Lead Researcher: Andrea Cornwall
Researchers: Ayesha Khan , Srilatha Batliwala , Cecilia Sardenberg , Hania Sholkamy
Articles by Pathways of Women's Empowerment researchers for Open Democracy's 50:50 section which features and analysis and news from women working around the world on issues of women's rights and empowerment.
In this article, Naila Kabeer looks at the rising global phenomenon of the female breadwinner. This phenomenon has had an impact on relations of social reproduction, family structure and size, and on global trade, which has, as a result, seen a rise in global mail-order bride services and the globalization of the sex trade. …
Development’s emphasis on women’s empowerment has been welcomed by some as a return from the fog of “gender equality” and the blind alley of “gender mainstreaming” to a sharper, clearer concern about the injustice, discrimination and lack of opportunities that women the world over experience. But the straight talk about power that was once part of feminist discourses of empowerment has given way as development agencies have taken up the term. Today’s softer, more conciliatory, calls for women’s empowerment have none of the rough edges of older demands for justice and equality. …
Of all the buzzwords that have entered the development lexicon in the past thirty years, "empowerment" is probably the most widely used and abused. Like many other important terms that were coined to represent a clearly political concept, it has been "mainstreamed" in a manner that has virtually robbed it of its original meaning and strategic value. In this article Srilatha explains that the word 'empowerment' must be reclaimed. …
The gang-rape of Mukhtaran Mai launched a nine-year court battle that concluded with a verdict by the Supreme Court of Pakistan acquitting all but one of the accused. Her case illustrates how both the formal and informal systems of justice share the same hostility to women who defy social norms and demand justice in cases of rape, says Ayesha Khan. …