Gender,energy, and empowerment: a case study of the Rural Energy Development Program in Nepal

Rural women in general, and mountain women in particular, are greatly involved in managing household energy systems in Nepal. Alternative energy technologies have a high potential to reduce women's workloads and improve their health status, as well as increasing efficient energy supply. Interventions in rural energy are primarily aimed at reducing firewood use and increasing economic growth through rural electrification, rather than aiming to reduce human drudgery, especially that of women. Hence, such intervention takes place without considering the needs, roles, interests, and potential of rural women, even though women are the primary users and managers of rural energy resources. This article aims to analyse the gender implications of rural energy technologies in Kavre district, where the Rural Energy Development Program (REDP) has been implemented, especially in terms of saving women's labour and increasing socio-economic opportunities for women.     

Elucidating linkages between women’s empowerment in livestock and nutrition: a qualitative study

This article investigates knowledge and perceptions of women’s empowerment from the perspective of female livestock keepers and elucidates linkages between women’s empowerment and household nutrition in relation to livestock. Eight focus groups with 62 female livestock keepers were conducted in Tanzania. Women’s empowerment in livestock was associated with improved household nutrition. Other opportunities for empowerment were identified that could contribute to women’s decision-making power. The article recommends that all development interventions in the livestock sector be gender sensitive and engage local men in conversations about gender inequities. It also discusses other pathways to increase women’s empowerment and household nutrition.     

The role of self-help groups in empowering disabled women: a case study in Kathmandu Valley,Nepal

The literature on self-help groups (SHGs) shows a mixed record on empowering women both economically and socially, while the literature on Women with Disabilities (WWDs) highlights the problems of isolation that exacerbate their disadvantages. This article, asking whether SHGs can empower WWDs, is based on a study conducted in Kathmandu Valley, Nepal. It concludes that being an SHG member is useful for gaining employment that leads to better recognition in the family and society. However, employment opportunities and organisational experiences mean that the benefits are not equally shared among all members.     

Women and globalisation: challenges and opportunities facing construction workers in contemporary India

This article identifies the opportunities and constraints faced by female construction workers in urban India, citing empirical research conducted in the city of Ahmedabad. The Self-Employed Women's Association (SEWA) conducted three surveys in 1998, 2003, and 2007 to learn more about the needs and priorities of construction workers in the context of economic globalisation. While enthusiastically endorsing the role that training and certification can play in providing skilled women with opportunities for quality employment, the author emphasises the need for wider policy intervention at the state and national levels to ensure that such programmes have replicable, sustainable, and gender-equitable results.     

Gender and the environment: Traps and opportunities

A growing debate about gender and the environment highlights women's roles in the use and management of natural resources, opening up important opportunities for development analysis and action. But there are traps in conceiving of women's roles in relation to the environment in a partial, narrow, or static way; of isolating them from men's roles; and of assuming a close link between women and ‘nature?s. An alternative approach examines dynamic gender-differentiated activities, rights, and responsibilities in the processes of natural resource management. A case study from the Gola forest, Sierra Leone shows how this approach can help to ensure sustainability and equity in the design of projects concerned with the environment.     

Women’s NGOs as intermediaries in development cooperation: findings from research in Tanzania

This article employs research conducted with the Kivulini Women’s Rights Organization in Tanzania to discuss opportunities, constraints, and broader lessons about the role of women’s NGOs as intermediaries in development projects. Findings reveal that women’s NGOs often have insecure positions in development projects and are undervalued by executing agencies because advocating for gender equality is perceived as a “natural” extension of women’s roles in patriarchal societies. Women’s NGOs are “feminised” and consequently trivialised in their role as intermediaries, putting gender equality objectives at risk of attrition or abandonment. Under certain circumstances, women’s NGOs can be pushed out of partnership projects altogether.     

Women and NGO professionalisation: a case study of Jordan

This article examines the impact of NGO professionalisation on the recruitment of NGO staff. Based on an in-depth survey of employees in 20 advocacy NGOs in Jordan, it demonstrates the gendered impact of professionalisation. The majority of NGO employees are highly educated women, often Western-educated, who work in NGOs primarily for career opportunities and because they are attracted by the NGO's goals. In contrast to existing literature, this article argues that gender considerations, such as job flexibility to accommodate household duties, play less of a role in determining the reasons why women seek work in NGOs and their degree of job satisfaction.     

Women’s empowerment in rural Honduras and its determinants: insights from coffee communities in Ocotepeque and Copan

This article quantifies the level of women’s empowerment in western Honduran coffee-producing households through the construction of the Women’s Empowerment in Agriculture Index, and highlights the determinants of each empowerment indicator and their interactions. Women in the study region suffer from a lack of control over use of income and access to productive resources. Since control and ownership of assets are positively correlated with input in productive decisions and control over the use of income in this study region, it is suggested that “low-hanging fruit” to improve empowerment would be to invest in interventions that strengthen asset control and distribution.     

Trading and trade-offs: Women's livelihoods in Gorno-Badakhshan,Tajikistan

This paper is based on a small micro-level study carried out to assess the impact of recent socio-economic changes in Tajikistan on the livelihoods and well-being of women in Gorno-Badakhshan. It examines the recent involvement of women in trading and informal economic activity with a focus on the trade-offs that women have faced as a result. It argues that the shift towards a market economy in a depressed economic environment has resulted in increasing socio-economic differentiation, insecure livelihoods, and declining social capital. Women's involvement in trading, along with the withdrawal of the state from basic social services, has increased women's workload. Women's participation in the political sphere is declining from an already low base. Increasing material poverty and multiple roles and responsibilities have made it difficult for women to take up opportunities for public participation, even at a local level. The article concludes that there are structural barriers to reducing poverty in Gorno-Badakhshan and raises questions about the possibilities for disadvantaged groups and regions to benefit from a strongly market-based development paradigm.     

Inequality,environmental injustice,and racism in Brazil: beyond the question of colour

Starting from an analysis of social and environmental injustice, the author argues that the concept of environmental racism is integral to the hegemonic model of capitalist development. She reveals how the financial mega-conglomerates, helped by the media, exploit such prejudices, and highlights the relevance of environmental racism in the struggle to overcome inequalities, to value the importance of diversity, and to build full citizenship for all.     

Skills development in South Africa: Group Five's social investment project

The boom in the construction industry in South Africa has drawn attention to the need for skills development. This article reports on an evaluation of the ‘People at the Gate’ training programme initiated by Group Five in Gauteng and Mpumalanga Provinces. The programme aims to empower unemployed local community members in areas where the company operates. The programme targets women and men who come to the company's sites looking for possible employment and are unable to be accommodated due to their lack of skills. The study evaluated the difficulties that trainees are faced with during and after the project; employment opportunities that are created; and the skills most needed in different trades and provinces.     

Women's empowerment in challenging environments: a case study from Balochistan

This article offers strategies for women's empowerment in conservative, tribal, and religious environments, based on an innovative programme in Pakistan. Mainstreaming Gender and Development (MGD) encouraged participants to build on their communities' strengths, minimised resistance among families and communities by including them in the development process, and succeeded in building a cadre of women activists. Drawing on its experience, the author questions the importance of collective action, suggests that the selection of participants should be based on aptitude rather than socio-economic status, and highlights the potential for women's empowerment in challenging environments.     

Memory,suffering, survival tactics,and healing among Jopadhola women in post-war Uganda

This ethnographic case study addresses the question of how women in Jopadhola patriarchal society in Eastern Uganda remember three decades of civil war and violence and survived its aftermath. When the war ended, little changed for these women, who are still exposed to a continuum of gender-based violence and continue to use the same tactics that, during the war, enabled them somehow to live with their suffering. Local NGOs, with the support of the government, have started to assist Jopadhola women to improve the quality of their present-day lives. By rebuilding their human and social capital, these NGOs are also creating the space for women to heal their war memories.     

Fit for purpose? A review of guides for gender-equitable value chain development

This article presents a review of seven guides for gender-equitable value chain development (VCD). The guides advocate persuasively the integration of gender into VCD programming and raise important issues for designing more inclusive interventions. However, gaps persist in their coverage of gender-based constraints in collective enterprises, the influence of norms on gender relations, and processes to transform inequitable relations through VCD. Guidance for field implementation and links to complementary value chain tools are also limited. The article identifies opportunities for conceptual and methodological innovation to address the varying roles, needs, and aspirations of women and men in VCD.     

Women,work, and wage equity in agricultural labour in Saiss,Morocco

This article documents wages and working conditions for landless female and male agricultural labourers in Morocco. We found that higher-paid, equipment-intensive tasks were predominantly assigned to men, whereas women often performed lower-paid, time-intensive tasks. Women were systematically paid less than men even when they performed the same tasks. Enforcing existing legislation in Morocco to ensure equal pay for women is an essential first step towards enabling women to benefit equitably with men from their agricultural labour contributions. A revalorisation of the importance of agriculture is also necessary so that agricultural labour is not perceived as an occupation of last resort.     

The election of women under proportional representation: The case of Malta

It has often been noted that women's opportunities for a legislative career are enhanced in countries using proportional representation. But in Malta, which uses a variant of proportional representation, there are fewer women in parliament than in any other Western democracy. A detailed analysis of voting data shows that what accounts for the paucity of women legislators in Malta is not a shortage of ballot positions; nor a lack of qualified women candidates; nor significant voter prejudice against female candidates. Rather, Malta's exceptional performance results from the unwillingness or inability of party elites to recruit a substantial number of women candidates, even though voting patterns create an incentive for political parties to maximize the number of candidates. Since the cause of this failure to mobilize more women candidates can be ascribed neither to the workings of the electoral system nor to voter behaviour, it will have to be sought in contextual factors that still work to stifle women's political careers. Malta's experience serves as a caution against optimistic expectations that the adoption of proportional representation will lead to greater legislative opportunities for women.     

UN contributions to development thinking and practice

This brief article highlights some major contributions made by the United Nations to development thinking and practice from 1945 to 2000. The term ‘development’ is used here broadly to refer not only to increases in economic growth and per capita income and to structural change, but also to progress in promoting human rights, poverty reduction, employment generation, fairer distribution of the benefits of growth, participation in decision making at different levels, equality of men and women, child development and well-being, and social justice and environmental sustainability. There is first a discussion of the values that have underpinned UN work on development. This is followed by a summary of some key contributions made by the UN system to thinking on development issues. The article concludes with some observations on the ways in which these contributions were made and on strengths and weaknesses of the system in generating development ideas and action.     

The power of small-scale solar: gender,energy poverty,and entrepreneurship in Tanzania

Energy poverty is a major challenge in the developing world, with an estimated 1.2 billion people lacking household electricity. Although energy poverty affects both men and women, the burden of household energy supply disproportionately affects women in low-income countries in the developing world. This article examines the impact of a women-oriented solar lighting social enterprise, Solar Sister, in Tanzania for both solar entrepreneurs and customers, demonstrating that solar lanterns positively impact household savings, health, education and women’s economic productivity and empowerment. Our study argues that Solar Sister’s approach is successful because of its explicit gender lens. Providing energy access to women translates to a pro-woman, pro-child, and pro-family development intervention.     

Gold mining and corporate social responsibility in the Wassa West district,Ghana

Despite a boom in gold mining in Ghana's Wassa West district (WWD), unemployment and poverty have deepened, partly due to loss of farmland to surface mining but more so because of the limited opportunities for wage employment in the district's ‘revived’ gold-mining industry. However, the large-scale mining companies are implementing some alternative livelihood programmes (ALPs) as part of their corporate social-responsibility (CSR) agenda. While the ALPs have provided some employment and income-earning opportunities and skills training, the prospects for their sustainability depend on how the challenges confronting the various programmes are addressed. This will require a well-coordinated approach involving all the key stakeholders.     

How gendered is Gender and Development? Culture,masculinity, and gender difference

Gender studies in general, and Gender and Development (GAD) in particular, through their belief in a cultural conditioning of gender behaviour, use the idea of ‘culture’ in a restrictive sense which perpetuates a conceptual difference between men and women, and also between First World and Third World women. There is a tendency among gender experts to magnify the difference between men and women, and categorise them into two radically different realms. This article argues for a gender project based on the idea of culture as lived experience. It approaches gender not as a category of exclusion but as a problematic construct that is constantly restructuring itself.