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This ground-breaking collection investigates the relationship between feminist activism and legal reform as a pathway to gender justice and social change. …

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. …

In contemporary post-conflict Sierra Leone, women have managed to secure 13. 5 per cent of seats in parliament – without affirmative action in place, thanks to women's groups' and coalitions' mobilisation and activism. While the political resistance to Sierra Leone having a quota was high, the women's movement has succeeded in forcing the political parties and the government to recognize that it is no longer politically viable to sidestep women's rights, should they wish to capitalise on women's voting power. As women's organisations, in particular the 50/50 group, continue the struggle to introduce a quota, the challenge for Sierra Leonean women is how to ensure that the quota project is not hijacked by the male-dominated political establishment. …

Despite the vibrancy of mobilisation in Egypt after Mubarak, Hania Sholkamy’s account of the 8th of March demonstration in Tahrir square to mark International Women's day bears witness to the persistent resistance to women’s political participation. …

The Big Question for Development podcast produced by the Institute of Development Studies, examines what International Women's Day means for women around the world. …

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. …

Understanding what works to promote, support and sustain ‘women’s empowerment’ calls for a greater appreciation of what the term means to different policy actors in different contexts. In Ghana, there is a strong commitment to women’s empowerment from government administrative officials, particularly female staff. However, there appears to be limited knowledge about the dimensions, pathways and strategies for women’s empowerment within government and the bureaucracy. Officials often base their interventions on a desire to address women’s individual situations rather than on analysis of the deeper-rooted structural constraints that women face, and remedies that might address them. …

The South Asia Hub of the Pathways of Women’s Empowerment research consortium held an inception workshop based on scoping papers on the themes of ‘voice’, ‘work’, and ‘body’. The purpose of the research is to seek to identify discourses and interventions that have led to the greater empowerment of women, based on these three themes. The papers in this book are culled from that inception workshop and give an idea of the mosaic that forms the lives of women in the heartland of South Asia. Three main arenas of activism and interventions emerge from the papers. …

Drawing on direct experience, this book is about feminists working politically to promote their organisations' gender equality goals. The aim is that by sharing this experience, the book's contributors can help others in similar positions to debate and reflect on the challenges of their jobs, and that readers from within the wider international women's movement will gain insights to help them engage more strategically with their allies inside development organisations. …

This introductory chapter provides a brief discussion on conceptual debates on voice and the assumptions that the authors interrogate using empirical evidence. The broader contexts within which feminist activism and voice are organised are discussed. It focuses on the various influences on feminist activism: NGOisation/ professionalisation ; increase in transnational networks and links; rise of conservative forces; creation of participatory/democratic spaces; increase in donor’s epistemic power to shape feminist agenda; and how these have influenced feminist voice in the selected countries. …

Report from the first National Seminar on Feminisms in Brazil Theoretical Reflections and Perspectives. …

The Regional Scoping Workshop for Latin America, organized by NEIM, took place in Salvador, Bahia, Brazil, from 6-9 June 2006. The workshop was organized around five round-tables followed by open debates in plenary: 1) Theoretical Reflections on the Empowerment of Women in Latin America; 2) Power, Institutionality and the Empowerment of Women in Latin America; 3) Policies of Employment and Income as Spaces of Empowerment of Women in Latin America; 4) Public Policies for Preventing and Combating Violence Against Women; and 5) Struggles for Sexual and Reproductive Rights in Latin America. On the last two days there were three different discussion sessions in small groups, organized around the three axes that the RPC will be investigating (voice, work, and bodily integrity): 1) Issues in Measurement of Women’s Empowerment; 2) Identifying Stories of Change; 3) Exploring Policy Experiences. Group discussions had the objective of generating ideas and recommendations for the formulation of RPC projects, the results being presented in the final plenary session, followed by an informal evaluation of the workshop and its accomplishments. …

Report by Ana Alice Costa and Cecilia Sardenberg on the creation of the interdisciplinary studies programme on women, gender and feminism at the Interdisciplinary Women's Studies Nucleus at the Federal University of Bahia in Salvador, Brazil. …

In this paper Islah Jad argues that the spread of universal women’s rights discourse, based on the liberal individual notion of rights, potentially ignores the different contexts in which ‘indigenous’ forms of resistance by feminist movements takes place, and risks sidelining some important knowledge and gains that have been achieved by these movements. In the Palestinian context detaching feminist struggle from the wider context of the emancipatory struggle for national liberation has led to the marginalization of women’s movements and the subordination of their claims for rights to a universal donor agenda. …

India’s economic growth will accelerate more rapidly, democratically and effectively if India invests in people and their economic potential. Investing in people, especially women and their living and working environments, is imperative for nation-building. In this chapter, Bhatt looks at SEWA and its involvement in the process of organizing poor working women since 1972, its successes and its struggles. …