Gender in education: policy discourse and challenges

This article examines the socio-economic and cultural milieu of girls in Bangladesh and how it erodes the benefits of education. Laws and rules, even basic human rights, are unknown to many women. Economically active women too are affected by cultural norms and social taboos which reinforce their helplessness. Gender discrimination, especially for women, and inequity, physical, and verbal abuse persist. Women's empowerment is resisted by some women, and this poses a barrier to girls’ education, as evident from a rights perspective. Women's subordination to men is conditioned by a whole range of traditional practices embedded in the family and kin-group. Women's scope of work is mostly limited to domestic chores and care: education investment, borne out of the instrumentalist approach, is rendered ineffective as it is quite dependent upon socio-economic status and concomitant social structure. Education investment must uphold a capabilities approach to achieve sustained outcomes in education.     

Benefits and challenges of micro-enterprise participation: women's cottage industry in Kaimosi,Kenya

This article investigates the perspectives of Kenyan women in the Kaimosi cottage industry regarding the benefits and challenges of producing craft commodities for the global marketplace. Utilising qualitative methods, the research provides an understanding of issues the women faced in producing and marketing goods and offers insights for NGOs into some pitfalls for the sustainability of micro-enterprises. The women asserted that participation in the micro-enterprise had improved their family's economic well-being, helped finance their children's education, and improved their community status. This supports the literature that has found that women's involvement in micro-enterprises reduces poverty and improves well-being.     

The role of non-timber forest products in poverty reduction in India: prospects and problems

The vast natural resources of India's forests, including non-timber forest products (NTFPs), such as medicinal and aromatic plants, leaves, fruits, seeds, resins, gums, bamboos, and canes, offer employment that provides up to half the income of about 25 per cent of the country's rural labour force. However, poor harvesting practices and over-exploitation in the face of increasing market demand are threatening the sustainability of these resources, and thus the livelihoods of forest-dependent tribal communities. This article analyses the role of NTFPs in livelihoods-improvement initiatives and considers recent initiatives intended to enhance their conservation and sustainable management. It recommends policies to optimise the potential of NTFPs, both to support rural livelihoods and to contribute to India's social, economic, and environmental well-being.     

Gender justice: the World Bank's new approach to the poor?

Gender inequality is now widely acknowledged as an important factor in the spread and entrenchment of poverty. This article examines the World Development Report 2000/01 as the World Bank's blueprint for addressing poverty in the twenty-first century, together with several more recent Poverty Reduction Strategy Papers (PRSPs), with a view to analysing the manner in which gender is incorporated into the policy-making process and considering whether it constitutes a new approach to gender and poverty. It is argued that the World Bank's approach to poverty is unlikely to deliver gender justice, because there remain large discrepancies between the economic and social policies that it prescribes. More specifically, the authors contend that the Bank employs an integrationist approach which encapsulates gender issues within existing development paradigms without attempting to transform an overall development agenda whose ultimate objective is economic growth as opposed to equity. Case studies from Cambodia and Vietnam are used to illustrate these arguments.     

Women's political participation in Greece since the fall of the Colonels: From democratic struggle to incorporation by the party‐state?

This article examines the changing nature of women's political participation in Greece and argues that the period since 1974 has seen a shift from political participation through women's involvement in popular democratic struggles to the increasing incorporation of the women's movement by the Greek ‘party‐state’. From 1967–74 Greece lived under the repressive dictatorship of the Colonels. Yet Greece now enjoys some of the most progressive legislation in Europe in the area of equality between the sexes. Most of the demands of the Greek women's movement of the late 1970s were already translated into public policy provisions by the 1980s.

Women's issues came to be accepted on to the political agenda in Greece in part as a result of women's participation in national struggles for liberation and democracy through which they developed close links with the parties of the Left. In the short term, collaboration with the newly formed or newly liberated parties of the Left brought important rewards for the women's organizations and allowed women a voice in Greek politics for the first time. However, it is argued that collaboration has also had its costs ‐ not least of which has been the linkage of progress on women's issues with the spoils of political office.     

Hanging in,stepping up and stepping out: livelihood aspirations and strategies of the poor

In recent years understanding of poverty and of ways in which people escape from or fall into poverty has become more holistic. This should improve the capabilities of policy analysts and others working to reduce poverty, but it also makes analysis more complex. This article describes a simple schema which integrates multi-dimensional, multi-level, and dynamic understandings of poverty, of poor people's livelihoods, and of changing roles of agricultural systems. The article suggests three broad types of strategy pursued by poor people: ‘hanging in’, ‘stepping up’, and ‘stepping out’. This simple schema explicitly recognises the dynamic aspirations of poor people, diversity among them, and livelihood diversification. It also brings together aspirations of poor people with wider sectoral, inter-sectoral, and macro-economic questions about policies necessary for the realisation of those aspirations.     

Women's benefits from agricultural technologies: evidence from poultry production among Nigerian fisherfolk

In many rural households, women are much more involved than men in poultry production. This article examines the introduction of exotic chickens into communities along the shorelines of Kainji Lake in Nigeria and the consequent impact on women's participation and decision making within the household. Women's household decision-making power, particularly in terms of spending money from the sale of chickens and their own extra income, is stronger when the household keeps improved chicken species. The rearing of improved chicken species was positively correlated with social-status enhancement, especially for women.     

Combining sanitation and women's participation in water supply: an example from Rajasthan

Water supply and sanitation provision are key elements in progress towards the Millennium Development Goals (MDGs). Women's participation is considered integral to the sustainability of the projects created to meet these two MDGs. Bringing feminist and geographic critiques to bear on gendered approaches to improving sanitation coverage, the research reported on in this article indicates that latrine building and women's participation may be contradictory goals for sanitation projects, despite the fact that women are the target group for latrine-building interventions. The findings of the analysis suggest that attention must be given to latrine building as both a technical undertaking and a gendered political intervention.     

Microcredit and development: a multi-level examination of women’s participation in microfinance institutions

International organisations promote microcredit as a tool for socio-economic development by targeting women’s entrepreneurial capabilities. There is limited research, however, on the variation in women’s participation in microcredit in developing nations. To understand this variation, this article examines the relationship between a country’s gender equality levels and women’s microcredit participation. The results indicate that participation is higher when loans are small; however, with increases in gender equality levels, participation decreases. Women in countries with higher gender inequality are limited to very small loans and questionable economic improvements, suggesting that microcredit needs to be utilised contextually to be an effective developmental tool.     

For Whom the Bell Tolls: Democracy and Development in South Asia

This paper suggests that there are many contrary pulls, some old, and others new, operating on socioeconomic development in the South Asian region. It argues that September 11th, 2001 has been a defining and defiling moment for the region, since the consequences of the terrorist attacks on the US will weaken democracy in the subcontinent. Consequently, the region will lose its historical advantage of not being militarised by outside poles, or interests, and this will undermine democratic mechanisms that facilitate alleviation of poverty and inequality. This paper investigates the disjunction between mainstream and grassroots perceptions of India's poverty, arguing that localised democratic government, attention to the institutional architecture of countries, and enabling participation of the poor and the discriminated offer the only way to deal with economic and social inequality.     

Impact of microcredit on income,poverty, and economic vulnerability in Peninsular Malaysia

This article examines the effect of Amanah Ikhtiar Malaysia's (AIM) microcredit programme on low-income households' income, poverty rate, and vulnerability in Peninsular Malaysia. This study employed a quasi-experimental approach, cross-sectional design, and stratified random sampling method. Findings indicated that participation in AIM's microcredit programme leads to an increase in household income and reduces both the poverty rate and level of economic vulnerability. AIM and policymakers, therefore, should focus on promoting a supportive environment to improve cooperation among participants by designing a dynamic and well-diversified microfinance programme and specialised skills-building training programme.     

International NGOs and the challenge of modernity

The forces associated with economic globalisation and the apparent supremacy of market forces have unleashed a range of political and social processes that have served, and were indeed designed, to enrich and empower the few at the expense of the majority. These include phenomena such as the rise in armed conflict, threats to food security, the loss of livelihoods and traditional ways of life of millions of people worldwide, the commodification of social provision, assaults on national sovereignty, and the privatisation of citizenship. However, the author argues, the most significant impact of globalisation is the 'localisation' of social and political struggle, and the emergence of new forms of international solidarity. Many NGOs have too readily succumbed to the view that globalisation in its present form is inevitable and irreversible, and have accommodated to it by trading their essential values for technical professionalism, often imported from the private sector. However, if NGOs are to assume their place as part of a transformational movement for social justice, they must rediscover and foster the values of citizen participation and develop a genuine respect for diversity.     

Sustainable rural livelihoods approach for climate change adaptation in Western Odisha,Eastern India

The economy of Odisha is primarily agrarian. Over 80% of the population of Odisha live in rural areas, where levels of poverty are higher than in the state's towns and cities. They depend for their livelihoods on farming and collecting forest products. During the dry season, many migrate elsewhere in Odisha and nearby states in search of temporary work as labourers. Odisha has the highest proportion of inhabitants from scheduled tribes and scheduled castes of all the states in India (39.9% compared to 24% nationally). These groups are marginalised and experience high rates of poverty, low levels of education and poor health. They are highly vulnerable to climate change, due to poverty and dependence on climate-sensitive livelihoods in a vulnerable region. The Western Odisha Rural Livelihoods Project sought to reduce poverty by improving communities' water resources, agriculture, and incomes. Communities were involved throughout and are now better able to respond to climate variability (both droughts and heavy rains). The Government of Odisha took full ownership of the project and state and national governments subsequently adopted approaches used by WORLP.     

The Emperor's New Clothes: A moral tale for development experts?

While global problems of poverty, inequality, and social upheaval are on the increase, the language used by development agencies and development experts sounds increasingly radical and idealistic. New socio-political conditions have been borrowed from real contexts in the South, only to be re-imposed on Southern 'partners'. Notions like empowerment, participation, and governance are paradoxically enforced through top-down, external intervention. Hans Christian Andersen's parable of the Emperor's new clothes highlights the illusory nature of this re-packaging of development policies in the 1990s. One major difficulty is that micro- and meso-level socio-political conditionalities remain subordinated to macro-level economic liberalisation. They look participatory from a distance, but at close quarters these measures have effectively become new forms of management and control, which are just as costly [as the old methods] but do not result in great benefits to project participants. (Craig and Porter 1997:50, commenting on the current vogue for mainstreaming of participation in development projects) Beautiful images of the high goals of the official development discourse and deep internal turbulence were clearly interdependent [but] contradictions between the discourse of goals and means and what is actually being achieved may not be visible any more. (Quarles van Ufford 1995:4, 12-13, 14)     

Women's involvement in small-scale aquaculture in Northeast Thailand

In Northeast Thailand, women are heavily involved in small-scale aquaculture. However, as aquaculture becomes more intensive, women are in charge of less. Women's decision-making power in aquaculture and in the household is stronger when women have greater material resources and knowledge than their husbands; and the case studies on which the article draws show that what is important is not how much women have, but how much they have in relation to their husbands. The case studies also illustrate that women's gender roles and responsibilities, as well as the social expectations placed upon them, limit what they will gain through aquaculture. In intensive aquaculture in particular, women are expected to invest all their resources in this activity in order to sustain the family enterprise.     

The dynamics of contemporary local-government policies and economic development in West Papua

There have been enormous political, economic, and social changes in West Papua. Every governor of West Papua has designed programmes to boost economic development and reduce poverty. The influx of migrant workers under the ‘transmigration programme’ into West Papua has limited the job opportunities for indigenous people in the labour market. This article concludes that the local government's strategies failed to deliver suitable development programmes to the local people, which resulted in increased poverty, the continuing poor development of the education system, and the deterioration of the population's health condition, with a rise in the number of Papuans infected with HIV and AIDS.     

Microfinance and women's empowerment: A lesson from India

This article describes an NGO project intended to empower scheduled caste women working in the silk-reeling industry in India through the provision of microfinance. It documents the impact that the project had on their economic and social status over a period of time and highlights the negative consequences of excluding male relatives from playing any meaningful role. It suggests ways in which the project might have been made more male inclusive while still empowering women. At the same time, it acknowledges that even if the men's hostility to the project had been overcome, the women's micro enterprises were unlikely to have been viable commercially. This is because the project insisted that the women operate as a group in what was a high-risk area of economic activity, with no clear strategy as to how their work could be sustained.     

Microfinance and women's empowerment: an ethnographic inquiry

Within the last two decades microfinance has been widely adopted as one of the best development strategies to reduce poverty and empower women in many developing countries. Drawing on ethnographic research undertaken in Ethiopia, this article elucidates the complexities of microfinance processes, and argues that current microfinance practice does not facilitate the participation of women in decision-making over the use and management of loans as well as the income they generate from running small enterprises. The article illustrates that women are engaged in running small-scale economic activities at home that produce low returns, and they have limited access to lucrative markets. It also demonstrates that due to a discriminatory household division of labour, women are overworked in their households and in their enterprises. Through engaging in a mode of representation (ethnography) that allows specific critical voices to be heard, the article contributes toward tempering the current enthusiasm for the widely expanding microfinance industry.