Empowering and shaping gender relations? Contesting the microfinance–gender empowerment discourse

This article critically examines the role of microfinance in shaping gender relations and empowerment outcomes for women. One aim of advancing credit to women is to empower them, thereby increasing their bargaining power and challenging existing gender subordination. We caution against this view and instead show that the mainstream argument is much more complex than what the popular rhetoric preaches. We argue that lack of a systematic strategy to incorporate men and the wider socio-cultural dynamics within which women are domiciled radically constrain the empowerment potential of microcredit programmes, and in some contexts may lead to unintended consequences for women.     

Foreign aid,democracy, and gender quota laws

Why do so many developing countries have gender quota policies? This article argues that foreign aid programmes influence developing countries to adopt policies aimed at fulfilling international norms regarding gender equality. This relationship is driven by two causal mechanisms. On the one hand, countries may use gender quotas as a signal to improve their standing in the international hierarchy, possibly as an end unto itself, but more likely as a means towards ensuring future aid flows. On the other, countries may adopt gender quotas as a result of successful foreign aid interventions specifically designed to promote women’s empowerment. I test these two causal mechanisms using data on foreign aid commitments to 173 non-OECD countries from 1974 to 2012. The results suggest that while programmes targeting women’s empowerment may have some influence on quota adoption, developing countries dependent on United States foreign aid are also likely to use gender quotas as signalling devices rather than as a result of ongoing liberalization efforts.     

Analysing changing gender relations: methodological challenges for gender planning

This paper is a starting point for a research project which will try to develop practical methods for analyzing changes in gender relations to inform policy research in improving the storage, processing, and marketing of crops in sub-Saharan Africa. While the research project will focus upon the crop post-harvest sector, many concerns raised in this study are relevant to a wide range of development interventions. This paper is based upon existing literature and offers no new empirical findings. Major conceptual advances in thinking about gender relations suggest the need to reassess conventional gender analyses in the context of development interventions. Evidence from development practice supports the argument that targeting can be undermined by processes of gendered bargaining around project interventions. Academic research points to key problems and potential methods for viewing changes in gender relations which may be adapted to project contexts. Existing gender planning frameworks focus upon shifts in gender relations, but also need to address the process by which gender relations are renegotiated if they are to inform better planning, monitoring, and evaluation.     

Beyond the 'grim resisters': Towards more effective gender mainstreaming through stakeholder participation

Gender experts who formulate planning frameworks and strategies for mainstreaming gender issues in organisational policies and programmes usually characterise non-expert policy makers and planners as either active resisters or passive implementers rather than as capable change agents. Because of this, more resistance to gender mainstreaming is encountered than is necessary, and mainstreaming programmes often fail to take into account the needs and contributions of planners as stakeholders. The paper discusses these shortcomings and presents cases from the UN system in which the author was involved, where organisational change and mainstreaming were based on stakeholder participation that began to overcome some commonly identified limitations.     

Practical lessons from gender audit of an education sector plan in Lao PDR

In 2013, the Laos Ministry of Education and Sports (MoES) commissioned a mid-term review of the Education Sector Development Plan 2011–2015 (ESDP, Lao People's Democratic Republic, Ministry of Education and Sports 2010). Plan International, a United Nations Girls Education Initiative partner, worked with MoES to lead a gender audit for the mid-term review. The gender audit strengthened the mid-term review and contributed to the design of the new ESDP. A MoES gender and inclusion working group was established, providing an institutional structure to support focused policy dialogue and address recommendations. This note recommends the inclusion of gender audits within mid-term reviews and final evaluations of sectoral plans to ensure that investments adequately address gender equality.     

Organisational change from two perspectives: gender and organisational development

By exploring two approaches to organizational change, gender and organizational development (OD), the author argues that OD is flawed since it perpetuates existing gender inequalities by failing to address them. By contrast, the gender approach brings change both for women and for men and is contextualized in a broader agenda of social transformation. Analysis of how power is gendered is the critical starting point. While gender is not disconnected from other forms of oppression--such as race and class--special attention needs to be given to gender because experience has shown it gets lost. This article seeks to contribute to breaking new ground in theory and practice in order to promote organizations that are both equitable and effective.     

Officialising strategies: participatory processes and gender in Thailand's water resources sector

This paper examines participatory processes in an Asian Development Bank (ADB) technical assistance package in Thailand's water resource sector. The authors analyse various levels of social interaction in the local community, in meso‐level stakeholder consultations, and in opposition to ADB's environment programmes expressed by civil society organisations. While participatory approaches are employed to promote more bottom‐up management regimes in water resources, the authors find that local power and gender differences have been overlooked. Evolving institutions of resource governance are constituted by gender, reproducing gender inequalities such as regarding water intended for agricultural use as a ‘male’ resource. Finally, it is argued that understandings and practices of participation legitimise particular agendas in a politically polarised arena.     

Dimensions,manifestations, and perceptions of gender equity: the experiences of Gram Vikas

Concerns about gender equity have been at the fore of discussions and analysis of NGO interventions and action since the 1970s. Gender equity, defined as equal rights to access, opportunity, and participation for men and women, has always been a distinctive feature in the programmes of Gram Vikas, a leading NGO in the Indian state of Orissa. Conscious efforts to identify and address these issues began in the mid-1980s. Several specific initiatives have been made to create a level playing field between women and men in the village communities where Gram Vikas works, and within the organisation. There have been resistance and challenges to several of these interventions, and while some of them have embedded themselves to create lasting impact, others have had only limited effect.     

Security sector reform,gender and local narratives in Burundi

This paper maps the difficulties with operationalising the gender discourse described in the peace accord and post-conflict documents, which guide Burundi's peace-building process, through local women's narratives from the security forces. The author claims that due to limited international and local investment, the local women involved in the security forces initiate small practical changes by referring to their vision of femininity, while theoretically legitimising these demands by linking them to the international human rights discourse in order to survive in an overwhelmingly masculine arena. International organisations and donors’ focus on traditionally feminine and softer areas, such as reconciliation and reintegration programmes, together with local elites’ tendency to view gender as an ‘add-on’ contribute to this development.     

Further resources for participatory research and gender analysis

So much work has been done on participatory research and gender analysis – their implementation, evaluation, and institutionalisation – that it is difficult to recommend a limited set of resources. The context here is ‘challenges to operationalising participatory research and gender analysis’, so we have sought out resources which shed light on some new practical issues and are based on empirical evidence. Some of the classics in the field have also been included. Readers will find additional resources in and through the bibliographical references of articles included in this issue.

This list was compiled by Guy Manners from annotated submissions by contributors to this special issue.     

Flip-flop rebel,dollar soldier: demobilisation in the Democratic Republic of Congo1

The wars in the Democratic Republic of Congo (DRC) have seen the recruitment of flip-flop clad rebels and instability arising because soldiers have not received their salary of a few dollars. Conversely, demobilisation programmes, which bring promises of reintegration grants, have not attracted people to disarm. This paper examines this conundrum alongside three features of the situation in Congo: the informalisation of politics and the economy, the exercise of power through violence, and the multiple crises in which people are living. Drawing on reports on demobilisation and interviews conducted in Congo, the paper investigates what implications these three aspects have for demobilisation, and what is achieved by the programmes as they stand. It argues that demobilisation programmes do not address fighters' motivations, and outcomes are largely immaterial. Instead there is a political pillage—akin to the pillages that took place across Congo in the early 1990s—by which some parties make immediate gains, whilst shaping the conditions for longer term losses and destructive systems.     

Conflict and gender: the implications of the Burundian conflict on HIV/AIDS risks

Sexual and gender-based violence in many conflict and post-conflict contexts are creating vulnerabilities to HIV. The paper is based on research conducted in Burundi in 2007–2008.The country experienced long-term civil war from the early 1990s until recently and has been the locus of post-conflict disarmament, demobilisation and reintegration programmes, providing a coherent and focused study. The research finds that the relationship between conflict and HIV/AIDS is a function of pre-existing gender relations that also regulate sexual life and determine critical female vulnerabilities. When put under stress by armed conflict, these vulnerabilities become amplified, creating conditions for the increased spread of HIV. Analysis of how gender relations and vulnerabilities change according to the specific social and economic circumstances generated by military mobilisation, organisation and deployment, in relation to civilian displacement and insecurity, in a range of distinct circumstances, provides a framework for understanding HIV vulnerabilities during and after the conflict.     

Social determinants and risk factors for non-communicable diseases (NCDs) in South Asian migrant populations in Europe

In Europe, policies, strategies and interventions to address the growing burden of non-communicable diseases have generally neglected to take into consideration the impact of migration on health outcomes of increasingly multicultural and diverse societies. Research has shown that migrants of South Asian origin living in Europe are more at risk of acquiring non-communicable diseases than their counterparts in their country of origin or than the host European population. Using the example of migrants of South Asian origin, this paper highlights the migration-related social determinants of health and risk factors for non-communicable diseases. This paper calls for a more integrated, multi-sectoral approach to promote migrant-friendly health and social services to address non-communicable diseases in South Asia and Europe.     

Mainstreaming gender in refugee protection

The issues of gender-related persecution and violence against women have been put onto the international agenda, largely thanks to lobbying by feminist NGOs and transnational networks. There is a question, however, of how successfully this agenda-setting has translated into effective policy-making and policies that will increase the protection of women who are victims of gender-related persecution. One of the problems with policies to support women refugees and asylum seekers lies in a failure of transmission of the goals of gender sensitivity through all the various bureaux and representatives of a large bureaucratic organization such as the United Nations High Commissioner for Refugees (UNHCR). For nearly twenty years, since the early 1990s, the UNHCR has identified ‘refugee women’ as a policy priority, and yet, despite this prioritization of concerns about women refugees and gender issues in the asylum and refugee process, it could be argued that little progress has been made in implementation of policies on refugee women. This article will examine the way in which the concept of gender has been adopted within the UNHCR and the processes that have been put in place to mainstream gender within refugee protection activities. How far has mainstreaming managed to move policies to protect women beyond a mere focus on ‘vulnerable’ groups, and to integrate a gendered understanding of the global processes that produce refugees, and of the protection needs of these refugees?     

Urban agriculture: addressing practical and strategic gender needs

This paper considers the role of urban agriculture in addressing the practical and strategic needs of African women, and assesses the gender implications of embracing urban agriculture as a development intervention strategy. Empirical evidence from Botswana and Zimbabwe points to the multi-faceted role of urban agriculture whereby some women use this activity to support their households on a daily basis, and others use it as an avenue for social and economic empowerment over the longer term. In order to benefit rather than burden women, the promotion and support of urban agriculture must take on an emancipatory agenda, which supports individual, practical and strategic goals, and ultimately challenges the structural conditions that give rise to women's involvement in the activity in the first place.     

Relations between NGOs and trade unions: the case of Ukraine

This article describes the legal frameworks governing trade unions and NGOs in Ukraine, with the latter defined very much as organisations working for the benefit of their members and other citizens sharing the same interests rather than as philanthropic organisations whose mission is to assist others. Trade unions and NGOs are encouraged to collaborate in areas where their interests coincide, and the article describes two recent programmes in which such collaboration has been essential—one to promote more sport and physical activity among the Ukrainian population in order to address declining health statistics, and the other to address the needs of the growing number of people with disabilities in the country.     

Talking of gender: words and meanings in development organisations

This article reflects on the vocabulary commonly used within development organisations to communicate about ‘gender and development’. It argues that the relevant terminology, though frequently used, remains problematic. Some terms are almost entirely absent, while others are used loosely and inappropriately – with the subtleties of carefully developed and much-debated concepts often lost. Terms such as ‘empowerment’, ‘gender’, and ‘gender mainstreaming’ which originated in feminist thinking and activism have lost their moorings and become depoliticised. Despite these problems, there are indications that debates and language may be taking a more radical turn with the acknowledgement of the shortcomings of the practices of gender mainstreaming, the deepening of interest in the notion of empowerment, and the explicit adoption of a human-rights language.     

Engendering local democracy: The impact of quotas for women in India's panchayats

In 1992, India's Parliament enacted two constitutional amendments that sought to democratize local governance and engender it through quota-based reservations for women. This article asks whether participation in these institutions has enabled women to articulate and advance their interests. To evaluate this, the article deploys the distinction in feminist literature between strategic and practical gender interests. Through a survey of a wide range of studies conducted in different parts of India it points to the constraints, both of institutional design as well as of social inequalities of gender and caste, that inhibit a fuller and more effective participation by women. There is nevertheless evidence to suggest that the quotas have enabled women to address their practical gender needs and interests, even if the articulation and realization of strategic interests is moving at a somewhat slower pace.     

Developing indicators to assess women's empowerment in Vietnam

From mid‐1999 to mid‐2001, the authors carried out a qualitative study in rural Vietnam to explore relationships between gender equity and reproductive health. One of the study's objectives was to develop culturally appropriate indicators of women's empowerment, specific to the Vietnamese context. This paper describes the process of developing, testing, and refining the empowerment indicators, presents some of the findings, and discusses the methodological challenges that need to be addressed. The paper concludes by recommending a set of Vietnamspecific domains for assessing women's empowerment in the socio‐economic sphere as well as in reproductive health.     

The gender of shopping malls

Abstract

This article investigates the historical alignment between women and shopping that dates from about the middle of the nineteenth century. During this time the masculine, modernist world of urban life was separated from the feminine, domestic sphere; this led to gendered perceptions about space and place. The split between male and female worlds led to representations of space that characterised certain spaces as male and others as female. This article shows how the nineteenth-century department store became a key location of middle-class female activity and identity formation, and demonstrates how this social spatialisation has been sustained by the contemporary shopping mall. Because malls are products of consumer capitalism, they embody ideologies and myths that support this dominant ideology; notions concerning gender, class, race, and space are hence grounded in the manner in which malls conceptualise and represent space. This article sites a gendered reading of South African shopping within the discourses of gender politics, (feminist) cultural geography and (visual) cultural studies, which attempt to unveil the spatial practices of contemporary society. The findings suggest that the social perception that shopping is women's work is upheld by current social practices.