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This chapter explores the impact that the Wahabi dars or teaching practice had on women’s lives in Pakistan. It draws on a study, undertaken simultaneously in Lahore and Dhaka, that sought to examine both discursive and spatial arrangements of the dars in order to understand what was drawing large numbers of women to these meetings, track the process of change from traditional practice and eclecticism of popular Islam to the certitudes and rigidities of the dars discourse and to mark the moments that initiated the move, if any, from acceptance of the status quo towards the possibility of choice and exercise of agency as a result of this engagement. …

This presentation to the Pathways South Asia Hub Final Conference held in Dhaka from 26-28 July 2011 outlines research which, in the light of a seemingly contentious relationship between state, religion and modernity in Bangladesh attempts to understand the historical antecedents of tensions in the modern Bengali Muslim woman and how she negotiates religion. The historical research begins from the early twentieth century to trace the formation of the idea of a Bengali nation to its source. Its focus is through literature and journals which expressed the thoughts and desires of Bengalis, and became the site where language, nationhood and the place of woman in the nation were debated. …

We examine the discursive changes that are taking place in areas related to the media, predominantly satellite television and religion, viz the global upsurge of religious fundamentalisms and resurgent patriarchies in Pakistan, in the wider context of new technologies, consumerism and globalisation. We have identified and attempt to grant visibility to new pathways and sites of change in the area of media and religion and women’s empowerment. …

The special journal issue sprung out of a special panel at the IACS 2009 Tokyo Conference. The panel, entitled ‘Women Negotiating Islam’ had looked at how women in different locations cope with the ways that religion, either as politics or as culture, enters their lives. …

Contestations is an e-journal whose aim is to elicit lively disagreements and to offer a platform for argumentation. It is inspired by a vision of deliberation that is about people feeling able to air their views, listen to a plurality of positioned responses and take from that what they will - without any pressure to arrive at a consensual conclusion. It is, above all, about the freedom to dissent with any of the orthodoxies that exist in the field of women's empowerment - and there are many - and take the opportunity to provoke others to think again about the things they take for granted. …

The project explored the identity formation of Bengali Muslim women by investigating the cultural and political history of Bangladesh spanning the 20th Century. Researchers investigated how women placed themselves in the anti-colonial nationalist movements of the early twentieth century; the import of language, culture and national identity for Bengali Muslims during the middle decades; and the contestations between nation, culture, progress, modernity and women's sexuality in a globalised world towards the end of the millennium. …

This bulletin explores how religion has been used in an instrumental manner by global, local and national actors as a means of engaging with gender issues in Muslim communities. …

This project researched the reforms that have been taking place in Egyptian personal status laws since 2000. The aim was to examine the unfolding reform story and what it entailed in terms of successes and challenges for women's rights activists in their pursuit of justice and equality in marriage and divorce rights, and for Egyptian women at large who seek legal redress in family courts. The focus of the study was on two aspects of the reform story: 1) the process of mobilising for the new laws, building alliances, choosing strategies, and making concessions, and 2) the implementation of the legal reforms in the new family courts that were introduced in 2004. …

The collection of essays in the book aims to capture the variety of policies, discourses, debates and interventions that have influenced the lives of women in South Asia and to identify those that have led to greater empowerment of women. …

This bulletin is devoted to exploring what empowerment means in the everyday lives of women in different situations and circumstances. …

This pack of 20 vibrantly drawn cards provides a clear and very accessible entry into some of Pathways’ research findings and recommendations. The cards feature research from Bangladesh, Brazil, Egypt, Ghana, Pakistan, Palestine, and Sierra Leone, across the four Pathways themes of: conceptualising empowerment, empowering work, building constituencies and changing narratives of sexuality.  …

This special issue of 'Development' originates from a workshop held at the Institute of Development Studies in 2008. It seeks to explore the linkages between sexuality and the development industry and to uncover the impacts of development on sexuality and how to move towards a more constructive engagement. …

This project aimed to create the opportunity for Arabic speakers to set an agenda of priorities in a language that they can use to communicate and give a wider currency to their ideas. If, as has been often noted, women’s empowerment is a cause without a following and a message without an audience, then there is an obvious need to talk and tackle women’s empowerment and develop the coherence and capacity to do so in Arabic. The conflation between Arabic and Islam has focused researchers on religion as the equivalent of language. This project ran a series of workshops held in plain Arabic to discuss the agendas of women’s empowerment and the flows that influence, set, shape, critique and communicate them. …

Using topical life stories, focus groups, data and discourse analysis, this project explored the experiential diversity and thematic commonalities in the lives of Palestinian unmarried women, in the context of a society experiencing prolonged warlike conditions, political crisis, and social disruption. In particular, the researchers examined the dynamics of choice, embodiment, responsibility, and survival, as well as attempted to identify structural, social, political and economic factors shaping Palestine’s rather unique pattern of early, but not universal marriage, with a relatively high proportion of never-married women (but not men) over time. …

This bulletin highlights the profound inequities of access both globally and nationally to safe abortion, and the importance of global and national movements for reform to address this. Contributions focus in particular on policy reform and what can be learned from struggles in different parts of the world to obtain or retain safe abortion services. …