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The realities of women’s lives in Pakistan are complex and challenging. The first section of this detailed scoping paper which was presented at the Pathways South Asia Hub Scoping Workshop 19-21 August 2006, presents an overview of current day discrimination that Pakistani women and girls face, including reduced access to resources, and discriminatory legal and customary practices. To understand women’s voice, this paper uses the Sustainable Livelihoods Framework. The second section describes initiatives that have helped expand women’s political space in Pakistan. …

In recent years, feminists in Bangladesh have faced many challenges. This chapter focuses on two major issues: the NGO-ization of feminist organisations and the generational divide within the movement; and provides new insights on the impact of NGO-ization and the possibilities of creating an intergenerational movement. Based on empirical data, we demonstrate that size, location and available resources make a difference to the impact of NGO-ization on feminist organisations, especially on their organisational autonomy, agency and accountability. We argue that while NGO-ization has diluted feminist political messages it has increased outreach and helped to transmit feminist messages into other spheres. …

This paper presented to 'Pathways: What are we Learning?' Conference held in Cairo from 20-24 January 2009 is derived from the authors’ larger project on policy discourses and practices on women's empowerment in Ghana by leading institutions and actors in the state, civil society and the donor community. The overall aim of the study is to understand and ultimately influence the conceptions of women's empowerment in Ghana, and the strategies and actions flowing from these. In this paper, the authors focus on the Ministry of Children and Women's Affairs (MOWAC), the designated central government agency for 'mainstreaming gender' into national development plans. Operationally, MOWAC sees itself as the coordinator and guide for other ministries and government agencies on gender issues and concerns. …

In this article, I examine the case of Brazil which, unlike many other Latin American countries, is an example of where quotas are not working. Drawing on over ten years of research and exploring the dynamics of a varied group of political parties, I contest that male resistance is not the only reason behind this failure. Vagueness around the quota law and a lack of sanctions, together with the elitist nature of politics in Brazil are all contributing factors. My research has also revealed a few anomalies, showing that contrary to much of the literature, women would seem to fare better in elections within less developed and smaller states in Brazil. …

This chapter situates the analysis of the Palestinian women’s movement in a colonial context and conceptualises the relation between the national liberation struggle against the Israeli occupation and social emancipation. It traces the historical development of the women’s movement including the contemporary professionalisation and institutionalisation of women's activism in the nineties, and its impact in expanding the gap between women’s leadership and grassroots. …

This paper examines the nature of the political struggle over the status, role and identity of women in Egypt in between the two revolutions (January 2011 and June 2013). …

This chapter focuses on the fragmentation of feminist voice in post apartheid South Africa. The chapter argues that while the country has successfully mainstreamed gender and created national gender machineries these failed to sustain a strong feminist voice both within and outside the state. …

This article explores the pathways of political action pursued by the Sudanese women's movement leading up to the introduction of a women's quota in 2008 and its implementation in the most recent 2010 national parliamentary elections, the country's first in 24 years. The article argues that the main achievement of the quota was the extent to which it mobilized women to engage in politics, rather than the increased representation of women in parliament. The form the quota took however, has not significantly challenged political parties to put forth women candidates in core geographic constituencies, restricting them instead to separate women's lists. The need for revisiting the quota, healing divisions within the women's movement and negotiating a robust common programme in the next phase are all critical for translating numbers into positive changes in Sudanese women's lives. …

Rwanda has one of the highest representations of women in parliament in the world. This article examines, from the perspective of a female MP in parliament, the dynamics behind the process of supporting more women assuming leadership positions in parliament. The article argues that the implementation of an electoral gender quota certainly carves the space necessary to allow more women to enter politics, nevertheless, a constellation of factors is needed to work together in order to create the enabling environment necessary for the quota to be effective. Some of these factors include (but are not restricted to) challenging the hierarchical gender relations in post-genocide Rwanda; the political will on the part of the government to engender politics; the role of national machineries in monitoring and pressing for gender-sensitive national policies, as well as the strategic mobilisation of female parliamentarians backed by the progressive new Rwandan constitution. …

This article argues that to understand the conditions that enable effective participation by women in politics, analysis is needed not just of the characteristics and performance of elected women leaders but also the extent to which village communities are engaged through collective processes, in demanding accountability from those elected. The article presents the experiences of a women's movement in the Uttarakhand that has evolved from a programme of environmental education in the region. Over the years, this movement has developed a strong political consciousness. Women's participation in Whole Village Groups has paved the way for active engagement with local governance institutions. …

As part of the South Asia Hub of the Pathways to Women's Empowerment Research Programme, 'Changing Narratives of Sexuality: Trajectories of Desire and the Mediation of Socio-Cultural Spaces' this action research project was designed to examine discursive changes and their impact on women's lives/identities in areas related to (i) religion specifically the global upsurge of religious fundamentalisms and resurgent patriarchies with reference to the rise of Wahabi Islam as a hegemonic discourse, new religious practices and women in Pakistan and (ii) the media, predominantly satellite television, in the wider context of technologies, consumerism and globalization. The project aimed to identify and uncover new pathways and sites of change in the two areas mentioned above by using different methodological techniques. The project was expanded by the Simorgh Lahore Partnership to include traditional religious practices and rituals in the religious component so as to deepen understanding of the processes of change that are underway to see how far they are conducive to women's empowerment and to what extent they merely reformulate and reinforce existing norms regarding women's status and position in society. In the process, it examines the ways in which these factors shape women’s identities and self perception. …

This presentation given by Neelam Hussain to the South Asia Hub Conference held from 26-28 July 2011 in Dhaka, was on research conducted by the Simorgh Women's Resource and Publication Centre, Lahore. The aim of the research on the impact of the media and women's religious gatherings on women's lives in Pakistan was to examine the impact of two seemingly disparate yet interlinked modern day phenomena, namely: the dars (women's religious gatherings) and new technologies, specifically satellite television and the mobile phone. …

The number of women in public office is an inadequate proxy for assessing ‘women’s political voice’ in public decision-making as it is based on the assumption that female public officials will - by virtue of their gender - seek to promote women’s rights and gender specific issues. This Policy_Brief seeks to explain how a critical analysis of the concept of ‘representation’ can help researchers understand the reasons why numbers alone is not enough to ensure an amplification of women’s public voice and substantive transformation of policy. …

The number of women in public office is an inadequate proxy for assessing ‘women’s political voice’ in public decision-making as it is based on the assumption that female public officials will - by virtue of their gender - seek to promote women’s rights and gender specific issues. This Working Paper seeks to explain how a critical analysis of the concept of ‘representation’ can help researchers understand the reasons why numbers alone is not enough to ensure an amplification of women’s public voice and substantive transformation of policy. …

This chapter explores different ways in which ‘voice’ has been a pathway to empowerment in India. Three major streams are discussed, the women’s movement, official efforts to institutionalize women’s voice, and decentralization with reservation which has guaranteed a space in local governance to women. The manner of engagement between the women’s movement and the State is reviewed. A more detailed discussion of the Panchayat institutions with empirical evidence on women’s participation is presented. …