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| Srl | Item |
| 1 |
ID:
152041
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| Summary/Abstract |
Social and cultural constraints in remote rural areas alienate women and limit their human development. However, there is potential for engagement in educational and economic activities to support their empowerment and the achievement of wider development goals. I discuss the case study of the Barefoot College from India where illiterate women have been involved for over 20 years in training in small-scale solar energy technology solutions. I argue that the participation in the solar program has the potential to support women’s ‘effective’ and ‘transformative’ empowerment, as my sample demonstrates. Through the training, poor women have the opportunity to have an income, learn new skills and foster employment opportunities. The engagement with the organization also supports raising their awareness and enables them to become agents of change. By challenging intra-household dynamics and societal customs, women pursue greater empowerment. Due to its unique model, the training program that started in rural Rajasthan scaled up internationally and has been replicated in several countries in south-east Asia, Africa and Latin America.
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| 2 |
ID:
178723
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Women’s agency in Peace and Conflict Studies has received increased policy attention since the formulation of UN Security Council Resolution in 2000. Academic attention regarding this question has, as a result, also increased dramatically in the intervening period. Women today, as a consequence, are not just seen as victims of conflict, but also as agents of change. Despite their vulnerabilities in the situations created by conflict, women may be exposed to new knowledge and opportunities, which may have positive impacts on their lives. Therefore, it is important to recognize the lived realities and the multiple stories of postwar societies to address the new needs of people and build a sustainable peace. This article examines the everyday lives of women in post-conflict Nepal to demonstrate the significant transformations that have taken place since the war. It specifically investigates conflict-induced social and structural changes through the lived experiences of women tempo drivers, war widows, women ex-combatants and women politicians. This article is based on the analysis of 200 interviews and six focus group discussions (FGDs) carried out over a period of 12 years in seven districts of Nepal.
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| 3 |
ID:
170271
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| Summary/Abstract |
In the aftermath of the 2005 earthquake that struck Pakistan-administered Kashmir an unprecedented number of development actors arrived in the region. Their impact influenced men’s perceptions of change in the gendered division of labour, as they claimed this arrival had increased women’s access to work in public spaces. Across urban and rural bazaars, a wide spectrum of male voices used this perceived increase to either try to further enhance women’s access or to curtail it. The struggle for women’s access to work in public spaces was visible in the stories these men told publicly. Although it pre-dated the earthquake, its aftermath made it more visible. Men’s narratives around women’s access to work post-earthquake also reflects a crisis of masculinity. The earthquake’s aftermath gave an opportunity for some men to reinforce the region’s classical patriarchy and others to challenge it; while doing so, men were also staking a claim at redefining what it meant to be a man.
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| 4 |
ID:
137743
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| Summary/Abstract |
The language of ‘gender equality’ and ‘women’s empowerment’ was mobilised by feminists in the 1980s and 1990s as a way of getting women’s rights onto the international development agenda. Their efforts can be declared a resounding success. The international development industry has fully embraced these terms. From international NGOs to donor governments to multilateral agencies the language of gender equality and women’s empowerment is a pervasive presence and takes pride of place among their major development priorities. And yet, this article argues, the fact that these terms have been eviscerated of conceptual and political bite compromises their use as the primary frame through which to demand rights and justice. Critically examining the trajectories of these terms in development, the article suggests that if the promise of the post-2015 agenda is to deliver on gender justice, new frames are needed, which can connect with and contribute to a broader movement for global justice.
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| 5 |
ID:
134393
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| Summary/Abstract |
The ‘girl effect’ – the idea that investment in the skills and labour of young women is the key to stimulating economic growth and reducing poverty in the global South – has recently become a key development strategy of the World Bank, the imf, usaid and dfid, in partnership with corporations such as Nike and Goldman Sachs. This paper examines the logic of this discourse and its stance towards kinship in the global South, situating it within the broader rise of ‘gender equality’ and ‘women’s empowerment’ as development objectives over the past two decades. Empowerment discourse, and the ‘capability’ approach on which it is based, has become popular because it taps into ideals of individual freedom that are central to the Western liberal tradition. But this project shifts attention away from more substantive drivers of poverty – structural adjustment, debt, tax evasion, labour exploitation, financial crisis, etc – as it casts blame for underdevelopment on local forms of personhood and kinship. As a result, women and girls are made to bear the responsibility for bootstrapping themselves out of poverty that is caused by external institutions – and often the very ones that purport to save them.
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| 6 |
ID:
170266
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| Summary/Abstract |
Questions of women's power remain a matter of heated debate globally, but take on a heightened intensity in a South Asia featuring rapid economic growth and structural transformation in recent decades. This Special Issue aims to improve understanding of how the women of South Asia are gaining and exercising power and of the obstacles and backlash they face, moving beyond discussion of women's empowerment as a matter of control over domestic economic resources or labour market participation. Articles from Bangladesh, India, Nepal, and Pakistan examine the struggles of garments workers in global value chains, middle class professionals, subsistence farmers and wage labourers, tracing the actors, institutions, and movements that build or block women's pathways to power. Collectively, the articles argue for paid work to be treated as a critical arena for struggles over women's power, not an end in itself. They draw attention to the roles of states and patriarchal forces in building or blocking pathways to power, and to the resilient nature of gendered norms that serve patriarchy. And they highlight the need for research into women's empowerment to focus on key episodes of political contention, as critical junctures for the progress – or retreat – of women's empowerment.
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| 7 |
ID:
169490
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How do legacies of conflict affect choices between state and nonstate legal institutions? This article studies this question in Chechnya, where state law coexists with Sharia and customary law. The author focuses on the effect of conflict-induced disruption of gender hierarchies because the dominant interpretations of religious and customary norms are discriminatory against women. The author finds that women in Chechnya are more likely than men to rely on state law and that this gender gap in legal preferences and behavior is especially large in more-victimized communities. The author infers from this finding that the conflict created the conditions for women in Chechnya to pursue their interests through state law—albeit not without resistance. Women’s legal mobilization has generated a backlash from the Chechen government, which has attempted to reinstate a patriarchal order. The author concludes that conflict may induce legal mobilization among the weak and that gender may become a central cleavage during state-building processes in postconflict environments.
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| 8 |
ID:
169041
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| Summary/Abstract |
Women’s political empowerment has emerged as a particular field of interest in the late twentieth and early twenty-first centuries in Turkey. Women’s absence in many spheres of life, including the political sphere, has become one of the main references to discuss the patriarchal characteristics of the established regime. The AKP was founded in 2001 by those who claimed to distance themselves from the Islamist Refah Party. The AKP’s particular emphasis on the active roles and status of women within the party and their empowerment as active agents of politics was used as an important mark of distinction from earlier versions of political Islam. In this study, which focuses on the self-narrations of AKP female politicians nominated and elected in the 2009 local elections, the aim is to expand the discussion on how the AKP female representatives narrate their experience of this ‘political empowerment’ stressed in the AKP’s program and whether they subvert, transform or reproduce patriarchal authority.
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| 9 |
ID:
169444
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| Summary/Abstract |
The measurement of women’s agency poses numerous challenges, including multi-dimensionality and context-specificity. This challenge is especially large for non-Western contexts that adapt measurement instruments without rigorous testing and comprehensive understanding of construct meanings in place. In this paper, we present a case study from Qatar where we investigate the face validity, comprehension and functionality of women’s agency scale items. Cognitive interviews were conducted with twenty-four women to capture their interpretations of decision-making, freedom-of-movement, and gender attitudes scale items. The majority of women originally reported that they made their own decisions; yet, further probing revealed otherwise. While women seemed to understand, as intended, the freedom-of-movement item, the items measuring gender attitudes were generally reflective of broader local societal norms rather than the women’s own opinions. This research highlights the need for deeper exploration into women’s understanding of an agency scale before its use in a new context.
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| 10 |
ID:
184426
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| Summary/Abstract |
Through qualitative research conducted in the bazaars of Bishkek, this paper examines the posited tripartite relationship between the free market, micro-finance and women’s empowerment by focusing on how loans from micro-finance institutions in Bishkek influence the lives of female loanees. The neo-liberal conception of ‘individual autonomy’ and ‘empowerment’, it is argued, may not adequately serve as indicators of actual female empowerment/disempowerment in Bishkek and lead us to fail to recognize moments of self-exploitation and forms of claim-making. The research also underlines the disempowering effects of the affectional burden, that is, the constant sense of anxiety, that the loanees have to manage in order to survive in the neo-liberal business environment, which offers high interest rate loans and exposes the loanees to over-indebtedness. These effects can be followed through the analysis of the role the desire for stability and ‘ontological security’ plays in the formation of the identities/world views of the loanees.
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| 11 |
ID:
191864
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| Summary/Abstract |
This article analyzes contemporary state discourse on women’s empowerment in Qatar as embodied in state documents, government-run public relations campaigns, and the media output of state-run or state-sanctioned institutions. Through the lens of critical discourse analysis, the article demonstrates how the Qatari state’s political rhetoric conflates women’s professional advancement with national progress and constructs the “ideal Qatari woman” as a neoliberal feminist subject. With particular attention to the rhetoric found in the state-run magazine Q Life, the article argues that the Qatari state is promoting a model of women’s empowerment that merges transnational paradigms of neoliberal feminism with nationalist ideals of loyalty and patriotism and presents the ideal “Qatari woman” as a neoliberal feminist subject who contributes to her state’s national development through her own professional development and fulfillment.
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| 12 |
ID:
154041
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| Summary/Abstract |
Since the economic crisis of the past decade, public development organizations have increasingly partnered with large private corporations to empower women through business. Existing feminist analyses focus on those public-private partnerships (PPPs) that are global, agenda-setting, benchmarking, and service initiatives. However, there are door-to-door initiatives that aim to empower women at the bottom of the pyramid (BoP) by turning them into entrepreneurs in the global South. At the same time, and unconnected to these Southern initiatives, PPPs in the global North attempt to empower middle-income women to care for distant others by consuming ethically. While these two kinds of PPPs are each identified in their own literatures as new frontiers in development, thus far they have not been studied together. Using transnational feminist literacy practices as a methodology, this paper reanalyzes existing studies on PPPs in the global South and North that target women’s empowerment and have thus far been overlooked. It finds parallels and linkages between PPPs in the global South and North. The use of transnational feminist literacy practices deepens our understanding of the mechanisms by which market-led, corporate-sponsored, “smart economic” and “win-win-win” development approaches, justified in the name of women’s empowerment, obscure and/or transform structural inequalities.
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| 13 |
ID:
169037
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| Summary/Abstract |
It is vital to understand the structural and institutional dynamics behind female empowerment as its realization benefits not only women but also society at large. Drawing on an original, global-level dataset that covers 169 countries between 1960–2014, this article mainly explores the effect of urbanization on women’s empowerment throughout the world. The article argues that urbanization has distinctive effects in different realms of female empowerment in politics, economics, and education, with the biggest impact being in education. The article further states that urbanization has a non-linear effect on women’s empowerment with a diminishing impact at higher levels of urbanization. After certain levels of urbanization, other political and economic factors, such as how democratic and economically affluent a country is, will determine the discrepancies of female empowerment in countries with similar levels of urbanization. To further test the stated hypotheses, the article looks at the Turkish case as a typical example of a patriarchal society with a neoliberal economic order. In light of the global and local level analyses, the paper aims to contribute to extant debates and studies in feminist studies, urban studies, modernization theory, and democratization.
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| 14 |
ID:
169040
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| Summary/Abstract |
Moving from the assumption that local governments are significant stakeholders of women’s empowerment policies, this article aims to examine the struggle against violence against women (VAW) at the local level through gender-sensitive policies employed by female mayors from a gender perspective and how these can be utilized as collective transformative resources for women’s empowerment. Based on a field-study, the contention of this article is that gender budgeting, gender-sensitive collective-labor contracts, and women’s support centers are institutional resources for the transformation of the municipal-budget, for attitude transformation in male employees, and for sustainable empowerment policies in the struggle against VAW in municipalities in Turkey. This article, stressing the link between the struggle against VAW and women’s empowerment, reveals the significance of institutionalization of gender-sensitive policies and the struggle at local level as two prominent factors taken to be into consideration in women’s empowerment.
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