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This book explores the ways in which positive, pleasure-focused approaches to sexuality can empower women. Gender and development has tended to engage with sexuality only in relation to violence and ill-health. Although this has been hugely important in challenging violence against women, over-emphasising these negative aspects has dovetailed with conservative ideologies that associate women’s sexualities with danger and fear. On the other hand, the media, the pharmaceutical industry, and pornography more broadly celebrate the pleasures of sex in ways that can be just as oppressive, often implying that only certain types of people - young, heterosexual, able-bodied, HIV-negative - are eligible for sexual pleasure. …

To celebrate their 25th anniversary, the Nucleus of Women’s Interdisciplinary Studies based at the Federal University of Bahia, Salvador held a National Symposium on Women and the Constitution from the 16 to 17 October 2008. The meeting provided feminist reflections on the legal legacy of the Brazilian feminist movement’s political lobby – also known as the ‘lipstick lobby’, twenty years after it was originally formed. The meeting was supported by the National Secretariat for Women’s Policies. …

To mark the occasion of the 20th anniversary of the Beijing Platform for Action and in association with UN Women, the Pathways of Women’s Empowerment programme are planning a special issue of the IDS Bulletin. Drawing together leading international feminist scholars, advocates and practitioners, the special issue aims to reflect on progress since Beijing and create a space for reflections from people of all genders from different generations on their ideas of possible feminist futures. …

This virtual IDS Bulletin on Challenging Patriarchy is presented in time for the Second Global Symposium on ‘Engaging Men and Boys for Gender Justice’, in Delhi November 2014, in order to contribute to ongoing political conversations, by highlighting significant articles from IDS Bulletins since the turn of the millennium. Much has happened since 2000, when Cornwall and White presented a first IDS Bulletin on Men, Masculinities and Development (2000), exploring how masculinities had been finding its way onto the lexicon and agendas of Gender and Development (GAD).  The queering of gender and its unsettling implications for our understandings of sexualities, pleasure and also masculinities in GAD, was forcefully presented in Cornwall and Jolly’s IDS Bulletin arguing that Sexuality Matters (2006).  More recently, a bulletin presented by Edström, Das and Dolan aimed at Undressing Patriarchy (2014) and connected perspectives from feminist, sexual rights and masculinities fields to explore the topic in a direction of intersectionality and deeper structures of constraint to gender equality. …

With the formulation of the first ever internationally agreed stand-alone goal on gender equality, debates around women’s empowerment are at a critical juncture. This IDS Bulletin makes a timely contribution to the understanding of how ideas around empowerment have evolved and how we can move forward to expand women’s opportunities and choices and realise women’s empowerment in a meaningful way. …

KPFA Radio Station’s Women’s Magazine (Berkeley, California) interviewed Cecilia Sardenberg on her thoughts as a feminist on President Dilma Rousseff’s election in 2010 and her hopes for the future. Cecilia who is a member of President Rousseff’s PT (Worker’s Party) herself has high hopes for what President Rousseff can achieve despite her lacking the dynamic charisma of the outgoing President Lula. When Rousseff was the Minister for Energy she brought in a gender equity programme which is now in existence across the major energy companies in Brazil. Although she hadn’t previously been associated with the feminist movement, Cecilia believes that she is going to be doing more of this in going forward. …

Dr Aisha Fofana Ibrahim from the University of Sierra Leone attended the Feminist Pedagogy Conference at the CUNY Graduate Center, New York on 12 October 2007. She presented a paper entitled ‘Decentering a “Traditional” Classroom through War-Talk and/or Trauma’. Here is her report from the conference: …

Feminists in Development Organizations: Change from the Margins - a new book edited by Rosalind Eyben and Laura Turquet reflects on the progress of gender mainstreaming in development. It draws on personal stories from feminists working within the aid bureaucracy to show how these women can build effective strategies to influence development organisations to foster greater understanding and forge more effective alliances for social change. …

In this article for ‘the Commune’, Aitemad Muhanna from the Pathways Middle East Hub tracks the decline of the leftist movement in Palestinian society and how the rise of support for Hamas affected notions of gender in the Palestinian camps. …

A collection of articles reflecting on Pathways' experience of conducting specific research on women's empowerment in Bangladesh, Egypt, Ghana, Brazil, and Palestine has been published in the Women's Studies International Forum. …

A new working paper by Andrea Cornwall for UNU-WIDER revisits foundational feminist work on the concept of empowerment from the 1980s and 1990s. The paper draws on  findings from the Pathways programme to explore experiences of positive change in women’s lives, in diverse contexts, and to draw together some lessons for policy and practice. …

On 19-20 June 2007, NEIM co-hosted an international seminar on ‘Women’s Pathways into Power: International Experiences of Affirmative Action’ at the Brazilian National Congress, in collaboration with AGENDE (Actions in Gender, Citizenship and Development), Casa da Mulher do Nordeste’s Mulher e Democracia (Women and Democracy) project, the network of women representatives in the National Congress, the Commission on Participatory Legislation (CLP), the Commission on Social Security and the Family (CSSF), the Commission on Human and Minority Rights (CDHM) and the Commission on the Constitution, Justice and Citizenship (CCJ) of the Chamber of Deputies. The seminar, which took place within the Chamber of the National Congress, discussed and analysed experiences of the use of affirmative measures to enhance women’s political participation in Latin America, Africa, the Middle East and South Asia. Speakers included Julie Ballington of the Inter-Parliamentary Union, Rwandan MP Juliana Katengwa, IDS researcher Naila Kabeer and Palestinian women’s rights activist, Suha Barghouti.  …