Gender Empowerment in Black Widow (2021)

This longitudinal evaluation of gender inequalities and economic growth addresses key questions in the evolving debate over the character of gender differentiation and the goals of womens empowerment. These questions include: 1) whether the impact of strategies of economic growth served to enhance or undermine the status of women; 2) whether changes in the status of women were accompanied by significant changes in gender inequality; and 3) the implications for existing debates. Section I reviews several sets of literature pertinent to the questions using three general approaches: modernization-neoclassical women in development and gender and development. Section II presents the data and methods used in the evaluation. The research assessed the contending interpretations reviewed in the first section by combining another set of cross-sectional and longitudinal data on womens status and inequalities between men and women with other existing indicators. Section III discusses the results in the following order: 1) cross-sectional patterns in womens status; 2) trends in womens status; 3) cross-sectional patterns in inequality between men and women; 4) trends in inequality between men and women; and 5) conclusion. Finally section IV presents an overall discussion of the findings of the whole longitudinal evaluation.

How do energy professionals in the Global South facilitate the brokerage of gender equity and empowerment in energy access? Energy sector professionals, including planners and members of non-governmental organisations (NGOs), are crucial development actors in off-grid contexts. They operate at the intersection between grassroots-level energy access in off-grid household and community buildings and overarching policy frameworks. However, despite their central role, the relationship between their professional practices and gender empowerment in energy access has received little attention. This paper investigates ‘energy brokers’ across Ghana, India, Nigeria and Pakistan based on interviews (<em>n</em> = 86). Subsequent thematic analysis explores these energy brokers’ overarching understandings of gender equity and empowerment, their agency, and brokering practices for energy access (including in relation to emerging energy technologies). Analysis shows ‘differentiated brokerage’ in that energy professionals from the NGOs and the delivery sectors are often better positioned to broker gender equity and women’s empowerment in energy access. However, linkages between equitable access and empowerment need to be better understood, especially at the ‘top’ and go beyond women’s economic productivity. Women’s participation across supply chains of emerging energy-access technology, in energy governance and as energy brokers needs strengthening. <em><strong>Practice relevance</strong></em> Energy professionals occupy an important ‘middle’ position and can help to create changes to overcome gender bias in access to energy. They facilitate the brokerage (understandings, agency and practices) of gender equity and empowerment in energy access in off-grid contexts, including household and community buildings. The evidence from this study shows the performance of energy professionals is critical in facilitating women’s empowerment in energy access. Key recommendations are: (1) energy professionals at the top need to recognise differentiated brokerage across the grassroots–policy spectrum to better identify and equip key actors; (2) energy brokers need to move beyond gender neutrality and economic participation acting on the breadth of women’s empowerment, including psychological dimensions; and (3) women’s participation across energy system transitions needs to be strengthened, with regard to energy supply chains, energy governance and as energy brokers.

Dorothy Shaw: promoting women's sexual and reproductive rights

ABSTRACTIn 2017, the Australian Government announced the creation of the Indo-Pacific Centre for Regional Health Security. In the same year, the Australian government investment in gender equality and empowerment in overseas development assistance reached the highest percentage ever recorded in Australian aid history. However, the health sector (excluding reproductive and family planning) has the lowest percentage of aid projects where gender equality is being mainstreamed as a primary objective. This article examines why this is the case and suggests what can be done to address the health aid sector’s gender gap. This article argues that in Australia’s largest health aid sector investment, the Indo-Pacific Centre for Health Security, there is a disconnect between the Australian government’s gender empowerment objective and its relative absence of gender inclusion policies and objectives. The solution is to prioritise gender inclusion across all health aid sector programming. Specifically, to study the lessons learned from the Australia’s gender inclusion practices in women’s health aid sector programming and to integrate them into the areas of health research and investment in emerging infectious disease outbreak response.

Gender and women empowerment approaches: Interventions through PRIs and CSOs in Northern India

This study deals with the Muslim Brotherhood's reception of CEDAW (Convention on the Elimination of All Forms of Discriminations against Women) in Jordan. In view of the Arab Human Development Report (AHDR) and interviews with several political actors in Jordanian society it is possible to evaluate Islamist ideas on women's rights. The main aim is to investigate whether Jordanian Islamists are promoters of or obstacles to female empowerment and gender equality. By analyzing various political stands it became apparent that Islamists, on the one hand, reject CEDAW, gender empowerment, and gender equality, and on the other promote issues which in the long run may empower women in Jordanian society. There is thus an unintentional trend towards female empowerment in the organization of the Muslim Brotherhood despite its opposition to such female politics.

At Millennium Summit in September 2000 largest gathering of world leaders adopted UN Millennium Declaration, committing their nations a new global partnership reduce extreme poverty and setting out a series of time-bound targets, all with a deadline of 2015, that have become known as Millennium Development Goals (MDGs).2 In many ways, MDGs, eclipse goals and objectives of Beijing Platform of Action. Hence, I think of MDGs as Major Distraction Gimmicks - a distraction from much more important Beijing Platform for Action (BPA) with its 12 Priority Areas of Concern,3 which represent a much closer approximation of complexity of relationships between equality and women's empowerment (MDG Goal 3), and other MDGs and targets. In particular, these are: MDG 1: Eradicating extreme poverty and hunger, Universal primary education (MDG 2), Reducing child mortality (MDG 4), Improving maternal health (MDG 5), Combating HIV/AIDS, malaria and other diseases (MDG 6), and Ensuring environmental sustainability (MDG 7 (including Target 10, Access safe water). Nevertheless, MDGs are now part of an international development framework which many countries in Caribbean have signed on to. Thus this analysis addresses question of how they be made work promote equality and empowerment in Caribbean Community (CARICOM) region. The analysis here will not be limited gender equality and women's empowerment (MDG Goal 3). It will also highlight dimensions of some of other MDGs that are closely related women's equality and empowerment - as a means and as an outcome. Finally, analysis and suggestions in relation strategies to ensure that inequalities are identified and addressed in MDG monitoring process and in national policy responses from will focus on Caribbean realities, including my own experience of working in this field for over 30 years. Suggestions are made by drawing on findings and insights on linkages between global trends, development strategies (including macroeconomic policy framework of structural adjustment) and their impact on poor and ways in which we might now approach activist interventions toward goal of women's equality and empowerment. A General Critique of Millenium Development Goals First, what be said in favour of MDGs? As UNIFEM and many others point out, that MDGs be viewed within context of the new aid agenda. They provide a common framework agreed by all governments, complete with measurable targets and indicators of progress, around which governments, UN agencies, international finance institutions and civil society alike could rally. They provide a strategic talking point for assessing what barriers achievement of goals are, and provide a tool with which hold both donor agencies and governments accountable. (White, 2001, 2002, cited by Ramya Subrahmanian, 2002:3) Regarding goal on gender equality and empowerment of women, some would say it can be celebrated as symbolic of significant impact of feminist advocacy over years in making case for gender-aware development (Ramya Subrahmanian, 2002:1), despite fact that we know emptiness of rhetorical statements on 'gender.' On other hand, there is evidently widespread awareness of limitations of MDGs: * their inadequate targets and indicators; * their restriction indicators that are quantifiable when much of what is most important, such as women's equality and empowerment, is not easily quantifiable; * their omission of important goals and targets, such as violence against women and sexual and reproductive rights; * their silence on context and institutional environment in which they are be met. The Millenium Development Goals first came my attention in response exclusion of hard-won goal of women's sexual and reproductive rights from list of goals. …

Whilst international rhetoric on HIV and AIDS frequently invokes discourses of human rights to inspire and guide action, translating universal rights talk into practice in specific settings remains a challenge. Community mobilisation is often strategy of choice. We present a case study of the Entabeni Project in South Africa – in which a foreign-funded NGO sought to work with female health volunteers in a deep rural community to increase their access to two HIV-relevant rights: women's rights (especially gender equality) and rights to health (especially access to HIV- and AIDS-related services). Whilst the project had short-term health-related successes, it was less successful in implementing a gender empowerment agenda. The concept of women's rights had no purchase with women who had little interest in directly challenging male power, foregrounding the fight against poverty as their main preoccupation. The area's traditional chief and gatekeeper insisted the project should remain ‘apolitical’. Project funders prioritised ‘numbers reached’ over a gender empowerment orientation. In the absence of (1) a marginalised group who are willing to assert their rights; and (2) a context where powerful people are willing to support these claims, ‘rights’ may be a blunt tool for HIV-related work with women in deeply oppressive and remote rural communities beyond the reach of international treaties and urban-based activist movements.

Gender equality and human rights are vital components of sustainable development. Recognising this, like many countries across the globe, Zimbabwe adopted and is in the process of implementing the Agenda 2030 for sustainable development. As such, the Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs) influence the country’s national priorities and developmental trajectories. 2030 is earmarked for the completion of the SDGs and their evaluation. That being the case, it is important to note that in Zimbabwe the realisation of (SDG,5) on achieving gender equality and empowerment of women and girls is still far from being a lived reality owing to several setbacks. This paper delineated the factors impeding the successful realisation of SDGs aimed at promoting gender equality and empowerment of women/girls in Zimbabwe. The paper adopted a qualitative research approach guided by the descriptive design. 15 participants were selected through purposive and convenient sampling and data were collected using focus group discussions and key informant interviews. Data were analysed through the Thematic Content Analysis. This study established that barriers towards the attainment of gender equality in Nyanga rural district are embedded in cultural, religious, and political factors. Other factors such as poverty and lack of policy implementation also serve as barriers towards the realisation of gender equality and empowerment of women.

Evidence from climate-smart village (CSV) approach to mainstream climate-smart agriculture (CSA) demonstrates improved productivity, income, and reduced climatic risks. However, its contribution to gender empowerment in diverse farming households is not documented. This study creates a Gender Empowerment Index for climate-smart villages (GEI-CSV) based on four major measurable indicators—political, economic, agricultural, and social. The gender gap was derived by mapping difference in empowerment levels across selected CSVs and non-CSVs. These indicators can be used as a vital tool to understand the process of gender empowerment that can trigger the entry points to achieve gender equality, which is also an important aspect in the adoption of climate-smart agriculture practices (CSAPs). The study measures empowerment at the inter-household and intra-household level across CSVs and non-CSVs from the individual household survey with both female and male members of the same household. This paper provides evidence demonstrating how gender empowerment differs in CSVs and non-CSVs from selected climate-smart villages (community-based approach) in two contrasting ecologies and socio-economic settings of India. The study documents the existing gender gap in CSVs and non-CSVs across India’s western (Haryana) and eastern (Bihar) Indo-Gangetic Plains (IGP). Irrespective of CSVs and non-CSVs, considerable differences in outlook and gender gap were observed between Bihar and Haryana. Both women and men in Bihar are less empowered than they are in Haryana. High empowerment level in CSVs than non-CSVs shows that the concept of CSVs has brought a change towards knowledge and capacity enhancement of both women and men farmers promoting gender equality in farming households with a varying scope of interventions made and required for scaling CSAPs across the diversity of farming households.

Women's rights and gender empowerment programmes are now part of the international agenda for improving global public health, the benefits of which are well documented. However, the public health community has, yet, to address how people define and understand gender equality and how they enact the process of empowerment in their lives. This study uses safe homes and respect for everyone (SHARE), an anti-violence intervention in rural Rakai, Uganda, as a case study to investigate perceptions of gender equality. Investigators analysed 12 focus groups of adult women and men to explore how macro-level concepts of gender equality are being processed on an interpersonal level and the effects on health outcomes. Respondents generally agreed that women lack basic rights. However, they also expressed widespread disagreement about the meanings of gender equality, and reported difficulties integrating the concepts of gender equality into their interpersonal relationships. Community members reported that equality, with the resulting shift in gender norms, could expose women to adverse consequences such as violence, infidelity and abandonment with increased sexual health risks, and potential adverse effects on education. Efforts to increase women's rights must occur in conjunction with community-based work on understandings of gender equality.

Introduction to the Special Issue: Gendering Global Media Policy: Critical Perspectives on “Digital Agendas”

This article aims to revisit Islamic feminist thought on the reinterpretation of the Qur'an by analyzing the views of four major figures in the movement: Aminah Wadud, Fatima Mernissi, Asma Barlas, and Riffat Hassan. This study uses a critical text analysis approach to understand the arguments and interpretations they put forward in interpreting Qur'anic verses related to gender. Through an in-depth analysis of their work in articles, books, and papers of their views. In addition, the article explores the ways in which these Islamic feminists reconstruct an understanding of sacred texts, highlighting differences in approach and common themes in their interpretations. In addition, it evaluates the impact of their reinterpretations of the Qur'an on traditional views in Muslim societies and their implications in the context of social change and gender equality. When examining Islamic feminist views on the Qur'anic reinterpretation, it is important to thoroughly understand the cultural and linguistic context of Arabic. Misconceptions regarding the interpretations of classical Muslim intellectuals, which are often considered discriminatory against women, are often due to a lack of understanding of the cultural and linguistic context of Arabic. Therefore, it is important to pay attention to linguistic and cultural contexts when interpreting sacred texts. On the other hand, feminists should also note that interpretations of the Qur'an do not always result in interpretations that are in line with their principles of gender equality. The theoretical implication is that, in an effort to understand the verses of the Qur'an related to gender issues, it is important to consider the cultural context, language, and comprehensive interpretation. There is room for dialog and deeper understanding between feminist views and traditional interpretations, by taking an approach that combines an understanding of classical Arabic culture with the values of gender equality championed by feminists.

PROTOCOL: The effects of road infrastructure, and transport and logistics services interventions on women's participation in informal and formal labour markets in low- and middle-income countries: a systematic review.

PurposeThe aim of the article is to discuss the challenges from immigration to Nordic (gender) politics, theories and research. The research question is to what extent Nordic welfare and gender equality politics is based on exclusive solidarity biased towards the native majorities. A key issue is how Nordic gender theory and research has addressed multiple inequalities. The article briefly revisits the academic debates about gender equality, diversity and multiculturalism, which arguably represent two different paradigms: multicultural approaches have addressed the accommodation of minorities with diversity as the key concept, while feminist approaches have focused on gender (in)equality with gender as the key concept.Design/methodology/approachThe intersectional approach suggests that increased migration and mobility present similar challenges for the two bodies of thought to address complex and multiple inequalities within and beyond the nation state. The main part explores “the multicultural dilemma” in greater detail focusing on the intersections between gender and etho‐national minorities in Denmark, Norway and Sweden.FindingsPerceptions of diversity and gender equality/women's rights are contextual and dynamic as intersecting diversities and inequalities are embedded in national histories, institutions and policies. Scholars have demonstrated that the discourse about women's rights and gender equality has become an intrinsic part of Nordic identities and belongings. The article suggests that the new forms of inequalities among women can be interpreted as a Nordic gender equality paradox between the relative inclusion of the native majority women and the relative marginalization of women from diverse ethnic minorities in society.Originality/valueThe intersectionality approach to gender and ethnicity in Scandinavia is in this article combined with a transnational approach to gender, diversity and migration.