Research Projects

This project concerned the significance and impact of official external financing for women’s organising at global, regional and national levels. It used participatory methods of critical reflection involving both donor staff and representatives of women’s rights organisations and networks in Bangladesh and Ghana as well as at regional and global levels. …

This project has identified and worked with feminist activists working within international development organisations that are shaping discourse and policy action – it explored their strategies and strengthened capacity to bring about change. …

This research aimed at monitoring and evaluating progress made so far on the implementation of UN Resolution 1325. So far the efforts undertaken by various organisations at implementing the Resolution have been geared towards popularising, sensitising and building human and institutional capacity on the resolution, but not a critical assessment of the gap between policy formulation and programme implementation. …

This bulletin is devoted to exploring what empowerment means in the everyday lives of women in different situations and circumstances. …

This project investigated women's struggles and pathways for the implementation and monitoring of public policies addressing violence against women in Brazil. The project was launched with the creation of the Maria da Penha Law Observatory Consortium, under the national coordination of NEIM. The Observatory monitors the implementation of the Maria da Penha Law in all 27 Brazilian states. …

This collection of eleven short stories by both young and established writers drew on the research of the Pathways programme for inspiration in creating a fictional narrative. The idea to transform some of the stories which the researchers uncovered during the research process into fiction grew out of a desire to reach a wider audience in demonstrating the change and conflict women encounter within their lives. The stories were developed through creative writing workshops in which different aspects of writing were debated, life stories from the research shared, and draft fictional stories were presented and discussed. The hope is that by producing this volume, these stories of ordinary women and their daily struggles, which often languish as research documents, will reach a much more diverse public. …

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 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. …

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 special issue of 'Development' originates from a workshop held at the Institute of Development Studies in 2008. It seeks to explore the linkages between sexuality and the development industry and to uncover the impacts of development on sexuality and how to move towards a more constructive engagement. …

This book explores the ways in which positive, pleasure-focused approaches to sexuality can empower women. Gender and development has tended to engage with sexuality only in relation to violence and ill-health. Although this has been hugely important in challenging violence against women, over-emphasising these negative aspects has dovetailed with conservative ideologies that associate women’s sexualities with danger and fear. On the other hand, the media, the pharmaceutical industry, and pornography more broadly celebrate the pleasures of sex in ways that can be just as oppressive, often implying that only certain types of people - young, heterosexual, able-bodied, HIV-negative - are eligible for sexual pleasure. …

This special issue of Development originates from work presented at the AWID Forum on the 'Power of Movements' held in South Africa in November 2008. …

Stories of Change is a video documentary that travels through different regions of Bangladesh and through different generations by following the narratives of five women ranging from a 16 year old cricketer to a 60 year old activist. The film depicts the lives and struggles of these women as a part of the efforts to make visible the trajectories of change experienced in the lives of Bangladeshi women. …

Representations of men as perpetrator and patriarch have profoundly shaped the terms of gender and development’s engagement with masculinities discourse and practice. Many of those working in the field have remained hesitant, tentative, often hostile to the notion that men might be potential allies in the struggle for gender justice. This work explores what role there should be for men in women's empowerment. …

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. …