While significant progress has been made in improving the wellbeing of women and girls around the world, a gender gap still exists between men and women which is very evident in Ghana. Gender inequalities continue to persist in Ghana because of cultural gender norms that exalt and favor men and put women in subordinate and subservient roles. These cultural gender norms hinder women's development and widen gender inequality between men and women in different system levels of society. Therefore, there is a need to examine the influence of these cultural gender norms on women's lives using a systems framework to capture a full picture of women's experiences at these systemic levels of society. In this paper, we use Bronfenbrenner's ecological systems multilevel approach to examine the impact of these cultural gender norms on women's lives at the different system levels. We conducted a desk review of studies published in sub-Saharan Africa focused on cultural gender norms and gender inequality. The findings showed that the impact of cultural gender norms on gender inequality at the levels of the four social systems (microsystem, mesosystem, exosystem, and macrosystem) are interconnected, creating and widening the inequality gap between men and women. Cultural gender norms influence gender role socialization in the home, which then transmits to the school and religious institutions as the mesosystem. At the school level, cultural gender norms act as a mesosystem manifest through discriminatory classroom practices, gender role assignment of school responsibilities, and gender role representations in textbooks. In Christianity and Islam, cultural gender norms create doctrines that enforce men's domination over women, and, in the workplace, cultural gender norms have gendered labor by defining a man's occupation and limiting women to domestic and low-paying occupations. The mass media is the exosystem that displays images of women to fit cultural gender norms of what is defined as acceptable for women. Finally, the macrosystem is the overall sociocultural norms that have been accepted by society that perpetuate discriminatory practices against women.

© 2019 Journal of International Women's Studies. Gendered social norms are difficult to overcome, due to a lack of consensus among legal, religious, and social institutions on the direction that will result in new social norms. In the case of Pakistan, which ranks sixth on the list of the most dangerous countries for women, it is not possible to change gendered social norms regarding domestic violence by only focusing on legal reform since, in its social context, the act of domestic violence is not in itself regarded as a serious offence. This article explores reform in Punjab, where deeply entrenched legal structural obstacles and discriminatory gender norms prevent women from accessing justice. The paper draws on a new framework for influencing changes in individuals' behaviour to reduce the condoning of domestic violence. Using a mixed-methods approach the paper introduces a new initiative of women for institutional reform undertaken by the Strategic Reforms Unit (SRU) in Pakistan, to examine the role of social norms in normalizing the practice of domestic violence. This initiative provides an opportunity for examining how these prevalent social norms can be changed by both improving women's access to legal processes regarding the registration and prosecution of crimes as well as addressing public shame associated with the wearing of a tracking device by the assailant. This model of institutional reform of the criminal justice system could provide the way forward to close the large gap between incidents of violence against women (VAW) and the low level of convictions in many societies. The paper concludes that such institutional reform could be adapted for use in other countries to comprehensively reduce VAW cases and to increase the success in prosecution and sentencing of perpetrators of such crimes.

A substantial amount of literature dealing with conceptualisations of the nation has neglected the importance that gender and the politics of reproduction play in the construction of national identities. Analysing images of political campaigns and activists as well as public discourses on motherhood, abortion and childcare, I will illustrate the importance that gender and sexuality assumed in German nation-building projects before and after its unification in 1990. After 1949, East and West German ideas of nationhood were premised on opposing ideas of gender roles, in that politicians within these two German nations mobilised distinct gender identities to assert their respective political system as superior and progressive. While in East Germany, the progressiveness of the socialist project was measured along the lines of women’s integration into the labour force; in West Germany, the idea that a woman’s identity was primarily rooted in motherhood played an influential role in nationalist discourses. Once East and West Germany reunified in 1990, these opposing ideas of gender roles clashed. This became particularly visible in the context of political debates around abortion and childcare. An analysis of these debates suggests that the “new” unified German nation was premised upon a story in which the West German idea of the housewife-breadwinner model prevailed. This was diametrically opposed to what was framed as the East German “woman-worker” who had free access to abortion, and was abjected as immoral and backward. Analysing how such a national story was constructed is highly valuable, as it elucidates the ways in which gender has become a constitutive and structural element in the nation-building process of unified Germany to the present day.

The Arab Spring, a revolutionary wave of protests and rebellions, and a process of regime change and democratization is sweeping the Arab world, but marginally touching women’s issues in Kuwait. While Arab women in Tunisia, Libya, Egypt, Morocco, Yemen, Jordan, and Syria are active participants and co-beneficiaries of the process of change, Kuwaiti women have lost their electoral gains made in 2009 in the latest elections held in February of 2012. The objective of this paper is to examine the impact of Arab Spring on women in Kuwait, and their continued struggle for political participation in the country. It will also highlight the accomplishments of the women’s movement and its inability to utilize the general atmosphere supportive of women’s rights in Kuwait to maintain its parliamentary representation in the Kuwaiti National Assembly.

Abstract Although many measures have been taken by the majority of Arab countries enhance women's representation in decision-making positions, women's participation in public life and positions of power have not been achieved the desired level. The Arab region ranks the lowest in the world in terms of women's participation in parliaments. The objective of this paper is examine the Political participation of women in the Arab countries and identify different challenges that impede Arab women participation in politics and decision making. Challenges include: cultural factors, the stereotyped image of women, women's low self-confidence, lack of coordination among women's organizations, effectiveness/efficiency of women empowerment programs, shortcomings in the institutional and legal frameworks, practices of political parties and election process, skepticism about the Agenda for Women empowerment, the process of development of Women empowerment strategies. Thus, challenges facing women in politics are immense. They require the consolidation of all efforts with great belief in women's capabilities as human beings who are able lead and shoulder the responsibility in the building of their nations. Keywords: Arab women in politics, Arab women and equality, Arab women in development Setting the Scene at the Global Level: During the last decades, the world has witnessed special International attention women's issues, and devoted 1975 as the International Year for Women. The year of 1975 laid the groundwork for the Convention on the Elimination of All Forms of Discrimination against Women (CEDAW) during the first International conference on women held in Mexico in 1979 (2). The Mexico conference was followed by other main significant international conferences on women held in Copenhagen (1980), Nairobi (1985) (3). The pace of the attention women's issues has accelerated in the beginning of the nineties, with the growing international concern about the persistence of discrimination against women and the marginalization of their role, the consequent waste of energy, and the disruption of the fundamental forces in the overall development process. The International Conference on Population and Development (ICPD) in Cairo in 1994 had the major impact on the emerging concern of gender issues. This was followed by the Beijing conference in 1995, which paved the way strengthen women's participation in decision-making process and higher positions and endorsed the cumulative effect of the previous efforts of all conferences emphasizing on the states' accountability and commitment adopt concrete plans of action that respond Beijing's Platform for Action (BPFA) (4). In further pursuit of women's rights, the Millennium Development Goals (MDG's) in 2000 clearly specified the importance of women development in its Goal 3; to promote gender equality and empowerment of women. Other MDG's have not explicitly stated gender as a target; however, women's issues are addressed implicitly in many areas of the MDG's such as poverty, education, and health (5). The Arab region was not in isolation from the global debate on women and human rights, where the political will has played a major role in enhancing Arab women development. Arab countries have witnessed major shifts over the past decade in political, economic, and social development. The Arab region, comprises 22 states that are members of the Arab League, is defined by a complex set of issues, including the Arab-Israeli conflict and its repercussions, unstable economic conditions and trends, population-resource imbalances and environmental stress. The Arab Islamic cultural heritage and common Arabic language have preserved a unique character for the region and its peoples. Democratization in the Arab region remains a slow process which faces various setbacks including regional instability and conflict, economic imbalances, and the lack of freedom engage in a meaningful democratic process. …

Incarcerated women are among the most vulnerable and perhaps the least studied populations in the US. Significant proportions of female inmates are substance users, and many living in unstable housing conditions or being homeless. Female inmates are often at high risk of engaging in sex exchange for drugs or housing needs. While a disproportionate number of incarcerated women have experienced childhood household adversities and maltreatments, the effects of these childhood experiences on psychosocial and behavioral outcomes of this population in later life. We apply a life course perspective to examine these pathways in a sample of incarcerated women in Cook County, Illinois. Findings demonstrated lasting, but differential, effects of household adversities and childhood abuse on subsequent life risks and opportunities among these women.

Russia on the Eve of Modernity is a pioneering exploration of a world that has been largely destroyed by revolutionary upheavals and obscured in historical memory by scholarly focus on elites. Drawing on traditional religious texts, ethnographic materials and contemporary accounts, this book brings to light the ideas and perceptions of the ordinary Russian people of the towns and countryside who continued to live in a pre-modern, non-Western culture that showed great resilience to the very end of the Romanov Empire. Leonid Heretz offers an overview of traditional Russian understandings of the world and its workings, and shows popular responses to events from the assassination of Alexander II to the First World War. This history of ordinary Russians illuminates key themes ranging from peasant monarchism to apocalyptic responses to intrusions from the modern world and will appeal to scholars of Russian history and the history of religion in modern Europe.