Global Women's Movement Research Articles

‘The Hand That Stirs the Pot Can Also Run the Country’: electing women to parliament in Namibia

In early 2004, 29% of Namibian Members of Parliament were women, putting Namibia fourth in continental Africa and seventeenth worldwide in terms of women's representation in a national legislature. This article sets out to determine how such a high percentage of women has been elected to the National Assembly in Namibia since independence. It suggests that electoral gains have been achieved through a combination of factors: the use of a closed list proportional representation electoral system and voluntary quotas on the part of political parties at the national level, sustained pressure over the past three to five years from a nascent women's movement influenced by the global women's movement, and the active participation of women inside and outside the country in a protracted and violent struggle for independence that was only attained in 1990. The first two factors confirm past experience and accumulated knowledge on the significance of choice of electoral system and use of quotas, and the importance of women's organisations to elected women's legislative agendas and success. The last factor deviates from experience, and from a literature that suggests that women's active participation in political struggles has not always translated into tangible gains for women.

The Internet and the Global Women's Movement: Using Information to Bridge the North/South Divide

The Internet and the Global Women's Movement: Using Information to Bridge the North/South Divide

Common ground or mutual exclusion?: women's movements and international relations

* 1 Introduction: Common Ground or Mutual Exclusion? Women's Movements in International Relations - Marianne Braig, Sonja Wolte * Part 1: Feminist political and theoretical practice - Between subversive transformation and appendix to patriarchal structures * 2. Women in International Relations: What Impact on the Discipline? - Marysia Zalewski * 3. Impact of the Global Women's Movement on International Relations - Has it Happened? What Has Happened? - Nighat Said Khan * 4. Accommodation or Transformation? Women's Movements and International Relations -Some remarks on Marysia Zalewski's and Nighat Said Khan's Contributions - Christa Wichterich * Part 2. Developing the Mainstream or Mainstreaming Women into Development? * 5. Mainstreaming Gender - a Critical Revision - Claudia v. Braunmuhl * 6. Reclaiming the Empowerment Discourse: A Challenge to Feminists - Carolyn Medel-Anonuevo * 7. Women's Interest in Social Policy - Rhetorics and Realities of Social Investment Funds - Renate Rott * Part 3. Instrumental silence? Women and Gender in conflict management theory and practice * 8. Engendering the Field of Conflict Management? Why Gender Does Not Matter! Thoughts from a Theoretical Perspective - Cordula Reimann * 9. Making a Difference? The Inclusion of Gender into Institutional Conflict Management Policies - Donna Pankhurst * 10. War in Empty Rooms and the Sudanese Women's Union - Fatima Ahmed Ibrahim * Part 4. Women's Human Rights - New Spaces for Women's Activism? * 11. Global Women's Politics: Towards the Globalizing of Women's Human Rights? - Uta Ruppert. * 12. Economic and Social Rights of Women - A West African Perspective - Akua Kuenyehia * 13. Claiming Rights and Contesting Spaces: Women's Movements and the International Women's Human Rights Discourse in Africa - Sonja Wolte * Part 5. Feminist Intrusions into the Discipline of International Relations ? - Perspectives from the Mainstream * 14. Difference and Dialogue in Development - Lothar Brock * 15. Feminism and Mainstream International Relations Theory - Harald Muller * 16. Feminism, Human Rights, and International Relations - Gert Krell

HIV/AIDS, globalisation and the international women's movement

The spread of the HIV/AIDS pandemic is closely connected to processes of globalisation in the South and, in particular, in Africa. It is clear that, for the most part, these processes are bad for poor people, women, and a range of marginalised groups, both within the global South and in some communities within the North. While globalisation certainly has a strong relationship to AIDS, groups such as the Treatment Action Campaign are fighting back and demonstrating that in the new world order the need for a vigilant civil society is all the more important. At the global level, feminists from the North have not as yet engaged with HIV/AIDS as a critical issue. Given that in my country (South Africa), HIV prevalence hovers at about 22 per cent, and not a weekend goes by without a funeral of someone my age whose death no one can explain, it feels like there is an almost deafening silence on AIDS in the global women's movement. In this article, I propose that by analysing the complex intersections between different forms of inequality, feminists from the South can move such critical issues further up the global agenda.

Globalization, Gender, and Work: Perspectives on Global Regulation

abstract This article proposes a working definition of globalization, which, although recognizing power asymmetries and risks, focuses on the changing options of actors. I link globalization to the options of diverse actors such as feminist networks and supranational and state institutions and enterprises. These options are related to resources, power, and capacities. The United Nations Decades of Women provided a dramatically opening opportunity structure for the global women's movement that could enlarge and diversify their options. They had developed a common charter while respecting differences and capacities for global orientation. Finally, I illustrate the argument by looking at processes of feminist regulations, which were negotiated by women's movements in Japan and Germany. Both cases suggest that negotiations and regulations in the global context are possible from an asymmetric position and that innovative capacities for transnational and global orientation and horizontal organization are crucial. Further research is necessary on innovative and egalitarian forms of regulation in globalization.

Globalization from Below: Toward a Collectively Rational and Democratic Global Commonwealth

This article presents a model of the structures and processes of the modern world-system and proposes a project to transform the system into a democratic and collectively rational global commonwealth. Popular transnational social movements are challenging the ideological hegemony of corporate capitalism. The global women's movement, the labor movement, environmentalist movements, and indigenous movements are attempting to form strong alliances that can challenge the domination of an emerging transnational capitalist class. This article argues that new democratic socialist states in the semiperiphery will be crucial allies and sources of support for the antisystemic movements.

Globalization from Below: Toward a Collectively Rational and Democratic Global Commonwealth

This article presents a model of the structures and processes of the modern world-system and proposes a project to transform the system into a democratic and collectively rational global commonwealth. Popular transnational social movements are challenging the ideological hegemony of corporate capitalism. The global women's movement, the labor movement, environmentalist movements, and indigenous movements are attempting to form strong alliances that can challenge the domination of an emerging transnational capitalist class. This article argues that new democratic socialist states in the semiperiphery will be crucial allies and sources of support for the antisystemic movements.