Women's Nongovernmental Organizations Research Articles

Women and the Media in the Middle East: Power through Self-Expression (review)

Reviewed by: Women and the Media in the Middle East: Power through Self-Expression Christa Salamandra Women and the Media in the Middle East: Power through Self-ExpressionNaomi Sakr, editor. London: I. B. Tauris, 2004. viii+248 pp. including chapter notes, bibliography and index. £45.00 hardback, 15.99 paperback. Like the best work in media studies, Naomi Sakr's ambitious volume focuses on social relations, on how Middle Eastern women shape and are shaped by the press, television, and internet. Chapters span the region from Morocco to Iran, incorporate a variety of disciplinary approaches, and examine a range of media topics from early twentieth-century Egyptian journalists to early twenty-first-century cyber-savvy professionals. Contributors include both academics and practitioners. As its title promises, Women and Media in the Middle East serves as a valuable overview of women's involvement in and with a range of media. But it does much more. Rather than attempting to formulate theories about how media works, this book consistently links media to broader social, political, and historical processes. Sakr's helpful introduction situates Middle Eastern women in a context of general media studies concerns. She identifies a series of key issues—representation, democratization, participation—that frame discussions of media's empowering potential. The theme linking diverse contributions is clearly articulated: how media in different times and places have expanded or restricted women's possibilities. All essays emphasize the relationship of media to both physical and social space. Some women use media to become visible, as in the case of journalists and activists, others to limit visibility, as in the case of professionals seeking to mask appearances, and students in the conservative Gulf states to subvert restrictions on interaction with the opposite sex. Women's centrality to anticolonial struggles, and their subsequent [End Page 107] marginalization in newly independent nations, links chapters exploring women's activism in Iran, Egypt, and North Africa. Gholam Khiabany and Annabelle Sreberny examine the challenges facing women's publications in Iran, arguing that an overemphasis on Islam and its relationship to feminism has distracted many observers from other factors influencing women's involvement in the public sphere. They attribute women's achievements to nationalist, secular, and progressive strains in Iranian culture and women's continued difficulties to the oppressive social relations legitimized by the Iranian political system. Sonia Dabbous's discussion of early twentieth-century journalists—Egypt's first women professionals—demonstrates the press' crucial role in opening up avenues of public participation. A portrait of a vibrant, early feminist press emerges. The role Palestinian women journalists play in the continuing struggle against Israeli occupation is explored in Benaz Somiry-Batrawi's contribution. She notes the small triumphs of local media producers operating under duress. The Oslo agreement paved the way for private media outlets, and these have employed women and addressed their concerns. Their efforts proceed under periodic disruption and constant threat. Kuwaiti women activists lobbying for suffrage face a different challenge. As Haya al-Mughni and Mary Ann Tétreault demonstrate, the Kuwaiti press reduced a complex array of women's groups and positions to a two-sided debate that worked to support conservative forces. Yet they find promising the growing number of women working in both the media itself and the Ministry of Information. Magda Abu-Fadil's portrait of prominent journalists such as CNN's Octavia Nasr provides an inside, personal glimpse of successful career trajectories. The "retributive peace" of postwar Lebanon maintains and exacerbates sectarian divisions and class hierarchies. Victoria Firmo-Fontan argues that women's nongovernmental organizations in Lebanon tend to reinforce rather than challenge existing power structures and fail to foster social responsibility. The Hezbollah Women's Association, which spreads its message through the party's television station, al-Manar, stands as an exception. The HWA, unlike its sister organizations, does not promote the use of imported domestic servants as an instrument of women's emancipation. It also eschews objectified representations of women. Two chapters on visual media content show how depictions of women serve as metaphors of nation in both colonial and nationalist [End Page 108] constructs. Zahia Smail Salhi explores stereotypic depictions of Maghrebi women in colonial imagery...

Antitrafficking Policies in Asia and the Russian Far East: A Comparative Perspective

Human trafficking is one of the most compelling issues of the new millennium and has inspired activism by a diverse range of individuals and government agencies. Efforts by the United States and the United Nations have resulted in the passage of antitrafficking laws in many countries, but have failed to ensure that these laws are effective and enforced. Although this macro-level engagement is important, it deals with the effects of trafficking and not with its prevention. Grassroots activities that focus on empowering women economically, socially, and politically are the best ways to minimize women's vulnerability to traffickers. Women's organizations are the lynchpin in successful antitrafficking efforts, as in South Korea. That model is a product of the Korean women's movement and emphasizes the essential role of women-based nongovernmental organizations (NGOs) in antitrafficking work and the importance of government institutions working in conjunction with such organizations to achieve effective results. In this article, I argue that the Korean model is a necessary one for the Russian Far East (RFE) to implement. Areas in the RFE included in this study are Amurski Oblast and Khabarovskii and Primorskii Krais. Funding and supporting women's NGOs must be at the core of any antitrafficking policy in this region.Popular Measures Used to Fight TraffickingA comprehensive study of the official material available on human trafficking reveals that recommended solutions are often insufficient, contradictory, narrow in scope, and culturally irrelevant. Although many of these proposed solutions are well intentioned, it is rare to find one that is comprehensive, multifaceted, and culturally sensitive.The U.S. Department of State's annual Trafficking in Persons (TIP) report is a major source of information on the state of trafficking worldwide. The report categorizes countries into three tiers, with tier three being the lowest. placement is supposed to be contingent on a country's efforts to actively address the trafficking issue. After the issuance of the third report in 2003, a country's placement at the tier three level was supposed to carry ramifications for their eligibility to receive nonhumanitarian U.S. aid. The 2004 report established a fourth category, labeled the Tier 2 Watch List.Activists, such as those working for human rights, international, and humanitarian organizations, are critical of the politicized nature of the State Department report, arguing that countries deserving of a tier three rating are often granted a tier two status, or now a spot on the tier two watch list, as a diplomatic gesture. The addition of the watch list significantly discredits the report as a serious enforcement mechanism and reinforces the perception that the rankings are politically and diplomatically motivated. The tier two and watch list categories appear to be catch-all ranks for countries such as Japan, Russia, Nigeria, and others that are clearly lagging in their antitrafficking efforts, but are too politically important to risk funding cuts or too powerful to join the ranks of tier three countries like Bangladesh and Sudan.Border Control and Visa RegulationIncreased border security and stricter visa regulations are common ways to deal with the trafficking problem. There is evidence to support claims that porous borders and ambiguous visa categories make a trafficker's job easier.The steady rise in trafficking over the past several decades, despite an equally steady tightening of visa regulations, indicates that this method alone is not effective. Restrictive visa and immigration policies often exacerbate trafficking problems, as they raise the risk posed to women due to the more extreme measures that traffickers then take to transport them across borders. Stricter visa regulations also mean that people who want to immigrate legally, but cannot do so under these stricter laws, may be forced to resort to illegal means of entering a country, increasing the value of a skilled trafficker. …

Women's NGOs at UN Conferences: The 1992 Rio Conference on the Environment as a Watershed Event

SUMMARY Before the UN Conference on Environment and Development (UNCED) was held in Brazil in 1992, the involvement of nongovernmental organizations (NGOs) in UN conferences was limited. NGOs participate in UN conferences in two ways, at a non-governmental forum usually convened simultaneously with an official UN conference, or as accredited observers to the official conference where government delegations meet and make decisions. Only 200 NGOs were granted access to the official portion of the Decade for Women Conference held in Nairobi in 1985, whereas 1,400 organizations were accredited to attend UNCED in Rio in 1992. And while only a small portion, about 5 percent, of those were women-oriented NGOs, they had a significant impact on the outcome. An entire chapter on women and environmental issues was added to the official conference document, and cross-cutting references to women were included throughout the document. This achievement reflects the work of several uniquely placed women, in and outside governments and the United Nations system, working together to build an international network of women and bring their voices to the table. Moreover, the techniques they developed have been used by women at every major UN conference held since 1992.

Will the Market Set Them Free? Women, NGOs, and Social Enterprise in Ukraine

During 1999 Counterpart International Inc. a global partnership organization with its headquarters in the United States introduced to Non-Governmental Organizations (NGOs) in Ukraine via a training and granting program that lasted until 2002. This article explores the potential benefits and risks that taking up strategies of social enterprise present for NGO leaders in Ukraine examining in particular the possible effects for women NGO activists as they struggle to navigate post-socialist political social and economic transformations. As it has unfolded in Ukraine social enterprise is an NGO development strategy implicitly directed towards women who dominate in certain types of caring-focused NGOs. It is thus important to assess the potential of social enterprise initiatives to empower women in Ukraines emerging civil society and market economy. (authors)

Women Connect! Strengthening Communications to Meet Sexual and Reproductive Health Challenges

ABSTRACT Women's nongovernmental organizations (NGOs) have significant comparative advantage for addressing sexual and reproductive health challenges facing women and families. This article describes an initiative to assist women's NGOs in developing greater skills using media and information communication technology for communicating women's health messages. Participating women's groups in Africa undertook innovative media projects—radio broadcasts on human immunodeficiency virus (HIV) and family planning, an antiviolence campaign, media campaigns on avoiding teen pregnancy—and designed websites, established Internet cafés, and downloaded health information from the Internet. Lessons learned offer guidance for collaboration with women's NGOs everywhere to strengthen communication for addressing critical sexual and reproductive health issues.

Women United for the United Nations: US women advocating for collective security in the cold war

This article details the creation of Women United for the United Nations (WUUN), a coalition of US women's non-governmental organizations created in the wake of the Second World War to advocate for the United Nations and the efficacy of collective security. The article illuminates the strategies the organization used to flourish in the 1950s, an era characterized by suspicion of political activism and conformity for US women. It describes WUUN's initiatives and documents the way the organization clashed with a more radical women's peace group, WOMAN. The article places the discussion of WUUN in the context of work done by other historians on the fate of other US women's organizations in the 1950s and provides a detailed account of the measures WUUN took to navigate the complexities that confronted women activists in the Cold War.

Women united for the united nations: US women advocating for collective security in the cold war

Abstract This article details the creation of Women United for the United Nations (WUUN), a coalition of US women's non-governmental organizations created in the wake of the Second World War to advocate for the United Nations and the efficacy of collective security. The article illuminates the strategies the organization used to flourish in the 1950s, an era characterized by suspicion of political activism and conformity for US women. It describes WUUN's initiatives and documents the way the organization clashed with a more radical women's peace group, WOMAN. The article places the discussion of WUUN in the context of work done by other historians on the fate of other US women's organizations in the 1950s and provides a detailed account of the measures WUUN took to navigate the complexities that confronted women activists in the Cold War.

The Network Inside Out (review)

Reviewed by: The Network Inside Out Teresia K Teaiwa The Network Inside Out, by Annelise Riles. Ann Arbor: University of Michigan Press, 2001. ISBN 0-472-08832-7, xxiii + 242 pages, tables, figures, maps, photographs, orthography and abbrevations, notes, bibliography, index. Paper, US$26.95. It feels terribly redundant trying to review a book that concludes that the present conditions of globalization and transnationalism have left no further room for analysis to expand (184 ). To whit: "The insights of anthropological studies of globalization often seem oddly anticipated by the subjects of transnational ethnographic enquiry themselves. . . . Anthropological analysis is reduced to restatement, to repetition, to generating reflexive modernity's 'doubles'" (5 ). This award-winning ethnography attempts to resist the temptations of an anthropology struggling to come to terms with familiar, almost universal phenomena (such as bureaucratic and institutional practices) and subjects that are themselves engaged in analysis that mirrors that of social scientists. "Thick description" then becomes appropriate only in ethnographies of the unfamiliar (an increasingly scarce commodity). For author Annelise Riles, "when phenomena are too well known to be described, what is needed is not greater detail but a selective erasure thereof, as, for example, the abstractions of modern art have brought modernity itself into view" (18 ). This review endeavors to honor the content of the form and the form of the content at hand by focusing on the most salient aspects of the text rather than attempting to provide an exhaustive account of it. Riles is an associate professor at Northwestern School of Law and a research fellow with the American Bar Association. Based on fifteen months of fieldwork in Fiji and with Fiji nongovernmental organizations ( NGOs) at international meetings between 1994 and 1995, her book was awarded the Certificate of Merit of the American Society for International Law in 2001. She frames her interdisciplinary interests in the following terms: "How I might make the ending points of legal knowledge—the puzzles, frustrations, facts, and commitments the theory and practice of law entailed—beginning points for anthropological reflection and vice versa" (xii). "Yet what is one to make of a subject, such as the international institutional practices considered in this book, that one encounters already analyzed? How might one transform this kind of ending into a beginning point of one's own?" (xiv) Riles's beginning point is "the Network," a concept that she traces back to J A Barnes's founding of social network analysis in 1954, and one that subsequently influenced the anthropology of Gregory Bateson and the fields of cybernetics and "cyborgology" (62 ). For Riles, "the Network" is "a set of institutions, knowledge practices, and artifacts thereof that internally generate the effects of their own reality by reflecting on themselves. . . . Indeed, for those concerned with the intersection of modernist [End Page 443] epistemologies and liberal political philosophies, the Network offers a poignant case study of institutionalized utopianism, an ambition for political change through communication and information exchange, of universalism after cultural relativism and the 'incredulity toward the metanarrative' ([Jean-François] Lyotard [The Postmodern Condition,] 1984 ). In the Beijing Conference and the networks it spawned, we have an opportunity to explore one highly reflexive elaboration of a modernist epistemology and radical neoliberal political vision, albeit one defined by its refusal of particularity, that is, by its own universalizing claims" (3 ). In The Network Inside Out, Riles has produced what is perhaps the first-ever ethnography of women's nongovernmental organizations in Fiji, and the first-ever study to use the case of a rural part-European family community in Fiji for comparative purposes. What makes both groups seem familiar is their simultaneous deployment of and enunciation by discourses of modernity. Women's organizations—such as (the now-defunct) PAWORNET (Pacific Women's Regional Information/Communication Network), Women in Politics, National Council of Women, and others in Fiji—have recourse (however superficial) to the tools of social science analysis, take a legalistic approach to language, and pay inordinate attention to issues of design and aesthetics in the organization of information for the purported purpose of its infinite (and ultimately liberating) expansion. In contrast, Riles finds that members of the Whippy family (descendants of early American settler...

Global Activism in "Virtual Space": The European Women's Lobby in the Network of Transnational Women's NGOs on the Web

Web sites are a part of the organizational practices of women's nongovernmental organizations (NGOs) and thus a new source of data about their identities and responses to the structure of political opportunities. Using network analysis of Internet links between the Web sites of 30 transnational women's organizations and content analysis of all posted material on the sites, this article explores how the European Women's Lobby (EWL) positions itself among other transnational women's groups on the Web and communicates its identity electronically. We find that the EWL places itself less globally than it might, which reflects its intra-EU mandate. More than other sites, it avoids using the term “feminist” but frames women as active and organized and emphasizes agency, politics, law, and global sisterhood as themes. Compared with other sites, family and reproductive health are under-referenced, indicating areas marginalized by the economic terms of the EU mandate. We conclude that the Web presence of the EWL reflects a reasonable picture of the intersection of feminist concerns with the EU structure of opportunity, making Web sites a useful window into feminist practices.

Gender-Responsive Government Budgeting

This paper examines the concept of gender-responsive government budgeting, promoted in recent years by women's nongovernmental organizations, academia, and multilateral organizations, and the extent of its implementation by national governments in both advanced and developing countries. Owing to recently developed analytical and technical tools, government budget management systems in some countries can help promote gender equality-to the extent of government involvement in gender-sensitive sectors and programs-at any level of available funding. However, to be fully effective, obstacles such as gender-biased culture, the lack of appropriate budget classifications, and the lack of gender analysis expertise and gender-disaggregated data in most countries need to be addressed.

Women as agents of ethnic reconciliation? women's ngos and international intervention in postwar bosnia–herzegovina

This article examines how women are represented by women's nongovernmental organization (NGO) activists and their foreign donors in postwar reconstruction initiatives in Bosnia–Herzegovina. I argue that dominant donor representations of women as peacemakers and natural agents of ethnic reconciliation present a paradox for the women they target. Women are charged with achieving the very political goals of ethnic reconciliation and refugee return, yet the essentialist constructions used to encourage women's peacemaking roles effectively marginalize them from formal political power. When local women activists use similar “affirmative” gender essentialisms, they risk closing off women's potential for influence in the formal (male) political sphere. However, I argue, given the moral and political climate of postwar Bosnia, in which politics is perceived as a corrupt, male sphere, this strategy allows women to gain moral authority and real, though indirect, power with which to achieve their often very political goals.

The Emergence of a Global Gender Equity Regime

INTRODUCTIONInternational regimes embody mutually accepted principles and practices on which there is, for the most part, compliance. Thus, a regime constitutes a high level of acceptance by states and comes close to international law. Gender issues have recently emerged as a global concern, but scholars have not yet asked whether there is a global gender equality regime or, if there is, how it can be identified, how it arose, and how it is being implemented.Since the early 1980s, gender equality has received unprecedented attention at international forums. There is a growing international understanding that gender equality is a prerequisite to achieving human and sustainable development. Over the past quarter century, the United Nations has convened five world conferences on women's issues: Mexico City (1975), Copenhagen (1980), Nairobi (1985), Beijing (1995), and New York (2000). Each marked a stage in a process that has raised gender equality to the centre of the global agenda.(1) Together they underscored the fact that women lag behind in virtually all aspects of life (education, health, literacy, access to income, labour markets, and so on) and established platforms of action to promote gender equality.(2) They also provided a platform for women's non-governmental organizations (NGOs) and global women's networks to lobby for a gender perspective in development policies and strategies. The cross-cutting coalitions they generated from all classes and economic groups from North and South have had an unprecedented and indisputable effect on changing awareness and programmes for women in many countries.(3)In the two decades between Mexico City and Beijing, gender equality has been embodied in an international legal instrument, the Convention on the Elimination of Discrimination Against Women (CEDAW), which entered into force in 1981 and has been ratified by 169 countries - more than two-thirds of the members of the United Nations.(4) Signature of CEDAW, the various platforms of action, and other regional conventions constitute a set of norms and rules related to gender equality. Some states have established national women's mechanisms on gender issues (bureaucracies, departments, policies, and programmes) and some have changed laws and policies to follow up on global commitments. Together these actions point to the possibility of a regime.Fields as diverse as international financial exchanges, security, and climate change have tried in recent years to utilize 'regimes' to address global problems.(5) They have drawn on a wide literature on the factors that lead to regime formation, affect regime maintenance, and determine how regimes can be utilized to address global problems in the future.(6) International relations scholars are also exploring the tensions and contradictions among normative principles in international life and how states are embedded in dense networks of transnational and international relations that shape their perceptions and their preferences. But, surprisingly, even though there is an extensive literature on global women's networks and the role of the United Nations as an ally, gender issues have not been systematically explored from the perspective of international regimes.IDENTIFYING A GENDER REGIMEOne could examine the rise and maintenance of a gender equality regime in terms of both its legal instruments and compliance mechanisms and its underlying normative principles, that is, the tensions and contradictions of gender equality that have begun to shape perceptions and preferences of states.Virtually all discussions of international regimes proceed from Stephen Krasner's 'consensus definition' in which regimes are 'implicit or explicit principles, norms, rules and decision-making procedures around which actors' expectations converge in a given area of international relations. Principles are beliefs of fact, causation and rectitude. Norms are standards of behavior defined in terms of rights and obligations. …

Women in Sustainable Development: Empowerment through Partnerships for Healthy Living

This article seeks to take partnerships seriously. Specifically, it is concerned with the nature, opportunities, and challenges facing women's nongovernmental organization (NGOs), which seek to make real contributions to sustainable development. It uses a case study of COFERENE, a successful women's NGO in Costa Rica, to explore the nature of partnerships, the contextual factors that shape them, the successes that can be realized from their wise use, and the potential problems that may arise. There are lessons, both optimistic and cautionary, to be learned from COFERENE'S experiences. This article analyzes these lessons. In synthesis, partnerships are complex and demanding, though there are cases in which women's NGOs have used them effectively to foster sustainable development.

Gendering (Trans)National Advocacy

Whether lauded or deplored, transnational organizing among non-governmental organizations (NGOs) generally, and women's NGOs specifically, is recognized as an active player in debates about international economic policy. In this article, I turn attention toward one consequence of women's transnational NGO organizing that has been under-analyzed: the impact that transnational activism has on domestic political organizations and opportunities. The recent increase in activism on gender and policies of free trade in the USA is the product of women's transnational political organizingover the North American Free Trade Agreement (NAFTA). In the case of NAFTA, theoretical insights about the ways that gendered categories undergird the economy were made visible by and through the transnational advocacy in which feminists engaged.And, this article indicates, these transnational advocacy efforts have helped to shift the domestic political terrain of women's organizing in the United States. I argue that as women's rights advocates in the United States were confronted with the realization that the nexus between gender and trade policy was important to many women's rights and feminist activists around the world, they began to question why the gendered implication of trade policy did not hold a comparable place in the US feminist arena. Thus, changes in the domestic political landscape of non-governmentalactivismmay be one of the longest lasting (and most overlooked) consequences of transnational political engagement.

Political Reform in Tanzania: The Struggle for Associational Autonomy

The concepts of democratic reversal and the erosion of liberties make little sense in electoral democracies like Tanzania that have never attained democratic liberties in the first place. As critical as elections are to democratization, a more important locus of the struggle for political reform in Africa has been associations that seek to establish and maintain their autonomy from the state. In Tanzania, where the democratization process was stalled after multiparty elections and the government showed little inclination to deepen the democratization process, critical social struggles continued in such areas as women's organizations, the media, and nongovernmental organizations over issues pertaining to political and civil liberties.

Expanding Civil Society: Shrinking Political Spaces-- The Case of Women's Nongovernmental Organizations

Expanding Civil Society: Shrinking Political Spaces-- The Case of Women's Nongovernmental Organizations

Gender and Politics under the Palestinian Authority

After setting out the main analytical approaches to evaluating women's status, the article assesses the situation of women under the Palestinian Authority (PA) in two main areas: representation in "state" institutions and the law (formal, customary, and shari'a). The work of the women's nongovernmental organizations is surveyed, particularly their campaigns for legal literacy and women's electoral participation. The article concludes that the situation of women has advanced little, because of a number of structural impediments, including a general conservatism in society (including among women's groups) and the characteristics of the PA.

Training in reproductive health and sexuality: the case of a regional program in Latin America.

Beginning in July 1993, a 5-year program has sought to provide social research, training, and technical assistance in reproductive health and sexuality in Argentina, Chile, Peru, and Colombia by 1) building research capacity and promoting an interdisciplinary approach to reproductive health and sexuality and 2) promoting a gender perspective to these issues. The target groups are women's nongovernmental organizations (NGOs); family planning, reproductive health, and women's health providers; and social scientists conducting health-related research. Training activities include regional workshops, a Regional Resident Fellowship Program to support graduate-level education, and provision of technical assistance. The first 3 years of the program have revealed that the basic training needs in these areas include 1) helping women's NGOs improve their record-keeping capacity, evaluation processes, theoretical and methodological background, and institutional-building ability; 2) sensitizing women's health providers to sociocultural dimension of health-illness issues and to a gender and human rights perspective; and 3) training social scientist researchers to apply their skills in applied research, develop their theoretical background, and improve research quality control procedures. The main challenges for training activities in the field of reproductive health and sexuality are posed by the complexity of the issues and their interdisciplinary nature.

Gender, markets and states: A selective review and research agenda

This paper attempts to define a research agenda that will explore the relationships among gender, markets and states, taking account of the recent and continuing processes of market liberalization, regionalization, and transformation of the relations between states and societies. It argues that, in order to understand what market liberalization or the formation of regional economic blocs might mean for women, one needs to look beyond market activity per se to nonmarket activity and to women's wellbeing more generally. It selectively reviews some of the literature on structural adjustment and regional trading blocs in order to clarify underlying concepts, and point to new directions for empirical research. In the penultimate section it raises a set of policy and research questions on the role that women's non-governmental organizations can play in shaping the emerging relationships between governments and the private sector.

"Women with self-esteem are healthy women": community development in an urban settlement of Guayaquil.

Guayaquil, home to two million people, is Ecuador's main port city. El Guasmo is an urban settlement in the south of the city. In 1984, CEPAM, an Ecuadorian women's nongovernmental organization, began working in El Guasmo Norte, the oldest and most established area of El Guasmo. CEPAM employs an integrated approach to its work with poor urban women on health issues, legal advice, and group formation, based upon a gender analysis of life in the area. This article describes the group's work in El Guasmo Norte, explaining how women came to understand that their health and well-being were determined by their status as poor urban women, and that as a result, they decided to establish their own health center. Sections cover the determinants of urban women's health, reflection and action, the health center, the concept of integration, participating in health services, and lessons learned.