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In this paper presented to the Sexuality and Development Workshop, Institute of Development Studies, Brighton, 3-5 April, Sardenberg proposes to reflect upon some of the dilemmas faced by women over fifty living in the “culture of eternal youth” which, nowadays, rules Brazilian society. She recognises that the battle against age is one that cannot be won, and therefore proposes a new discourse - a feminist discourse on the female body in the process of aging. She shares some reflections, based on her own person experience, around the control over the body that the culture of eternal youth imposes on us and looks at these issues from a feminist perspective, reflecting upon how gender, age and generation, along with race and class, structure the construction of body and self. She focuses here primarily on how narratives of decline and the positive ageism of the cosmetics industry at large speak to aging white, middle-class women. …

For Negra Jho, a hairdresser whose salon lies in the heart of the old centre of the city of Salvador - where more than 80% of the population are black - beauty is politics. In a context in which centuries of racism have shaped ideas of beauty, the politics of our hair gains new significance. Brazilian society has privileged images of white women as icons of beauty. Black women have grown up being told that their hair is ugly, and that beautiful hair is straight and smooth. …

This paper is based on a three‐year research project entitled Minority Women Negotiating Citizenship. Conceived of in the aftermath of Gujarat 2002, the project studied 75 life‐history narratives of Muslim women survivors of communal violence in Gujarat, Hyderabad and Mumbai, in order to map their everyday experiences of negotiating survival, marginalisation and exclusion. While analysing our material we found that our preliminary organising or analytic categories – victim, agent, Muslim, woman, class, location – could not contain the negotiations and fluid ‘subjects’ of the narratives. The most useful analytic concepts and tools were those being used by the women themselves in their narratives, such as bahar nikalna and sambhalna. …

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. …

The aim of Changing Focus was to encourage local photographers to use representations of women in their work that actually reflect the empowerment that women may experience in their lives. These portrayals can then be used to show that images of women need not only be the kind of stereotypical depictions found in many popular music video clips or films, nor should images of women be relegated purely to the home and family. Photographers participated in a workshop on gender awareness and equality before setting out to produce images incorporating ideas and techniques from the workshop. These images were then displayed in a widely disseminated and accessible exhibition. …

Popular music plays a significant part in the everyday lives of people across age, class, religion, ethnicity and social occasion. In Africa, musicians are frequently powerful public figures capable of conveying ideologies through their lyrical and verbal pronouncements. Many popular songs portray women as sex objects and convey misogynistic constructions of women. At the same time, however, other songs hail women as perfect lovers and sacrificial mothers. …

This article maps the multiple methods used to bring scholar-activists, music producers and music consumers together in a conversation that culminated in the creation of three winning ‘empowering songs’ from the ‘Changing representations of women in popular music’ project. This project explores the gendered stereotypes of women in popular music, and seeks to contribute to reflection on, and creation of, alternative (empowering) narratives about women through song. The article discusses this marriage of research and advocacy and reflects on some of the outcomes from ‘corporate’ reflections – all of which generated a lot of passion about the tensions and possibilities around women’s representations and roles. The authors conclude that for research findings to have practical and policy value and legitimacy, what, how, when and where we communicate our messages is extremely important. …

Health has been a sector that is traditionally considered appropriate for women’s employment as it is consistent with their caring role. However in the South Asian context, women community health workers are in fact challenging various social constraints and stereotypes by being engaged in regular employment, in coming out of their homes, being mobile in their communities and fulfilling a socially valued role. A qualitative research study was carried out from March 2008 to explore how women health workers have been instrumental in bringing social change into their communities, whether their role as paid workers has empowered them as women, and if there are discernible changes in gender relations as a consequence of their work. The Bangladesh study compared Government women health workers with non-government women health workers of pioneering programmes in three locations: ICDDR,B; Ganoshathya Kendro and BRAC. …

Giuseppe Campuzano presents issues of identity considered important by many travestis. He places travesti issues in a ‘development’ framework discussing the difficulties of the contemporary situation of travestis in Peru. …

This article reflects on a digital storytelling project undertaken for research, communication, and advocacy purposes in Bangladesh. The project trained young women from different regions of the country to make digital stories about their everyday struggles and journeys of personal growth. Excerpts from selected digital stories are shared to highlight how these short films can be used to understand struggles against class and gender hierarchies, sexual harassment, and the need to establish full citizenship rights for minority groups. The article makes a case for digital stories as a new methodology for doing and communicating research. …

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. …

In this article, Schwenke reflects on women’s empowerment from a trans perspective, arguing for the need to include morals in development discourse and to navigate and be guided by moral values in order to think critically and reflectively, and to make a persuasive justification based on moral sensibilities allows us to evaluate our priorities, confront the status quo, and expand our human agency. Empowerment is rooted in societal acceptance of variant gender identities, and transformation of empowerment begins with a change in gender assumptions – a dialogue in which trans people have a unique perspective and can be extremely valuable. She stresses the importance of ‘human’ in human development and as a precursor to women’s empowerment. …

This chapter contextualises empowerment historically in Palestinian practices of mobilisation and resistance. The author draws on interviews and focus group discussions to explore the meanings the term has come to acquire in the Palestinian context. …

Stigma and legal sanctions against homosexuality, as well as gender norms among men who have sex with men, lead to an emphasis on aggression, power play and penetration in male-to-male sex in India. This in turn contributes to low levels of condom use among men who have sex with men (MSM) and transgender people, and increases the risk of HIV and ill-health. This article explores the potential for promotion of more sensuous, pleasurable, and communicative sex which could also be safer. The article draws on the author’s research as well as on his personal experience working as a masseur in Kolkata Massage parlours which provide commercial sexual services to male clients. …

The first of three chapters within this book which analyse the research findings from the Pathways Feminist Activists in Global Policy Organisations project, using the device of five fictionalised characters to preserve the anonymity of participants. …