Research Projects

The agenda for change is based on an alternative vision – one in which the economy is shaped for people rather than people for the economy. …

Brazil has the greatest experience in the weakness of quotas. There are no obligations for the parties to use them, and no one is held to account for not doing it. An international workshop was held to intervene in ongoing demands for political reform in Brazil to redress the low representation of women in national government, by drawing together lessons from successful efforts to bring women into office through quota systems. …

The aim of the research is to provide a grass-roots analysis of the livelihood strategies of women from low income households, their ability to take advantage of new economic resources and the extent to which these resources, along with other supportive measures, have translated into shifts in the balance of power within the family and the community. …

The Changing Focus photography competition invited local photographers to visually present their visions of the exchanges between women and their communities and to capture their representations of women’s empowerment and agency. The project addressed a Pathways commitment to working with various modes of communication in an effort to grasp a broader and fuller idea of how women experience empowerment in their local contexts. …

This project sought to explore and understand the ways in which women are represented in different music genres, and by different artistes over the period 1970 to date. The researchers examined the main themes about women in the song lyrics, both explicit and implicit, focusing on narratives of women's bodies and their roles as workers, providers and caregivers. …

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 research had the objective of 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 Organisations. 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 has participated in the 52nd, 53rd, 54th and 55th CSW meetings. …

The special journal issue sprung out of a special panel at the IACS 2009 Tokyo Conference. The panel, entitled ‘Women Negotiating Islam’ had looked at how women in different locations cope with the ways that religion, either as politics or as culture, enters their lives. …

This project explored the meanings and debates around women’s empowerment within and among sets of actors with a global reach, and how they are shaping values, ideas and policy actions (or absence of actions) on women’s empowerment. …

3G Three Generations of Women, is an interactive multimedia project that attempts to move beyond the media stereotypes and statistics about women, and look at their real lives. We photograph and interview three different generations of women within one family about aspects of their experience, growing up, learning, happiness, love, and more. We hope that this will give people some sense of the changes that have happened in the lives of these women over the past few decades. …

The researchers have used the Egypt Labour Market Panel Survey (ELMPS) of 2006 (and its predecessors) to foster both qualitative and quantitative studies on various aspects of gender and work in Egypt, as well as building research capacity in this area. …

Through this project Pathways South Asia provided a visual record of the diversities in women’s journeys through change in the spheres of women’s voices, bodily integrity and work in Bangladesh. A competition was held among amateur photographers from which fifty-five photographs were selected to mount an exhibition that toured Bangladesh. …

This Project aimed to identify and analyse conceptualisations of empowerment in Brazil underlying public policies for women. The project looked, in particular, at the Pro Gender Equality Programme (Programa Pró-Eqüidade de Gênero) that is being implemented by the Secretariat for Public Policies for Women. Besides taking part in meetings and activities related to the Programme, the team also carried out a case study on one of the member organisations. …

Contestations is an e-journal whose aim is to elicit lively disagreements and to offer a platform for argumentation. It is inspired by a vision of deliberation that is about people feeling able to air their views, listen to a plurality of positioned responses and take from that what they will - without any pressure to arrive at a consensual conclusion. It is, above all, about the freedom to dissent with any of the orthodoxies that exist in the field of women's empowerment - and there are many - and take the opportunity to provoke others to think again about the things they take for granted. …

The project explored the identity formation of Bengali Muslim women by investigating the cultural and political history of Bangladesh spanning the 20th Century. Researchers investigated how women placed themselves in the anti-colonial nationalist movements of the early twentieth century; the import of language, culture and national identity for Bengali Muslims during the middle decades; and the contestations between nation, culture, progress, modernity and women's sexuality in a globalised world towards the end of the millennium. …