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The debate about the relationship between paid work and women’s position within the family and society is a long standing one. Some argue that women’s integration into the market is the key to their empowerment while others offer more sceptical, often pessimistic, accounts of this relationship. These contradictory viewpoints reflect a variety of factors: variations in how empowerment itself is understood, variations in the cultural meanings and social acceptability of paid work for women across different contexts and the nature of the available work opportunities within particular contexts. This paper uses a combination of survey data and qualitative interviews to explore the impact of paid work on various indicators of women’s empowerment ranging from shifts in intra-household decision-making processes to women’s participation in public life. …

A significant new law was passed by Egyptian legislators in 2004 introducing family courts to arbitrate family conflict in an effort to promote non-adversarial legal mechanisms. The aim of this paper is to examine how this new legal system is working for female plaintiffs. Through an analysis of court practices in a number of divorce and maintenance cases, this essay will make two central arguments: First, I will argue that the benefits family courts are currently providing to female plaintiffs are limited due to a number of gaps and shortcomings in the legislation, mechanisms of implementation, resources, and the capacity and the training of court personnel. In addition, the legal process in the new courts as well as the substantive family laws that are being implemented continue to reflect gender inequality and biases against women. …

In 2000 a new divorce law, called khul, was passed in Egypt. Khul gave Egyptian women the right to unilaterally petition for an end to their marriages. The court automatically grants them divorce, but as long as they relinquish any post divorce financial rights from their spouses. This case study – which shares Marwa’s story – of the reforms in Egyptian personal status laws, shares the findings of Pathways’ research, that while khul has provided a real and beneficial legal option to Egyptian women, gender justice has not yet been served in the unfolding story of Egyptian family law reform, and presents action points based on the research. …

The Egyptian family law system regulates matters such as family property, marriage and divorce, alimony, child custody, and paternity disputes. Until the introduction of a new legal framework which came into effect in 2000 and 2004 women attending the country’s law courts were offered no guarantee of their civil rights or human dignity. This new legislation was a real advance, but as with any attempt to bring about social change through legal reforms the new system has had complex and multidimensional effects. In this light, Mulki Al-Sharmani examines here one aspect of the reform package - mediation-based family courts - in order to assess how far Egypt’s women have travelled in achieving “empowerment through law”. …

This paper was presented at the XIII Bahian Researchers Symposium on Women and Gender Relations held at NEIM/UFBA in Salvador from 4-7 November 2008. The purpose of the study was to identify and analyse changes in women's lives in Salvador, Bahia over three successive generations, and how these changes relate to processes of women's empowerment. …

In the last decade a series of reforms have been introduced in Egyptian family laws. On January 26, 2000 the Egyptian Parliament passed procedural Law No. 1 of 2000. The goal of this law was to address the problems of backlog of cases and inefficient legal procedures, challenges which were mostly confronted by women since they tended to be the majority of claimants in family law cases. …

This article identifies changes and continuities in gender relations in a working class neighbourhood in Salvador, Bahia, through the generations. Based on data collected over a period of nearly 20 years, it seeks to identify processes of women's empowerment. It confirms the relevance of women's economic independence to their participation in decision-making and in gaining autonomy; it gave them the power to assert control over their own lives. To this end, female solidarity has also played a special role, propitiating the exercise of power with to bring about the desired changes in one's lives. …

This chapter identifies change and continuities in gender relations in a working class neighbourhood in Salvador, Bahia, through the generations. Based on data collected over a period of nearly twenty years, it seeks to identify processes of of women's empowerment. …

In the last decade, there have been several significant family law reforms in Egypt that have impacted the struggle to enhance the legal rights of women in the domain of marriage and family. How have these reforms been brought about? Who were the actors involved in the process? Who are the various interlocutors in the public debate about these reforms? What does this debate tell us about their views and agendas in regard to women’s rights and position in the society? This paper will answer these questions with the aim of providing the context for a study on family courts in Egypt. The purpose of this study is to examine how these reforms are being implemented, to identify the diversions and subversions in the process, and to determine whether these reforms are strengthening the legal rights of women in family disputes. The first section of the paper outlines how Shari'a model of marriage is framed in family law, and the significance of the varied ways in which this religious legal model has been interpreted and implemented. …

This chapter will examine the contemporary legal, social and religious (jurisprudential) debates over the recent revisions to Iran's Family Protection Act (2011). By highlighting the differential tenor of these debates in various sectors of Iranian society, this chapter will reveal the tensions over women's status and rights in Iranian society, the role of law in shaping that status from 'above,' and, finally, the disparate groups claiming the authority to define women's roles in the Iranian social order. …

The paper seeks to intervene in debates about the role of crisis in Post Washington Consensus (PWC) policymaking. Gender and, especially, sexuality are largely absent from that debate. My paper asks: What do experiences of crisis reveal about the inter-connections between crisis, gender, and sexuality? In concrete crisis conditions, which common sense groundworks of the present (Nikolas Rose) get unsettled, which get re-entrenched, and what is the role of the development industry in this process? Using policy texts, interviews with Bank policymakers, and fieldwork on a family strengthening loan in Argentina, I argue that the denaturalization of free markets in the PWC is articulated, in part, through the re-naturalization of monogamous heterosexual couplehood. With the injuries of neoliberalism framed as injuries to loving couplehood, the Bank and its allies resolve to (re)generate intimate partnership as defining feature of the post-crisis era, raising crucial questions about the new regimes of heteronormativity under construction in contemporary development practice. …

This article is based on the discussions that took place at an internal reflection workshop organized by the Bangladesh team of the Pathways of Women’s Empowerment. The reflection workshop created a space for our group, which includes both feminist academic and activists, to come together and reflect on our own journeys of empowerment; how our own experiences have shaped our work; and the dilemmas and contestations that we have in how we interpret and understand empowerment. The process of the workshop was intensely personal and allowed us to encounter our own biases and raise questions about how we experience and interact with power in our lives. The questions we raised are context specific but some also have broader resonance for people working on empowerment. …

This paper illustrates the complementarities between women’s work and their private and intimate choices. The engagements of women in Egyptian labour markets are determined to some extent by their personal life trajectories. The fabled low rates of formal employment for women are a function of the gender roles that women choose to or are compelled to play. Work and marriage choices are linked and have mutual bearings on one another. …

The film, which examines how the ancient Egyptian divorce law of khul’ is helping women in modern day Cairo to escape from abusive marriages, is directed by Lucy Bennett from Manifest Films. Forty-seven per cent of married women in Egypt are affected by domestic violence but whilst khul’ is a crucial law, it can come at a high price. Following the stories of three women, the film explores how khul’ has both helped and hindered them and asks what more now needs to be done. …

New family laws have been passed in Egypt within the last several years, with important ramifications for women. In this chapter, Mulki Al-Sharmani argues that two issues diminish the transformative role that these reforms could play in strengthening Egyptian women's rights and achieving gender justice. …