Search All

When the Sierra Leone civil war was declared over in January 2002, the concept of women’s empowerment was firmly entrenched in development discourse and practice. The aftermath of the brutalities of rape, gang rape, sexual slavery, forced pregnancy, abduction, among other atrocities that women and children, especially girls, were subjected to during Sierra Leone’s eleven years’ civil war was firmly on the post-war agenda. There was a groundswell of protest from women’s NGOs and activists demanding the protection and promotion of women’s rights as part of peace negotiations, post-conflict reconstruction and peace consolidation processes.  …

This article looks at the issue of domestic violence from the perspective of African experience, and examines the impact of attempts to address it by legal means. It poses three questions: 1) what are the similarities and differences in the experiences of African countries that have attempted to pass domestic-violence legislation; 2) what lessons have been learned in the process; and 3) how do attempts to pass such laws connect to the lived realities of ordinary women? …

On the 29-30 May 2014 a group of feminist scholars, activists, and media and communications professionals met at the Institute of Development Studies at the University of Sussex to celebrate and interrogate learning from the Pathways of Women’s Empowerment Consortium (Pathways). This was an opportunity to look at the trajectory that the consortium had taken since its early days in 2005, consider how Pathways research could shape the post-2015 development agenda, and strategise about future directions in work on women’s empowerment. …

The paper will examine some of the critical issues raised by the women's movement in India on the violence experienced by women both within the family and through modes of development initiated by the state in India and the manner in which the state has sought to both counter feminist critiques as well as co-opt them through state initiated policies. It will particularly examine literacy and micro-credit programmes to argue that the rhetoric of empowerment functions as a new 'mantra' which does little to even dent the violence of women's everyday lives especially when they are poor and located on the social margins. …

Report in Bangla on the research which interrogated the significance and relative impact of donor funding on women organising at global, national and local levels. The researchers did not assume that successful organising by women required external funding, but rather sought to clarify the conditions under which external financial support to women's organisations and groups had a positive impact on women's empowerment as well as the conditions in which successful mobilising is achievable without such support. This was a comparative research with Ghana, where one of the components examined the role of international development agencies in supporting women's organisations. …

This chapter attempts to give an overview of the trends in research, thinking and programmes in Pakistan from 1975 onwards in the area of women’s empowerment and bodily integrity in order to understand what makes change happen. It also identifies drivers of change and enabling factors, and discusses what women in Pakistan have done to establish their rights and the implications of this. Secondly, it seeks to identify areas that need to be explored through further research. The author considers the concept of empowerment, the definition of bodily integrity, and examines the social constructions of the woman’s body in Pakistan. …

Brazilian feminists have made steady progress at both national and regional levels with establishing sexual and reproductive rights, and they have an important stake in the discussions at 2010's UN Commission on the Status of Women (CSW). Cecilia Sardenberg calls on them to be alert against retrogressive steps. …

This report follows research which aimed at investigating and analysing strategies of articulation – from local to global and back – of Brazilian feminisms, and the ensuing challenges, with a special focus on the global spaces created by the United Nations Organizations. This includes not only the influence of Brazilian feminisms and the participation of activists in international conferences, but also in specific commissions and committees, such as CSW (Commission on the Status of Women) and CEDAW (Commission on the Elimination of Discrimination Against Women). As part of this project, Cecilia Sardenberg participated in the 52nd, 53rd, and 54th CSW meetings. …

This article examines the experience of mobilizing for the right to safe, legal abortion in Brazil. It focuses on exploring the strategies pursued by the feminist and women’s movements to ‘win hearts and minds’ both within these movements, and beyond them, through collective struggle, dialogue and coalition building. Tracing the trajectory of the Brazilian campaign for the legalization of abortion, Jornadas pelo Direito ao Aborto Legal e Seguro (Brazilian Journeys for Legal and Safe Abortion), the article looks at avenues of action and modes of activism. It describes how the efforts of campaigners have focused not only on engaging support from the public and the media, but also on working with the Ministry of Health and health professionals to guarantee the availability of services for abortions that are legal under current restrictions, monitoring changes in public opinion and the media, and on legislative change, which has recently become especially difficult in the wake of increased activism by the Church. …

Kate Raphael of KPFA Radio speaks with with Brazilian feminist Professor Cecilia Sardenberg about Dilma Roussef, Brazil's first woman president (35:45). …

This chapter makes an attempt to probe into the politics of women’s voice in Bangladesh. The chapter argues that there are structural factors within the state and society that act as barriers for women in Bangladesh to vocalise their opinions in the public sphere. Yet parallel forces are at work at national and international levels that enable women to create their spaces and voices despite these structural limitations. …

Contemporary feminist activism in Brazil emerged in a moment of political upheaval, playing an important role in the process of re-democratization of the country and stretching the very concept of democracy in this process. Over the last three decades, feminisms in Brazil have brought important contributions, not only in terms of a change of values regarding women’s place in society, but also towards building a more gender equitable society in formal terms. However, formal power structures, such as those of the legislative, judiciary and executive branches have remained notoriously resistant to the inclusion of women, which has resulted in a major paradox for Brazilian feminists: on the one hand, the presence of a wide and well articulated women’s movement, and on the other, a notorious absence of women in decision making positions. One of the consequences of this state of affairs is that the feminist movement in Brazil still lacks a “critical mass” of women to push forth the implementation of new state institutions and policies, and there is also little support in the legislative and judiciary to guarantee greater advancements insofar as women’s sexual and reproductive rights are concerned. …

This article introduces an issue of writing on the ways in which religion enters cultural and social life. The papers in this issue concentrate on the way that Islam impacts on the everyday aspects of the lives of people in Muslim societies or communities where Islam plays a part. This issue emerged from a panel presentation on ‘Women Negotiating Islam’, about how women cope with the ways that religion enters their lives, and brings out the cultural aspects behind women’s negotiations of the positions made available to them and their struggle to carve their own spaces. The issue aims to show how women, culture and religion form a difficult and complex terrain in which our political and social lives are lived. …

Mwaura-Muiru highlights the need for the women’s movement and donors to work towards and support woman-led (especially poor woman-led) transformation. Collective organizing and social networks is a means of empowerment that allows women to respond to challenges, but grassroots organizing is being threatened by social and macro economic models of development. The women’s movement’s renewed interest in grassroots women’s coping strategies could potentially be a huge step forward for the women’s movement, but, Mwaura-Muiru argues, the views of the less privileged should be seen as the critical voice in the design of appropriate interventions. She critiques Gender and Development as being too focussed on technical and professional training, which continues to marginalize poor women, and argues that there is a need to rethink development and women’s empowerment, and stresses that strategies towards women’s empowerment need to consider grassroots women’s needs and diversity. …

In this chapter the authors discuss how feminists in Brazil have responded to the challenge of dealing not only with tensions from existing inequalities within their ranks, but also with the task of devising strategies to channel very diverse women’s demands. They look at the national conferences for women held over the last decade  - the Conference of Brazilian Women (2002), and the I and II National Conferences of Public Policies for Women (2004 and 2007, respectively) – and examine their products: the Feminist Political Platform and the I and II National Plans of Public Policies for Women.  …