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This article is based on the experiences and reflections of a group of researchers in Bangladesh (of which we were members) studying women's empowerment. We investigate the kinds of epistemological and ethical dilemmas that arose from how they selectively presented their identities to gain access and tried to create ‘positional spaces’ in conducting fieldwork. We also explore how these researchers engaged in co-production of knowledge with research participants and tried to balance our multiple accountabilities in this process. By exploring these issues, we analyse assumptions about ‘feminist’ research practices and our struggles to live up to these. …

A bibliography divided into the following sections: Psychological empowerment (theory and analyses); Agency/ self-efficacy/ autonomy/ motivation/self-esteem/ well-being etc. ; Collective empowerment and organisational empowerment; Empowerment, gender and difference; Employee empowerment. The bibliography states that most of the journal articles are available via the Sussex University or LSE electronic journals login. Articles from the internet have URL links. …

Many names are given to identities and practices that suggest or involve sexual activity between men: queer, gay, homosexual, dandy, batty man, queen, bachelor, fag, etc. In international development, however, ‘men who have sex with men’ (MSM) has fast become the preferred descriptor for the myriad expressions of same sex desire by men. This term was originally proposed as an alternative to ‘gay’ or ‘bisexual’ by grassroots activists and healthcare workers concerned about the impact of sexually transmitted diseases in their communities. This was a radical gesture at the time, a sharp refusal of the dominant narratives about sexual orientation and sexual behaviour that were being relayed by organisations led by white, gay-identified men. …

By focusing on three different national level women's organisations in Bangladesh, this article looks at how the movements have used different strategies to become an effective voice for women's interests and empowerment at civil society and state levels. The importance of framing their issues in a non-contentious way, building alliances with like-minded groups and the strength of personal networks can be clearly seen. Reaching out to these diverse groups has meant the organisations at times making strategic choices, which allowed the groups to create space and legitimacy for their agenda. Relying on personal networks is shown to carry certain risks for sustainability and their ineffective engagement with political parties can reduce their influence, but ultimately their strategies for mobilising support and building constituencies has gained these organisations greater legitimacy and strength as advocates of women's issues. …

In pre-colonial Peru the distinctions between male and female were far more flexible than they are today. A traditional ‘travesti’ or transgender/transvestite identity and culture existed and played an important role in Andean religion and society. Colonial and subsequently development influences suppressed these identities and communities, although the Peruvian travesti remained. In contemporary Peru travestis face violence from the public and police, as well as economic exclusion and discrimination by health services. …

The purpose of this workshop was to provide time and space to reflect. Participants reflected on their work on empowerment and why they do it, and how it has shaped them. Participants reflected on their personal journeys and also on their relationships with power; when do they feel powerful and why, when do they feel powerless, and how do they react to power. This report follows the different sessions and highlights the themes and questions that emerged from the participants’ stories and reflections. …

This study of the digital storytelling (DST) project at the South Asia Hub of the Pathways of Women's Empowerment Research Programme Consortium examines the capacity of DST practice to articulate women's diverse experiences of empowerment, given the genre's formalities and narrative guidelines. I challenge notions that DST mediation is limited to relationships between the storyteller and the technology, and instead focus on mediation as a co-creative process. There are at least two overlooked dynamics in DST. The first is how the organization adopts narrative guidelines to fit their framework and purpose; and second, the social relationships mediating the way actors related to one another in the workshop. …

UK-based international development agencies are introducing the concepts of diversity and sexual orientation into their staff employment policies for the first time. Based on interviews with agency staff and a study of diversity policy documents, Carolyn Williams outlines some of the difficulties that have emerged. She proposes that future debates and policymaking need to explore how to interconnect sexual identity, social and cultural diversity, while paying careful attention to the protection of individual's right to privacy. …

Current debates on sexuality and development need to be seen in relation to a longer historical cycle. This contribution provides a pictorial overview of the last three decades, laying out the diverse influences from the 1970s, which produced both the Washington Consensus and Foucault’s History of Sexuality, through to the current paradoxes of the 1990s and 2000s, with advances in sexual rights struggles pitted against the rise in conservatisms and fundamentalisms. This time line roots current sexual rights struggles in recent history, showing how the same themes resurface and gain new meanings over time. Throughout this history, how does development deal with sexuality? Development language regarding sexuality is far from transparent. …

There is a wide spectrum of sexual acts, practices and identities worldwide. The existing language of sexual rights has emerged largely in relation to lesbian, gay, bisexual and transgender (LGBT) people. In turn, this language seems to cater primarily to LGBT or similar such identities. Heterosexuals may be excluded, as well as indigenous same sex practising or transgender people who do not identify as LGB or T, such as the Hijras of South Asia. …

In this paper, presented to 'Pathways: What are we Learning?' Analysis Conference, Cairo, 20-24 January 2009, I want to argue against a common and perhaps a temptingly easy understanding that posits a direct and problematic link between the challenges of reforming Egyptian personal status laws and their seemingly inescapable religious identity. Such a reading has a homogenizing effect that: 1) collapses those who take issue with the proposed changes in the substantive laws from a religious perspective into one unitary position, 2) fails to appreciate the interconnectedness of secular (e. g. human rights) and religious discourses that frame the debates about the new legal reforms, and 3) conceals a number of underlying issues which go beyond the question of the religious boundaries of the family laws. …

Based on ethnographic fieldwork carried out in West Bengal, India, Akshay Khanna examines the conditions under which epidemiological knowledge about ‘men who have sex with men’ is produced and brought to circulate. He looks at conditions under which particular idioms of gender and sexuality are transformed into epidemiologically over-determined identity categories. The Sexual Subject that circulates in development praxis as an embodiment-in-the-world, it is argued, would be better understood in terms of the political economy that makes its intelligibility and circulation possible. …

The downfall of Suharto's regime in 1998 has been marked by the increasing visibility of Islamic piety in a form of popular culture. Tracing the emergent new genre of sinetron religi (religious TV series/serials), this paper analyses the discourses of Islamic piety in several different series/serials, the construction of the public and the wider implication of these discourses for the position of Islam culturally and politically in Indonesia. This article argues that religious melodrama series/serials are a site of contestation of incoherent concepts of piety. As cultural texts, they interpellate their public and allow us to see how the visibility of religious discourses in public becomes a subject of negotiations and confrontations, while at the same time they trigger the politicisation of piety as national identity. …

Directed by Paulina Tervo, Thorns and Silk tells four unusual stories from Palestine, featuring women who work in jobs that are conventionally associated with men in their society. All four of them have the courage to break traditional rules, though not without challenges. We dip into the life of a wedding filmmaker, who films women-only weddings in the most conservative part of Palestine; hear the stories of a female taxi driver who works in the Israeli parts of Jerusalem; discover a young police trainee at the Palestinian Police Academy and learn about the hardships in occupied Nablus from a mother who takes on male roles in order to keep her family toilet paper factory going. …

Ama Ata Aidoo is an iconic African writer who has inspired generations of black and other women writers. This latest collection of short stories brings together diverse themes that speak of the relationship between Africa and its diaspora in terms of home, exile and sense of belonging and alienation. It reveals the complexities involved in the African diaspora connections, engaging with a sense of anomie and fragmentation, revealing her interest in presenting common human frailties. Steeped in Ghanaian and African history, her craftmanship also embraces pertinent new levels. …