Empowerment boom or bust? Assessing women's post-conflict empowerment initiatives

Over the past decade, the term ‘empowerment’ has been generously employed and woefully ill-defined. In particular, women's empowerment has been embraced by such a vast number of development actors that it appears to be a unifying mission within development. Despite the boom in women's empowerment initiatives, there remains little critical analysis of the use of empowerment in general, and the perceived success or failures of specific empowerment initiatives. Using the disarmament, demobilization and reintegration process in Sierra Leone as a case study, this paper examines how reintegration was described as a source of empowerment for women. Drawing from interviews and analysis of related policy discourses, it is argued that, rather than representing a radical shift in development approaches towards more inclusive and representative policies, empowerment projects are shaped by neoliberal ideas such as individualism, responsibility and economic order and carry implicit, gendered and disciplining messages about appropriate social behaviour.     

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.     

中国-东盟自由贸易区背景下我国商业秘密法律制度的完善

根据我国反不正当竞争法第1条，商业秘密是指不为公众知悉、能为权利人带来经济利益、具有实用性并经权利人采取保密措施的技术信息与经营信息。根据这一规定，商业秘密的构成要件包括：秘密性，即不为权利人以外的社会公众知悉；保密性，即权利人采取一定措施保持该项信息的秘密状态；价值性，即能够运用于生产经营活动当中并为权利人带来现实或者潜在的经济利益；实用性，即这一信息能够实际应用于生产经营当中。     

The Rule of Law and the UN Peacebuilding Commission: a social development approach

There is a danger that the Rule of Law Assistance Unit of the United Nations Peacebuilding Commission will employ the same dominant but problematic paradigm that the international development community has pursued across the globe. This top-down, state-centred paradigm, sometimes known as ‘rule of law orthodoxy’, stands in contrast to an alternative set of strategies: legal empowerment. Legal empowerment involves the use of legal services, legal capacity-building and legal reform by and for disadvantaged populations, often in combination with other development activities, to increase their freedom, improve governance and alleviate poverty. It is typically carried out by domestic and international non-governmental organisations (NGOs), but also by governments and official aid agencies. This alternative approach focuses directly on the disadvantaged and integration with other development activities, which means it often operates under the de facto rubric of social development. Legal empowerment strategies vary among countries and NGOs. But their impact includes reforming gender-biased, non-state justice systems in Bangladesh; ameliorating the legal system's corruption in post-conflict Sierra Leone; keeping the human rights flame burning in post-conflict Cambodia; advancing natural resources protection and indigenous peoples' rights in Ecuador; and strengthening agrarian reform in the Philippines. Addressing such priorities can help alleviate poverty, ameliorate conflict and prevent chaos or repression from dominating the disadvantaged, particularly in conflict or post-conflict societies.     

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.     

Empowering families as an alternative to foster care for street children in Brazil

Although the emphasis in current thinking about work with street children has changed from aid-dependency towards youth protagonism, many organisations ignore the role of the children's families in their interventions. In so doing, they reproduce obsolete welfare traditions and also violate rights guaranteed by the Convention on the Rights of the Child and national legislation. This article illustrates the importance of child–family ties for both children and families, and argues that interventions that lack the involvement of parents and families serve to reproduce images of failed families and inadequate mothers. The author presents an alternative approach from Brazil which respects the rights and needs of children and families through family empowerment.     

Microfinance,wage employment and housework: a gender analysis

This paper examines the loan-use pattern of women involved in wage employment and their benefits from such loans in Bangladesh. The effects of wage employment on gender relations and how these women balance loan use, wage employment, and housework were also explored. The study was conducted among women enrolled in the Ayesha Abed Foundation (AAF) of the Bangladesh Rural Advancement Committee (BRAC) in Jamalpur district, central Bangladesh. The AAF was established to generate employment and income for poor rural women. Data were gathered through survey, interviews, and focus-group discussions. Findings revealed that women wage earners avail themselves of the BRAC loans for consumption, asset accumulation, land purchase, and other productive purposes. About 53% of their loans were used by others and only 34 out of 341 women in the sample actually used the loans themselves. The loans were repaid by sewing or subsistence work, mainly in the subcenters (52%), through income from rickshaw pulling by their husbands (24%), and by selling vegetables, eggs, or milk. Furthermore, findings showed that the household work of women wage earners is generally taken up by other women in the family and has resulted in more men taking part in household responsibilities. In conclusion, wage employment plays an important factor in the promotion of the economic and social empowerment of women. Economic empowerment is observed in the greater degree of control women have over the money they earn. Social empowerment is manifested in the expanding mobility of women, whereby they are able to interact with other women and generate support systems.     

Judicialization of politics or politicization of the judiciary? Recent trends in Latin America

This article examines the judicialization of politics in Latin America with particular reference to Mexico and Argentina. It surveys several inter-connected processes with regard to the democratic aspiration of building the rule of law and enhancing citizenship. More than ever before regime legitimacy is linked to the credibility and success of rule of law construction. At the same time, judicial institutions and legal processes have acquired an unprecedented public and political centrality, as judges are called upon to resolve political disputes and engage in the judicial and legal review of governmental processes. Moreover civil society in varying degrees is increasingly resorting to legal mechanisms as one means of reclaiming and advancing citizenship rights. However, this process of judicialization of politics in young democracies does not necessarily imply improvement in regard to the rule of law. And a failure to live up to expectations concerning the rule of law is placing an additional burden on the embattled democracies of the region.     

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.     

The impact of human rights INGO activities on economic sanctions

What impact do human rights international non-governmental organizations (hereafter HROs) have on the initiation of economic sanctions? The extant literatures on sanctions and transnational non-state groups have largely overlooked the role, if any, the activities of these transnational non-state actors have on the use of economic coercion as a popular policy tool. In this study, we argue that HROs could affect sanction decisions through two distinct mechanisms: information production (“shaming and blaming”) and local empowerment (local presence). By bringing poor human rights performers into the international spotlight, we argue that this effect should hold even after accounting for human rights practices in the targeted countries. Using dyadic data on HROs and economic sanctions, we find robust support for our basic argument that HRO activities increase the likelihood of sanction events against repressive regimes. Additionally, much of the empirical support highlights the role of information production, as opposed to local empowerment, in leading to sanction onset. Overall, our findings indicate that HROs are powerful actors in influencing foreign policy decisions between states.     

An endogenous empowerment strategy: a case-study of Nigerian women

In Nigeria women's empowerment is essential to improving their standard of living and protecting their right to participate fully in development. More effective strategies are needed for women to participate in decision making. There are both static and dynamic aspects of the concept of empowerment. The former may lead to exogenous power strategies, while the latter may lead to endogenous empowerment facilitated by the dynamic concept that regards empowerment as a bottom-up process that develops the capacity of individuals. This process can be accomplished in six stages that encompass awareness, skills and capacity assessment, capacity-building and skills development, participation and greater control in decision-making, action for change, and evaluation. Nigeria needs an endogenous empowerment strategy for women's effective participation within organizations that is based on the tenet that women can only protect their interests through effective participation in their organizations and that highlights awareness-building, skills-acquisition and capacity-building, and changing discriminatory norms. External agents can not empower women but can foster conditions conducive to self-empowerment.     

The Strategic Use of Interests,Rights, and Power to Resolve Disputes

To ensure success in resolving difficult disputes, negotiators mustmake strategic decisions about their negotiation approach. In this essay,we make practical recommendations for negotiation strategy based on Ury,Brett, and Goldberg's (1993) interests, rights, and power framework fordispute resolution and subsequent empirical research by Brett, Shapiro, andLytle (1998). We discuss how negotiations cycle through interests, rights,and power foci; the prevalence of reciprocity; and the one-sided,distributive outcomes that result from reciprocity of rights and powercommunications. We then turn to using interests, rights and powerstrategically in negotiations. We discuss choosing an opening stragegy,breaking conflict spirals of reciprocated rights and power communications,and when and how to use rights and power communications effectively innegotiations.     

From ‘Rustless Screws’ to ‘Nail Houses’: The Evolution of Property Rights in China

This article addresses property rights in China under four headings. I begin by placing the Chinese case within the larger context of property rights literature. The second section reviews the existing scholarship on property rights in China and identifies existing lacunae. The third section provides the broad contours of the contemporary Chinese intellectual and political discourse over property rights in China. And finally, I offer several cases of property rights that illustrate the variation in the scope of the concept of property rights in China and suggest possible avenues for future research.

The right of property is the guardian of every other right, and to deprive the people of this is in fact to deprive them of their liberty.- Arthur Lee, Virginia, 1775

You reproach us with planning to do away with your property. Precisely so; that is just what we intend.- Karl Marx and Friedrich Engels¹

The fact that a legal or economic model does not exist for an activity or a behavior is no reason to oppose it, because the laws can develop out of experience and practice.- Wu Guoping, Yangtze Water Resources Commission²

     

Towards a policy framework for the empowerment of social movements

As they move from responding to needs and demands to a more rights-based approach, some French NGOs are rethinking both their areas of work and their ways of working. ‘Empowerment’ has become a key concept in this changing context, although it is sometimes difficult to know how best to apply it and understand what it really means in an NGO setting. This article shares some thinking on empowerment, analysing its ‘object’ (individuals, organisations, networks, or movements) and the ‘process’ through which it is realised. Drawing on the author's own experience and on a brief literature review, it is illustrated by the examples of the international disability and US gay rights movements.     

The Economic Leverage of International Organizations in Interstate Disputes

Addressing a long-standing debate in international relations scholarship, this study shows that international governmental organizations (IGOs) with high economic leverage over their member states, such as some development banks, substantially lower the risk that political disputes experience the use of military force. Empirical tests covering cases of disputatious claims and international crises since 1946 make use of a new classification of IGOs that have economic leverage and use it toward increasing states’ cost of using force in disputes. When pairs of states are subject to the economic leverage of IGOs, they are substantially less likely to use force. For the understanding and practice of interstate dispute resolution and international conflict more generally, the study suggests a specific linkage between institutionalized economic interdependence and conflict escalation.     

“I know! I live here”: poor women and the work of empowerment

To trace the effects of empowerment programmes in the Global South, attention needs to be focused on the everyday practices of frontline staff, or fieldworkers, who convey empowerment ideas and practices at the grassroots. This is especially critical when fieldworkers work in the marginalised communities where they also live. Instead of looking outward towards a programme’s outcomes, this article turns inward to examine the impact of women fieldworkers’ dual experiences of development on their decisions and practices in the field. The ethnography of women fieldworkers in a government-led women’s empowerment programme for the poor in Delhi, India reveals the uneasy relationship of women’s empowerment to the larger contradictory development paradigm that they work within. Fieldworkers used their experiences as poor women to meet programme quotas, while also side-lining social change in favour of shielding clients from ineffective programme activities.     

The Effect of IMF Programs on Women’s Economic and Political Rights

Though much research has been devoted to the socioeconomic and political consequences of International Monetary Fund (IMF) programs for recipient countries, little is known about the impacts of these programs on the level of respect for women’s rights. We postulate that IMF-induced policy reforms of privatization and public spending cuts, and the growing political repression and instability following the implementation of IMF programs, undermine the government’s ability and willingness to protect women’s economic and political rights. To substantiate the theoretical claims, we combine data on women’s political and economic rights with data on IMF programs for the years 1981–2004. Our findings suggest that IMF involvement is likely to deteriorate the level of respect for women’s economic rights while having no discernible effect on women’s political rights. The results further indicate that the effect of these programs is not conditioned by political regime type and economic wealth of recipient countries. One major policy implication of our findings is that the IMF should start to recognize that the conditions attached to lending programs might be implemented at the expense of women’s economic rights and that more explicit protections of women’s rights need to be included in program negotiations.     

Participatory gender-responsive monitoring of women land rights: empowering and smart

This viewpoint argues that a genuine participatory approach to defining a theory of change and outcome indicators of enhanced women land and property rights is essential to include the standpoint of women and men who are directly involved, and to acknowledge their power to frame the change and solutions they envision. Moreover, outcomes and outcome indicators defined by women and men who are targeted by women rights interventions typically better distinguish outcomes to be reached among women, among men, and in terms of gender relations, are more concrete and easier to measure.     

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.     

南海共同开发案例研究

目前南海争端愈演愈烈,共同开发停滞不前。但毋庸置疑,若以和平手段解决南海争端,那么共同开发就必定会作为一项重要的过渡性争端解决措施而被各当事国所采用。南海泰国湾地区共同开发案的制度设计,能够为南海主海在某个特定时间和空间节点实施共同开发提供法律框架范本。为此,本文选取“马来西亚-泰国”、“马来西亚-越南”两个业已实施的共同开发案例,分析其管理机构与模式、合同制度、费用分摊与收益分享机制、管辖权及其冲突之解决、争端解决方式等法律制度层面的问题,以期未雨绸缪,对我国未来在南海构建行之有效的共同开发机制提供智力支持。