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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. …

Palestinian women’s political participation is marked by the Israeli occupation and a volatile political situation. This chapter argues that the political chaos following the Oslo Agreement of 1993 has led to civil society fragmentation and the marginalisation of certain groups. However, women’s traditional involvement within the Palestinian national movement led to their assumption that society would adopt a non-gender biased perspective during elections. …

In Bangladesh there is a well-documented reign of patriarchal institutions and practices, causing women to have little control over their bodies and restricting their experience of the completeness of a vital body and a vital mind. However, this control over women’s bodies appears to be shifting, and nearly all the key elements tat constitute ‘bodily integrity’ are in a state of flux. Whether this is the beginning of a new era with weakened structures, norms and customs remains to be seen, but it certainly is a change. The male-dominated society and economy is now experiencing an increasing infiltration by women of all ages and social classes, with significant implications for siciety’s and men’s hold over women and their bodies. …

Palestinian women's political participation is marked by the Israeli occupation and a volatile political situation. This article argues that the political chaos following the Oslo Agreement of 1993 has led to civil society fragmentation and the marginalisation of certain groups. However, women's traditional involvement within the Palestinian national movement led to their assumption that society would adopt a non-gender biased perspective during elections. Disappointing results led to the formation of a coalition to campaign for a quota system. …

This research examined the complexity of gendered subjectivity in Gaza Strip and how it is reshaped in a contradictory manner in the context of livelihood crisis and insecurity caused by the full siege imposed on Gaza Strip by the Israeli occupation and the international community. The research is unique because it attempted to deal with the reality of women’s everyday life and avoided any standardized framework of gender analysis. It focused on the contextualization of the concept of women’s agency based on the narration of women’s stories and life experiences. The documentation of poor women’s interpretation of their daily life is the basis for creating new knowledge and new theories. …

While security and women’s empowerment are both prominent development concerns, there has to date been little sustained analysis of the relationship between the two. An unexamined assumption appears to be that insecurity – violence and rights abuses – prevent women from gaining power over their lives through full social, economic or political participation. But how and how much does insecurity structure women’s agency? In which domains and contexts are these insecurities prominent? And what are the policy and practical implications of the relationship between women’s security and processes of empowerment in contemporary developing countries? This paper reports on an effort to derive lessons about how security and insecurity shape processes of women’s empowerment in developing countries through a thematic synthesis of a collection of research outputs from a five-year programme of research on the Pathways of Women’s Empowerment. The programme covered four broad thematic areas: voice (political mobilisation), paid work, body (or changing narratives of sexuality) and concepts of empowerment. …

Directed by Paulina Tervo, Thorns and Silk tells four unusual stories from Palestine, featuring women who work in jobs that are conventionally associated with men in their society. All four of them have the courage to break traditional rules, though not without challenges. We dip into the life of a wedding filmmaker, who films women-only weddings in the most conservative part of Palestine; hear the stories of a female taxi driver who works in the Israeli parts of Jerusalem; discover a young police trainee at the Palestinian Police Academy and learn about the hardships in occupied Nablus from a mother who takes on male roles in order to keep her family toilet paper factory going. …

Using topical life stories, focus groups, data and discourse analysis, this paper, presented to 'Pathways: What are we Learning?' Analysis Conference, Cairo, 20-24 January 2009, explores 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 project examines dynamics of choice, embodiment, responsibility, and survival, as well as attempt 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. Comparing topical life stories of an earlier generation of largely educated unmarried women (now 40-65) who often had a clear trajectory of a life committed to the national project e and/or self-improvement with the diverse voices found in focus groups of contemporary young women (18-25) in diverse locations in the West Bank offers a window into how choice and responsibility operate differentially in the lives of unmarried women. Issues explored are how unmarried women place and value themselves in family and societal settings, how families and communities view unmarried women and shape these choices and responsibilities, and how unmarried women narrate marriageability, self-fashioning, and embodiment. …

Islah Jad's research examined the role of the newly elected local councils in the West Bank and Gaza Strip, elected in 2005-2006. The Islamic Resistance Movement - HAMAS - participated in this election for the first time and was supported by large numbers of women.  …

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 research examined the complexity of gendered subjectivity in the Gaza Strip and how it is reshaped in a contradictory manner in the context of livelihood crisis and insecurity caused by the full siege imposed on the Gaza Strip by the Israeli occupation and the international community. The research is unique because it attempted to deal with the reality of women’s everyday life and avoided any standardised framework of gender analysis. It focused on the contextualisation of the concept of women’s agency based on the narration of women’s stories and life experiences. …

This bulletin is devoted to exploring what the quota has meant as a motorway to women's accession to political power. It draws on research findings from Pathways, as well as presentations given at a special seminar held in the Brazilian National Congress. The bulletin raises the questions of who are the women who are best positioned to benefit from the quota as a fast track option, what are they enabled to do once in office via the quota seats, and what kind of gender agendas does the critical mass of women who have come to power via the quota espouse and advocate? …

This project links talented young documentary filmmakers with academics from the Pathways consortium to collaborate on a series of shorts broadly exploring concepts around women’s empowerment. …

This bulletin arises from a conference of the same title that was held at the Institute of Development Studies in July 2007 in collaboration with Birkbeck College. It sets out to provoke reflection on the now ubiquitous notions of 'empowerment' and 'agency' within neoliberal development discourses on gender. It also seeks to raise broader questions about the politics and political economy of Gender and Development. …

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. …