Gender equality – whose agenda? Observations from Cameroon

The political project of gender equality in Africa has gained momentum and made many achievements. However, these have been largely confined to the ‘big’ women working in the public and private bureaucratic contexts in which there is a greater commitment to gender equality. It is argued that in the context of Cameroon, until these ‘bigger’ women renew their commitment to their grassroots sisters, the experience of gender equality will remain largely unequal. Only strong links between white-collar workers and less privileged women will span this chasm.     

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.     

Revisiting Representation: Communism,Women in Politics,and the Decline of Armed Conflict in East Asia

This research note evaluates one of the commonly used measurements for political gender equality: representation of women in parliaments. It demonstrates that caution is called for when interpreting results where this variable is used, because parliamentary representation implies different things in different settings. Societies with more women in parliament tend to have fewer intrastate armed conflicts. We investigate this statistical association with a particular focus on East Asia. This region has seen a shift from extremely intense warfare to low levels of battle deaths at roughly the same time as great strides have been made in the representation of women in parliaments. This research note shows, however, that this statistical association is driven by authoritarian communist regimes promoting gender equality as a part of communist ideology, and these countries’ representative chambers have little influence over politics. Using statistical tests and empirical illustrations from East Asia, the note concludes that the political representation of women is an invalid indicator of political gender equality in East Asia. There is thus a need for nuance in assessing the picture painted in earlier research. In addition, the suggestion that more women in parliament will lead to fewer armed conflicts runs the risk of being forwarded as an oversimplified solution to a complex problem, and we briefly discuss the instrumentalization of gender equality in peace and security studies.     

Deradicalisation,disengagement, rehabilitation and reintegration of violent extremists in conflict-affected contexts: a systematic literature review

ABSTRACT

This article identifies, assesses and synthesises existing literature on deradicalisation, disengagement, rehabilitation and reintegration (DDRR) in conflict-affected states through a systematic literature review. While existing research has methodological shortcomings and determining the outcomes of DDRR programmes is challenging, 12 common themes surfaced in the synthesis. According to the studies selected, varying experiences of the individuals in violent extremist organisations, including form of engagement, role in the organisation and experiences of insecurity and disillusion, may affect DDRR processes. Capacity and resource constrains may pose challenges to DDRR programming in conflict-affected contexts, but engaging former extremists, their families and communities at large mitigates the issues characteristic for conflict-affected contexts and contributes to wider peace-building objectives.     

Multilateral donors and the security-development nexus: discourse and practice in conflict-affected states

This article assesses how the ‘security-development nexus’ has impacted multilateral aid to conflict-affected states; an area until now understudied. Using a mixed methods approach, we examine both the policy discourse and aid commitments of the major multilateral donors: the European Commission, the World Bank and the UNDP. We investigate the extent to which these donors fund the sectors identified within the policy discourse as crucial to ensuring peace and stability – democratisation and peace, conflict, and security activities – and examine the impact of ‘Western’ security concerns on multilateral aid in conflict-affected states. Our new data indicate that in contrast to policy discourse, post-conflict states receive no more multilateral funding for democracy–building than states which have not suffered from conflict and furthermore, that in the context of the security-development nexus, multilateral aid to conflict-affected states is influenced by the key transnational security concerns of Western states. These results point to a potentially dangerous gap between policy and actual aid commitments, ignore the long-term nature of development and weaken the impartiality of multilateral aid.     

Energy poverty amidst abundance in Malaysia: placing energy in multidimensional poverty

In developing countries the analysis of energy poverty has been framed in terms of a nexus; linking poverty, gender, and energy as obstacles to sustainable development. This article considers the dual challenges of energy and fuel poverty in Malaysia, a middle-income country boasting high levels of grid penetration, suggesting that there are limitations to this approach in relation to articulating the relationship between energy and poverty, specifying the dynamics of energy poverty, and informing policies to address this. Locating energy deprivation in the context of multidimensional poverty offers a basis for addressing energy poverty in a wider range of spatial and temporal contexts.     

Climate resilience in fragile and conflict-affected societies: concepts and approaches

To understand resilience to climate and environmental changes in fragile and conflict-affected societies is particularly important but equally challenging. In this paper, we first develop a conceptual framework to explore the climate-fragility-conflict and climate-resilience-peace nexus. Second, we discuss approaches to promote pathways from climatic changes to peace. We draw on the relevant literature and International Alert's experience in fragile and conflict-affected societies to stress the key role of resilience. To build resilience, climate, development, peacebuilding, and government actors would have to overcome bureaucratic and institutional barriers and cooperate across thematic and regional silos.     

Sustaining livelihoods in complex emergencies: experiences of Sri Lanka

This article examines the role of context-specific factors that help to perpetuate the vulnerability of conflict-affected people. The discussion revolves around key concepts of household livelihood security, resilience building, income diversification, market access, and armed non-state actors. It is argued that, while conflict-affected households develop adaptive strategies to sustain their livelihoods amid the commonly observed vulnerabilities, the governance arrangements of the parties to the conflict can place stress on local initiatives, confining them to subsistence level and so reinforcing their vulnerability. Deeper analysis of the sources of vulnerability and implications of policy processes could help to inform intervention strategies.     

Faith-based HIV response in post-Soviet Eastern Europe: the case of Channels of Hope in Russia,Romania, and Armenia

ABSTRACT

Most of the data available on faith-based HIV response focus on Africa, which is the heart of the pandemic. This article investigates faith-based community-level HIV responses within Eastern Europe, by studying the implementation of World Vision International’s “Channels of Hope” faith-based HIV intervention. The intervention approach was developed in a high HIV-prevalence setting (South Africa) and then implemented across sub-Saharan Africa and elsewhere – including three low HIV-prevalence Eastern European settings (Armenia, Romania, and Russia). Drawing from implementation and evaluation research, this article explores the nature, challenges, and potential of faith-based HIV response within low-prevalence, post-Soviet contexts.     

Attitudes towards gender equality and perception of democracy in the Arab world

This article analyses the relationship between support of democracy and attitudes to human rights, in particular, support for gender equality, in the countries covered by the first wave of the Arab Barometer project. We use cluster analysis and negative binomial regression modelling to show that, unlike in most countries of the world, correlation between support of democracy and gender equality is very low in the Arab countries. There is a group of people in the region who support both democracy and gender equality, but they are a small group (about 17% of the population) of elderly and middle-aged people characterized by higher education and social status. A substantial number of poorly educated males express support for democracy but not for gender equality. Many people, especially young males aged 25–35 in 2007, are against both gender equality and democracy. Younger people tend to be both better educated and more conservative, those belonging to the 25–34 age group being the most patriarchal in their gender attitudes. Yet, controlling for age, education does have a positive effect on gender equality attitudes. Nevertheless, this phenomenon may reflect two simultaneous processes going on in the Middle East. On the one hand, people are getting more educated, urbanized, etc., which means the continuation of modernization. On the other hand, the fact that older people are the most liberal age group may point to a certain retrogression of social values in the younger generations.     

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.     

The domestic and international quest for economic equality: The interactional process

The historic interaction between domestic and international interpretations of the meaning of equality involves today's economic equality. The economic demands of the Third World countries on the advanced countries find support in the social developments which earlier had occurred in the latter. But these demands have also important domestic consequences, both in the advanced and Third World countries.     

Participatory risk assessment: a new approach for safer food in vulnerable African communities

Women play the major role in food supply in developing countries, but too often their ability to feed their families properly is compromised; the result is high levels of food-borne disease and consequent limited access to higher-value markets. We argue that risk-based approaches – current best practice for managing food safety in developed countries – require adaptation to the difficult context of informal markets. We suggest participatory research and gender analysis as boundary-spanning mechanisms, bringing communities and food-safety implementers together to analyse food-safety problems and develop workable solutions. Examples show how these methodologies can contribute to operationalising risk-based approaches in urban settings and to the development of a new approach to assessing and managing food safety in poor countries, which we call ‘participatory risk analysis’.     

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.     

The governance of fertility through gender equality in the EU and Japan

It is generally accepted amongst demographers that a declining fertility rate has negative economic consequences, namely in the guise of a slowdown in economic growth. Declining fertility has, therefore, been seen as a major problem in Japan and the EU for the last 20?years. Over the past two decades, demographers and social scientists have discussed intensely the causal connection between gender equality and female fertility, to the extent that during the past 10?years, gender equality has become the cornerstone of the EU and, to a degree, Japanese public policy aiming to re-optimise fertility rates. This article scrutinises the different ways in which gender equality is erected by demographic and social scientists in Japan and the EU as a technology of governance with the aim of re-exerting control over sexual reproduction. I argue that in the EU, scientists engage directly and endeavour to develop demographic theory based on European case studies, whereas Japanese gender equality policy is developed mainly by measuring the successes of European gender equality policy and considering the results it might yield in Japan. In both cases, however, gender equality is taken up as a tool for the governance of fertility.     

Groups Work for Women: Gender and Group Identity in Social Dilemmas

Behavior in social-dilemma (mixed-motive) situations has been of great interest to economists, psychologists, and negotiation scholars. In this study, we used a threshold social-dilemma game to examine factors that have not yet been investigated and that may have an impact on behavior in these settings: gender and group identity. We found that, for women, interacting with members of a naturally occurring group increased coordination and efficiency, while for men, interacting with members of a naturally occurring group decreased coordination and efficiency. Psychological literature on gender differences and group interdependence explains these differences. We conclude by discussing the implications of these results for gender differences in negotiation behavior.     

Including conflict-affected youth in agri-food chains: agribusiness in northern Uganda

Farming and agribusiness could help employ and reintegrate conflict-affected youth in regions recovering from civil conflict. This study addresses the constraints for youth to engage themselves in agribusiness in the worst conflict-affected regions of northern Uganda. Specifically, it explores to what extent beekeeping and honey business offer viable socio-economic opportunities to formerly displaced youth. Using a value chain approach, the study draws on in-depth interviews with 23 (young) key stakeholders in the honey value chain, document analysis and focus group discussions. The results suggest that apiculture business can create employment for conflict-affected youth in northern Uganda due to the relatively low entry barriers, a young enthused vanguard and higher returns per unit input compared to other agricultural sectors in the region. However in order to succeed, this group requires support from community elders, government and business facilitators, because, due to their age and war background, these youngsters face the common constraints to farming and agribusiness, but at higher degrees of severity.     

Conflict analysis for the twenty-first century

Approaches to conflict assessment remain stuck in the late 1990s. Methodological tools are overwhelmingly geared toward development actors. Significant policy evolution—driven by experiences in practice—over the last decade, along with progress in research on conflict and instability, powerfully suggests the need for analytical tools that are both truly joint—involving all relevant departments—and capable of embracing all major aspects of conflict causation and drivers of state fragility. Based on a review conducted for DFID and taking the UK as a case in point, this article outlines the key issues, challenges and requirements involved in operationalising genuinely joint analysis. There are positive signs that the UK government is serious about its commitment to integrated approaches in conflict-affected and fragile states, as demonstrated by development of the new Joint Analysis of Conflict and Stability (JACS). Crucially, this must be backed up by a shared understanding of the context that is theoretically informed, process savvy, empirically grounded and geared toward addressing the key issues identified in domestic and international policy.     

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.     

Gender equity and social capital in smallholder farmer groups in central Mozambique

This case study from Búzi district, Mozambique investigated whether gender equality, in terms of male and female participation in groups, leads to gender equity in sharing of benefits from the social capital created through the group. Exploring the complex connection between gender, groups, and social capital, we found that gender equity is not necessarily achieved by guaranteeing men and women equal rights through established by-laws, or dealing with groups as a collective entity. While there were no significant differences in the investment patterns of men and women in terms of participation in group activities and contribution of communal work, access to leadership positions and benefits from social capital were unequally distributed. Compared with men, women further found it difficult to transform social relations into improved access to information, access to markets, or help in case of need.