Hidden in the Household: Gender and Class in the Study of Islam in Africa

The household, if understood in a dynamic multi-status, multi-generational, multi-cultural, “gendered” way, can provide a conceptual framework for reinterpreting practices, processes, and patterns of Islamization in Africa. This framework contrasts with the one privileged in literature that focuses on the agency of traders, clerics and chiefs in public institutions. It reminds us that they “lived Islam” next to their mothers, wives, sisters, and slaves in households. This preliminary exploration of women and slaves usually seen as marginal to Islamization is intended to challenge extant perceptions: women and slaves were not only “recipients” of Islam but its agents. In their households, they shaped how Islam was lived by all around them. So instead of looking only at the history of more public Islamic people and places, addressing attention to the household and its changing nature over time may allow us to see a different face of Islam and different process of Islamization.     

Policy implementation in an international setting: a case study of China and the 1995 united nations conference on women

For successful implementation, policy goals should be clear, shared by affected parties, and linked to implementation efforts. Leadership, capable implementers, adequate resources, and an ability to control the external environment are also necessary for successful policy implementation. In the case of China hosting the 1995 Fourth United Nations Conference on Women, these factors were not present. This study describes the problems of implementation as they are illustrated by this case and makes suggestions on how policies can be carried out in an international setting. These suggestions include the recognition of cultural differences, the acceptance of the fact that politics shapes policy decisions and implementation, and the establishment of structures and processes to resolve any conflicts that arise.     

The forgotten ‘mateys’: women workers in Portsmouth Dockyard,England, 1939-45

Abstract

This paper is based on nearly 30 interviews with women who worked in Portsmouth Dockyard before and during the Second World War. Their testimonies show that women experienced their wartime work in different ways, with attitudes that were to impinge on employment relations, on calls for equal pay and on the provision of facilities to relieve their domestic responsibilities. Government response to these problems reveal the duality of policy decisions and the difficulties of balancing the need for labour with dominant ideals about the cultural position of women. Shifts in employment practices in wartime conditions highlight the debates around the impact of wartime work on gender divisions in the workplace and perceptions of female paid employment by both men and women at that time.