elitist nature of politics in Brazil are all contributing factors. My research has also revealed a few anomalies, showing that contrary to much of the literature, women would seem to fare better in elections within less developed and smaller states in Brazil. …

A panel from the the AWID Forum held in Cape Town from 14-17 November 2008. Dzodzi Tsikata discussed how women’s NGOs in Ghana have responded to some of the challenges they face because of NGOization. She recounted the history of NGOization in Ghana and the lessons that women’s NGOs learned from it, and concluded that “while NGOization still remains a huge issue for the women’s movement in Ghana, I think that women’s organisations in Ghana have come to recognize by their work that NGOs are not synonymous with civil society nor with the women’s movement. ” Saba Khatak placed the women’s movement in Pakistan in the larger context of Pakistani politics. …

Within the last 20 years, the problem of women’s participation in formal power positions has been mobilizing women, especially feminists, throughout Latin America. After over half a century since gaining the right to vote, Latin-American women have recognized that, in practice, this fought for right did not guarantee the right to be elected as well. Indeed, Latin American women have remained marginalized from power, kept from participating in greater numbers in deliberative power structures. In these circumstances, the implementation of quota systems for women in a context of affirmative action policies has figured as a major goal in the mobilisation of women in their struggle for access to power structures. …

Tessa Lewin introduces Pathways of Women’s Empowerment RPC, explaining its purpose in bringing together academics and activists from five hubs to understand the factors influencing women’s empowerment. The article elaborates on the four themes of Pathways, namely ‘Conceptions of Women’s Empowerment’, ‘Building Constituencies for Equality and Justice’, ‘Empowering Work’ and ‘Changing Narratives of Sexuality’, before identifying some of the common factors which hamper women’s empowerment and highlighting some of the research being done by Pathways researchers. …

Cecilia Sardenberg discusses the challenges facing Brazilian feminists and their supporters in the campaign to legalize abortion in the country beyond the current strict limits. She reports on the recent decision at the Brasilia gathering of the second Conference for Public Policies for Women (II CNPM) in support of legislation to sanctioning abortion on demand – a significant step beyond the current situation where it was legal only if the pregnancy results from rape or when it put the mother’s life at risk. Cecilia Sardenberg is the director and a founding member of the Nucleus of Interdisciplinary Women’s Studies (NEIM) at the Federal University of Bahia, Brazil. …

Jerker Edström argues that common interpretations of vulnerability in gender and development discourse, policy and practice tend to reinforce essentialisms about men and women. These interpretations compromise our ability to think clearly about the structural influences on HIV and sexual health, as well as its relations to gender inequity and women’s empowerment. He examines some predominant constructions of women in the AIDS response, based on the notion of vulnerability, and suggests how unhelpful the notion of vulnerability is to the political project of women’s empowerment in redressing inequality and injustice. …

This book provides a summary of a conference held at the Brazilian National Congress in June 2007 on international experiences of affirmative action. The purpose of the conference was to identify and analyse, on the one hand, the shortcomings of the current Brazilian quota system and potential sources of support in congress for a change; and, on the other, highlight successful experiences of increasing women’s political representation in legislative bodies in other countries. Representatives from Argentina, Costa Rica, Bangladesh, Rwanda and Palestine, and from the Inter Parliamentary Union (IPU) in Europe, were brought together to discuss “lessons learned” from mechanisms at work in their countries, in order to contribute to the development of an alternative proposal for political reform in Brazil and other countries in a similar situation regarding women’s low representation in legislating bodies. …

Abortion has become an ever more controversial issue, provoking strong reactions both ‘for’ and ‘against’. Language used in disputes over whether or not women should have access to safe and legal abortion indicates just how polarised debates have become: pro-choice versus pro-life; pro-abortion versus anti-choice. As the anti-abortion agenda has become coupled with other conservative agendas, such as ‘pro-abstinence’, ‘pro-chastity’ and ‘anti-contraception’, an increasingly assertive movement has evolved. The extension of these conservative forces to parts of the world where thousands of women die every year because they were unable to access safe abortion and protect themselves from HIV infection, has turned this polarized dispute into an urgent development issue. …

This article describes the annual gathering of over a thousand women rural workers from the Brazilian state of Bahia, to share their experiences in the struggle for land and in the struggle against all forms of violence but especially domestic violence; and to remind themselves that, as women, they need to demand to be treated with respect by both their colleagues in struggle and by society at large. …

The number of women in public office is an inadequate proxy for assessing ‘women’s political voice’ in public decision-making as it is based on the assumption that female public officials will - by virtue of their gender - seek to promote women’s rights and gender specific issues. This Policy_Brief seeks to explain how a critical analysis of the concept of ‘representation’ can help researchers understand the reasons why numbers alone is not enough to ensure an amplification of women’s public voice and substantive transformation of policy. …

The number of women in public office is an inadequate proxy for assessing ‘women’s political voice’ in public decision-making as it is based on the assumption that female public officials will - by virtue of their gender - seek to promote women’s rights and gender specific issues. This Working Paper seeks to explain how a critical analysis of the concept of ‘representation’ can help researchers understand the reasons why numbers alone is not enough to ensure an amplification of women’s public voice and substantive transformation of policy. …

Voicing demands is a collection of analytical narratives of what has happened to feminist voice, a key pathway to women's empowerment. These narratives depart fromthe existing debate on women's political engagement in formal institutions to examine feminist activism for building and sustaining constituencies through raising, negotiating and legitimising women's voice under different contexts. …

Zelal Ayman, Ulrika Holmstrom, Monica Williams, Marcos Nascimento, Kuhu Das, Dean Peacock, Carolyn Hannan, and Anita Gurumurthy reflect briefly on the question, “What do men have to do with women’s empowerment?” …