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Women have long worked in agriculture, but often as unpaid family labour. The rise of supermarket retailing, however, is contributing to the transformation of agriculture. Initially concentrated in developed countries, supermarkets are now growing rapidly within Africa, Asia and Latin America. Production for supermarkets is generating opportunities for female employment, accessing this employment can bring many opportunities for women, but also new forms of vulnerability. …

This paper presents an overview of the processes, interventions, policies and personal experiences that lead to, or are associated with the somewhat ambiguous concept of women's ‘empowerment’ in Ghana. The task the authors set themselves was to find out from existing literature and key civil society organisations in Ghana today what kinds of actions have been implemented, and the policies and processes that seem to be associated with women's ‘empowerment’. …

This chapter is concerned with addressing the power dynamics and inequalities in the relationship between a South African non-government organization (NGO), Women on Farms Project (WFP) and the membership-based organization (MBO), Sikhula Sonke, which it established. In particular, it focuses on the genesis and evolution of the relationship and how unanticipated and initially unarticulated tensions led to a shift in power and a new phase in the relationship between the two organisations. The first section provides a short background to WFP, including the key discourses which have informed the understanding and approach of WFP’s work with farmwomen. The next section then outlines the contextual conditions of farmwomen in post-apartheid South Africa which led to WFP forming Sikhula Sonke. …

This article describes the annual gathering of over a thousand women rural workers from the Brazilian state of Bahia, to share their experiences in the struggle for land and in the struggle against all forms of violence but especially domestic violence; and to remind themselves that, as women, they need to demand to be treated with respect by both their colleagues in struggle and by society at large. …

Women’s participation in the workforce remains low in India. This low participation is apparently a cumulative outcome of a complex web of factors. Yet, why it continues to remain so low in the current changing economic and social environment is far from clear. Given the suggested association between paid work and women’s empowerment, higher participation rates may be desirable. …

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 book explores the emergence of an alternative repertoire among women working in the growing informal sectors of the global South: the weapons of organisation and mobilisation. The book offers accounts of how women working on farms, as sex workers, maids and waste pickers, in fisheries and factories, have come together to carve out new identities for themselves, define what matters to them, and develop collective strategies of resistance and struggle. …

This project looked at the challenge of how to maximise the gains and minimise the constraints of globalisation in order that women can access markets as a pathway to their empowerment in different regional and local contexts. …