Routledge ISS Gender, Sexuality and Development Studies – serie

In 1994, BRAC, the world's largest NGO, made headlines by putting women's rights centre stage in Bangladesh, one of the poorest countries in the world. The Gender Quality Action Learning (GQAL) Programme was one of the very first large-scale efforts to mainstream gender equality and aimed to weave objectives of gender equality throughout its own microfinance, education and health services. Advancing Gender Equality in Bangladesh describes the history, implementation, and outcome of this major 20-year initiative and discusses the lessons learnt throughout the fight to achieve gender equality outcomes in an effort to provide a tangible framework for future organizations interested in promoting gender equality and social inclusion. At a time when many gender equality programmes are still relatively young, this book offers a unique opportunity to track 20 years of intervention within a theoretical and cultural context and provides a platform for ongoing discussion about the roles of empowerment and gender transformation as agents for social change. This book provides an in-depth analysis of how strategies for change have operated in practice and will be of considerable interest to students, researchers and practitioners of international development, gender studies and social justice theory as well as those interested in a new practical methodology of the gender role framework.

This book explores the sex lives of women with disabilities in Nepal, showing that many women suffer more than men despite prevailing disability policies that emphasize nondiscrimination against people with disabilities. It also argues that far from general perceptions of women as asexual, women with disabilities are capable of leading highly creative and fulfilling sexual lives. Using critical sexual theory and postcolonial studies as critical frameworks, the book investigates the narratives of authors with disabilities, exploring policy gaps and the need for supportive gender and sexual policies through the words of those affected. In particular, the book analyzes five female Nepali authors with disabilities: Radhika Dahal, Jhamak Ghimire, Sabitri Karki, Parijaat, and Mira Sahi, demonstrating the need for supportive gender policies to address the emotional and psychological needs of women with disabilities. Overall, the book argues that disciplinary discourses in practice often consider sex or sexuality as taboo, barely recognizing women in the context of marriage and family, and therefore creating gaps between policies and marginalized narratives. This book provides important insights into sex and disability within the context of the Global South, and as such will be of interest not only to researchers working on Nepal but also to scholars across gender studies, disability studies, international development, and postcolonialism.

This book analyses the structuring role that gender plays for accessing work, experiencing work, and working conditions in Pakistan.Considering how these structures have been challenged and changed, the collection provides a fine-grained engagement with the role of gender at work in Pakistan against the backdrop of policy and academic discourses that often invisibilise the work and employment of women and transgender persons while normalising a male breadwinner model and masculine norms in and beyond the workplace. The book engages explicitly with feminist thought from South Asia and informs wider feminist discourses with fresh perspectives from Pakistani thinkers. Chapters straddle the analysis of occupations as diverse as agricultural labour, home-based industrial outwork, and domestic and unpaid care work. In line with transnational feminist thought, this book contextualises gendered labouring practices whilst paying attention to how gendered relations at work are embedded within cross-border dynamics, colonial histories and the global political economy. This wide perspective includes a critical engagement with neoliberal discourses around women’s paid employment as empowerment and the celebration of women’s entrepreneurship. Taking on board how gender can become a resource for resistance, this book counters and complicates the trope of ‘victimised’ Southern or Muslim women.Informed by disciplines including organisation theory, sociology, economics and social psychology, and including contributions from practitioners, government and NGO workers and academics, this book will be of interest to scholars and professionals concerned with challenging binary notions of gender in the workplace, and how this is complicated through the intersections of gender with ethnic, class, caste, religious, generational and other social divisions and hierarchies in the global South.

The Open Access version of this book, available at https://doi.org/10.4324/9781351245623, has been made available under a Creative Commons Attribution-Non Commercial-No Derivatives 4.0 license. The fact that women have achieved higher levels of political inclusion within low- and middle-income countries has generated much speculation about whether this is reaping broader benefits in tackling gender-based inequalities. This book uncovers the multiple political dynamics that influence governments to adopt and implement gender equity policies, pushing the debate beyond simply the role of women’s inclusion in influencing policy. Bringing the politics of development into discussion with feminist literature on women's empowerment, the book proposes the new concept of ‘power domains’ as a way to capture how inter-elite bargaining, coalitional politics, and social movement activism combine to shape policies that promote gender equity.In particular, the book investigates the conditions under which countries in sub-Saharan Africa and South Asia have adopted legislation against domestic violence, which remains widespread in many developing countries. The book demonstrates that women’s presence in formal politics and policy spaces does not fully explain the pace in adopting and implementing domestic violence law. Underlying drivers of change within broader domains of power also include the role of clientelistic politics and informal processes of bargaining, coalition-building, and persuasion; the discursive framing of gender-equitable ideas; and how transnational norms influence women’s political inclusion and gender-inclusive policy outcomes. The comparative approach across Uganda, Rwanda, South Africa, Ghana, India, and Bangladesh demonstrates how advancing gender equality varies by political context and according to the interests surrounding a particular issue.Negotiating Gender Equity in the Global South will be of interest to students and scholars of gender and development, as well as to activists within governments, political parties, nongovernmental organizations, women’s movements, and donor agencies, at national and international levels, who are looking to develop effective strategies for advancing gender equality.

South Asia is the region with the highest number of slaves globally according to the Global Slavery Index. Bonded labour affects between 15 and 20 million labourers within the region, and is shaped by locally specific interconnections between ethnicity, class, caste and, critically, gender structures. Masculinity and Modern Slavery in Nepal explores the role of masculinity in shaping the structures and experience of slavery and subsequent freedom. While many I/NGOs and human rights organisations use freedom from slavery as a powerful and emotive goal, the lived reality of freedom for many bonded labourers often results in disappointment and frustration as they navigate diverse expectations of masculinity. Taking Nepal as a case study, the book illustrates how men’s gendered experiences of bondedness and freedom can inform perspectives on the transition to freedom and modernity in South Asia more broadly. Researchers of modern slavery, gender studies, and South Asian studies will be interested in the rich analysis on offer in this book.

Gender Justice and Human Rights in International Development Assistance provides a critical analysis of how frameworks of gender equality play out in the field of international development assistance, at theoretical, international legislative and policy levels, donor and national policy levels and programme levels. If current dominant theoretical perspectives are not interrogated, the consequences could be that gender inequalities and injustices are inadequately addressed, or that opportunities are missed to impact on poverty reduction and on transformative gender changes. Through a renewed interpretation of gender equality in IDA, the book aims to show the way towards a more effective response to gender inequalities and injustices faced by women in developing countries.Drawing on 20 years of experience working with IDA policies and programming across three continents, this book makes an important contribution to the active and dynamic field of critical feminism, as well as providing practical illustrations on how such critical thinking might contribute to gender transformational changes. Gender Justice and Human Rights in International Development Assistance will be important reading for scholars and upper level students working in the fields of gender equality, human rights, development assistance, foreign affairs, international law, and international relations.

A growing number of governments have made commitments to achieving gender equality and women's rights, with many using gender responsive budgeting (GRB) to allocate resources for the delivery of economic policy and governance that benefit men and women equally. At a time when GRB is growing in global traction, this book investigates what it can deliver for gender equality and state resilience in contexts where the state is weak or prone to violence, such as in Timor-Leste.Gender-Responsive Budgeting in Fragile States: The Case of Timor-Leste uses the Timor-Leste case to investigate whether gender equality reform can be adopted at the same time as establishing economic and institutional fundamentals. While some may have thought that the adoption of GRB strategy in 2008 was premature, Monica Costa argues that GRB initiatives have contributed to budget accountability and transparency, and ultimately improved policy and budget processes and decisions. This multi-disciplinary analysis of a decade of GRB demonstrates why GRB is important to inform the debate on state fragility-resilience and argues that fragile states cannot defer gender equality in the name of getting the economic and institutional basics right. While a growing number of fragile states have taken steps to make their budget more gender responsive, questions remain for economists and policy makers about what can be achieved, and how. Gender Responsive Budgeting in Fragile States is the first international publication on GRB in fragile state contexts and will be of interest to researchers, upper level students, policy makers and NGOs with an interest in policy, economics, gender and development.

Teenage pregnancy is seen as a problem by researchers and policymakers alike all over the world, but particularly so in the context of developing countries. Here, it is seen as an obstacle to personal and national development, exacerbating the gender gap in education, and placing an additional financial burden on low income families. This book considers the opposition between pregnancy and parenthood on the one hand, and education on the other, using the specific case of in-school pregnancy in Mozambique.Drawing on the voices of young people, their families, and their teachers, this book aims to build an understanding of how individuals and communities react to in-school pregnancy policies. The result is a critical challenge of current policy guidelines that indicate pregnant schoolgirls should be transferred to night courses, initially set up to boost adult literacy. The book also demonstrates that young people operate within a range of constantly shifting and interweaving normative frameworks, and that a nuanced understanding of their agency can only be achieved by synthesising their individual perceptions with an understanding of the social, cultural, and historical contexts in which they operate. Concluding by stepping outside of the Mozambique case, this book aims to appeal to scholars and policymakers looking at development, gender, and education within Mozambique, but also within the Global South more generally.

The Open Access version of this book, available at https://doi.org/10.4324/9781351245623, has been made available under a Creative Commons Attribution-Non Commercial-No Derivatives 4.0 license. The fact that women have achieved higher levels of political inclusion within low- and middle-income countries has generated much speculation about whether this is reaping broader benefits in tackling gender-based inequalities. This book uncovers the multiple political dynamics that influence governments to adopt and implement gender equity policies, pushing the debate beyond simply the role of women’s inclusion in influencing policy. Bringing the politics of development into discussion with feminist literature on women's empowerment, the book proposes the new concept of ‘power domains’ as a way to capture how inter-elite bargaining, coalitional politics, and social movement activism combine to shape policies that promote gender equity.In particular, the book investigates the conditions under which countries in sub-Saharan Africa and South Asia have adopted legislation against domestic violence, which remains widespread in many developing countries. The book demonstrates that women’s presence in formal politics and policy spaces does not fully explain the pace in adopting and implementing domestic violence law. Underlying drivers of change within broader domains of power also include the role of clientelistic politics and informal processes of bargaining, coalition-building, and persuasion; the discursive framing of gender-equitable ideas; and how transnational norms influence women’s political inclusion and gender-inclusive policy outcomes. The comparative approach across Uganda, Rwanda, South Africa, Ghana, India, and Bangladesh demonstrates how advancing gender equality varies by political context and according to the interests surrounding a particular issue.Negotiating Gender Equity in the Global South will be of interest to students and scholars of gender and development, as well as to activists within governments, political parties, nongovernmental organizations, women’s movements, and donor agencies, at national and international levels, who are looking to develop effective strategies for advancing gender equality.

This book explores the gendered dimensions of recent land governance transformations across the globe in the wake of unprecedented pressures on land and natural resources. These complex contemporary forces are reconfiguring livelihoods and impacting women’s positions, their tenure security and well-being, and that of their families.Bringing together fourteen empirical community case studies from around the world, the book examines governance transformations of land and land-based resources resulting from four major processes of tenure change: commercial land based investments, the formalization of customary tenure, the privatization of communal lands, and post-conflict resettlement and redistribution reforms. Each contribution carefully analyses the gendered dimensions of these transformations, exploring both the gender impact of the land tenure reforms and the social and political economy within which these reforms materialize. The cases provide important insights for decision makers to better promote and design an effective gender lens into land tenure reforms and natural resource management policies. This book will be of great interest to researchers engaging with land and natural resource management issues from a wide variety of disciplines, including anthropology, sociology, development studies, and political science, as well as policy makers, practitioners, and activists concerned with environment, development, and social equity.

This book explores the sex lives of women with disabilities in Nepal, showing that many women suffer more than men despite prevailing disability policies that emphasize nondiscrimination against people with disabilities. It also argues that far from general perceptions of women as asexual, women with disabilities are capable of leading highly creative and fulfilling sexual lives. Using critical sexual theory and postcolonial studies as critical frameworks, the book investigates the narratives of authors with disabilities, exploring policy gaps and the need for supportive gender and sexual policies through the words of those affected. In particular, the book analyzes five female Nepali authors with disabilities: Radhika Dahal, Jhamak Ghimire, Sabitri Karki, Parijaat, and Mira Sahi, demonstrating the need for supportive gender policies to address the emotional and psychological needs of women with disabilities. Overall, the book argues that disciplinary discourses in practice often consider sex or sexuality as taboo, barely recognizing women in the context of marriage and family, and therefore creating gaps between policies and marginalized narratives. This book provides important insights into sex and disability within the context of the Global South, and as such will be of interest not only to researchers working on Nepal but also to scholars across gender studies, disability studies, international development, and postcolonialism.

This book explores the sex lives of women with disabilities in Nepal, showing that many women suffer more than men despite prevailing disability policies that emphasize nondiscrimination against people with disabilities. It also argues that far from general perceptions of women as asexual, women with disabilities are capable of leading highly creative and fulfilling sexual lives. Using critical sexual theory and postcolonial studies as critical frameworks, the book investigates the narratives of authors with disabilities, exploring policy gaps and the need for supportive gender and sexual policies through the words of those affected. In particular, the book analyzes five female Nepali authors with disabilities: Radhika Dahal, Jhamak Ghimire, Sabitri Karki, Parijaat, and Mira Sahi, demonstrating the need for supportive gender policies to address the emotional and psychological needs of women with disabilities. Overall, the book argues that disciplinary discourses in practice often consider sex or sexuality as taboo, barely recognizing women in the context of marriage and family, and therefore creating gaps between policies and marginalized narratives. This book provides important insights into sex and disability within the context of the Global South, and as such will be of interest not only to researchers working on Nepal but also to scholars across gender studies, disability studies, international development, and postcolonialism.

This book explores the sex lives of women with disabilities in Nepal, showing that many women suffer more than men despite prevailing disability policies that emphasize nondiscrimination against people with disabilities. It also argues that far from general perceptions of women as asexual, women with disabilities are capable of leading highly creative and fulfilling sexual lives. Using critical sexual theory and postcolonial studies as critical frameworks, the book investigates the narratives of authors with disabilities, exploring policy gaps and the need for supportive gender and sexual policies through the words of those affected. In particular, the book analyzes five female Nepali authors with disabilities: Radhika Dahal, Jhamak Ghimire, Sabitri Karki, Parijaat, and Mira Sahi, demonstrating the need for supportive gender policies to address the emotional and psychological needs of women with disabilities. Overall, the book argues that disciplinary discourses in practice often consider sex or sexuality as taboo, barely recognizing women in the context of marriage and family, and therefore creating gaps between policies and marginalized narratives. This book provides important insights into sex and disability within the context of the Global South, and as such will be of interest not only to researchers working on Nepal but also to scholars across gender studies, disability studies, international development, and postcolonialism.

Teenage pregnancy is seen as a problem by researchers and policymakers alike all over the world, but particularly so in the context of developing countries. Here, it is seen as an obstacle to personal and national development, exacerbating the gender gap in education, and placing an additional financial burden on low income families. This book considers the opposition between pregnancy and parenthood on the one hand, and education on the other, using the specific case of in-school pregnancy in Mozambique.Drawing on the voices of young people, their families, and their teachers, this book aims to build an understanding of how individuals and communities react to in-school pregnancy policies. The result is a critical challenge of current policy guidelines that indicate pregnant schoolgirls should be transferred to night courses, initially set up to boost adult literacy. The book also demonstrates that young people operate within a range of constantly shifting and interweaving normative frameworks, and that a nuanced understanding of their agency can only be achieved by synthesising their individual perceptions with an understanding of the social, cultural, and historical contexts in which they operate. Concluding by stepping outside of the Mozambique case, this book aims to appeal to scholars and policymakers looking at development, gender, and education within Mozambique, but also within the Global South more generally.

This book addresses the intersections of gender, sexuality and social justice in relation to dominant development and policy discourses and interventions. Bringing together young scholars from Latin America, Africa and Asia, the book challenges dominant assumptions on sexuality in development discourse, policy and practice and proposes alternative approaches. Reflecting on both the ‘global north’ and the ‘global south’, this book investigates key social justice issues, from teenage pregnancy, child marriage discourses, sexual empowerment, to sexual diversity, female imprisonment and sexuality, militarism and sexuality, anti-trafficking policies and processes of racialization and othering in the context of migration. Overall, the book challenges binary constructs and argues for an intersectional perspective on gender and sexual diversity as a problem of structural inequality that interacts with other systems of inequality, based on race, age, class and geopolitics. This book will be of interest to social scientists and activists, as well as development scholars and practitioners engaging with questions of gender, sexuality and social justice.

This book showcases Global South theorizations and understandings of gender.By taking voices from the margins and putting them center stage, this book provides an important example of decoloniality in action, challenging a field that continues to be rooted in Western Feminist epistemology. This book first analyzes the history and development of gender discourse, before going on to investigate non-Western philosophy and frameworks around gender. Each chapter presents instances of decoloniality in action, with possible retheorizations and rationalizations of how to be decolonial within gender discourse and praxis. This book concludes by considering what the future implications of a truly decolonial gender discourse and praxis would be.Offering detailed empirical accounts of decoloniality in action, this book will be a useful guide for researchers of gender and post-colonial studies.

This book showcases Global South theorizations and understandings of gender.By taking voices from the margins and putting them center stage, this book provides an important example of decoloniality in action, challenging a field that continues to be rooted in Western Feminist epistemology. This book first analyzes the history and development of gender discourse, before going on to investigate non-Western philosophy and frameworks around gender. Each chapter presents instances of decoloniality in action, with possible retheorizations and rationalizations of how to be decolonial within gender discourse and praxis. This book concludes by considering what the future implications of a truly decolonial gender discourse and praxis would be.Offering detailed empirical accounts of decoloniality in action, this book will be a useful guide for researchers of gender and post-colonial studies.

This book challenges us to rethink the foundations of gender and development and how a genuinely pluralistic approach to gender justice might be built. Written against the backdrop of shrinking aid budgets, political disillusionment and renewed calls for localisation, it argues that the central challenge facing gender and development is not simply conflict between feminism and its critics, but a deeper epistemological and ethical problem rooted in the dominance of Euro-North American frameworks and their encounter with diverse religious, cultural and gender worldviews.Drawing on fifteen years of interdisciplinary ethnographic research in East and West Africa and migrant communities in Europe, the book examines how a transnational epistemic community—spanning academia, consultancies, NGOs and state actors—has shaped and sustained dominant gender paradigms in international development. It shows how these paradigms have marginalised non-Western, religious and tradition-oriented perspectives, while also tracing how grassroots actors, faith communities and feminist movements negotiate, adapt and sometimes subvert their coloniality. At the same time, the book acknowledges the persistence of gender inequalities and abuses, often justified in cultural or religious terms, alongside the continuing importance of feminist and human rights interventions in cross-cultural responses. Rather than advocating either universalist or culturally relativist solutions, it proposes an Epistemology of Disagreement as a practical and ethical framework for engaging divergent gender worldviews through reflexivity, humility and sustained deliberation across difference.Drawing on insights from Project dldl/ድልድል, the book offers both a critical reappraisal of the contemporary gender and development apparatus and a practical vision for more equitable partnerships, rebalanced knowledge production and context-sensitive approaches to gender justice in a rapidly evolving global landscape.

Gender Justice and Human Rights in International Development Assistance provides a critical analysis of how frameworks of gender equality play out in the field of international development assistance, at theoretical, international legislative and policy levels, donor and national policy levels and programme levels. If current dominant theoretical perspectives are not interrogated, the consequences could be that gender inequalities and injustices are inadequately addressed, or that opportunities are missed to impact on poverty reduction and on transformative gender changes. Through a renewed interpretation of gender equality in IDA, the book aims to show the way towards a more effective response to gender inequalities and injustices faced by women in developing countries.Drawing on 20 years of experience working with IDA policies and programming across three continents, this book makes an important contribution to the active and dynamic field of critical feminism, as well as providing practical illustrations on how such critical thinking might contribute to gender transformational changes. Gender Justice and Human Rights in International Development Assistance will be important reading for scholars and upper level students working in the fields of gender equality, human rights, development assistance, foreign affairs, international law, and international relations.

A growing number of governments have made commitments to achieving gender equality and women's rights, with many using gender responsive budgeting (GRB) to allocate resources for the delivery of economic policy and governance that benefit men and women equally. At a time when GRB is growing in global traction, this book investigates what it can deliver for gender equality and state resilience in contexts where the state is weak or prone to violence, such as in Timor-Leste.Gender-Responsive Budgeting in Fragile States: The Case of Timor-Leste uses the Timor-Leste case to investigate whether gender equality reform can be adopted at the same time as establishing economic and institutional fundamentals. While some may have thought that the adoption of GRB strategy in 2008 was premature, Monica Costa argues that GRB initiatives have contributed to budget accountability and transparency, and ultimately improved policy and budget processes and decisions. This multi-disciplinary analysis of a decade of GRB demonstrates why GRB is important to inform the debate on state fragility-resilience and argues that fragile states cannot defer gender equality in the name of getting the economic and institutional basics right. While a growing number of fragile states have taken steps to make their budget more gender responsive, questions remain for economists and policy makers about what can be achieved, and how. Gender Responsive Budgeting in Fragile States is the first international publication on GRB in fragile state contexts and will be of interest to researchers, upper level students, policy makers and NGOs with an interest in policy, economics, gender and development.

South Asia is the region with the highest number of slaves globally according to the Global Slavery Index. Bonded labour affects between 15 and 20 million labourers within the region, and is shaped by locally specific interconnections between ethnicity, class, caste and, critically, gender structures. Masculinity and Modern Slavery in Nepal explores the role of masculinity in shaping the structures and experience of slavery and subsequent freedom. While many I/NGOs and human rights organisations use freedom from slavery as a powerful and emotive goal, the lived reality of freedom for many bonded labourers often results in disappointment and frustration as they navigate diverse expectations of masculinity. Taking Nepal as a case study, the book illustrates how men’s gendered experiences of bondedness and freedom can inform perspectives on the transition to freedom and modernity in South Asia more broadly. Researchers of modern slavery, gender studies, and South Asian studies will be interested in the rich analysis on offer in this book.

This book addresses the intersections of gender, sexuality and social justice in relation to dominant development and policy discourses and interventions. Bringing together young scholars from Latin America, Africa and Asia, the book challenges dominant assumptions on sexuality in development discourse, policy and practice and proposes alternative approaches. Reflecting on both the ‘global north’ and the ‘global south’, this book investigates key social justice issues, from teenage pregnancy, child marriage discourses, sexual empowerment, to sexual diversity, female imprisonment and sexuality, militarism and sexuality, anti-trafficking policies and processes of racialization and othering in the context of migration. Overall, the book challenges binary constructs and argues for an intersectional perspective on gender and sexual diversity as a problem of structural inequality that interacts with other systems of inequality, based on race, age, class and geopolitics. This book will be of interest to social scientists and activists, as well as development scholars and practitioners engaging with questions of gender, sexuality and social justice.

In 1994, BRAC, the world's largest NGO, made headlines by putting women's rights centre stage in Bangladesh, one of the poorest countries in the world. The Gender Quality Action Learning (GQAL) Programme was one of the very first large-scale efforts to mainstream gender equality and aimed to weave objectives of gender equality throughout its own microfinance, education and health services. Advancing Gender Equality in Bangladesh describes the history, implementation, and outcome of this major 20-year initiative and discusses the lessons learnt throughout the fight to achieve gender equality outcomes in an effort to provide a tangible framework for future organizations interested in promoting gender equality and social inclusion. At a time when many gender equality programmes are still relatively young, this book offers a unique opportunity to track 20 years of intervention within a theoretical and cultural context and provides a platform for ongoing discussion about the roles of empowerment and gender transformation as agents for social change. This book provides an in-depth analysis of how strategies for change have operated in practice and will be of considerable interest to students, researchers and practitioners of international development, gender studies and social justice theory as well as those interested in a new practical methodology of the gender role framework.