Power, Gender and Social Change in AfricaGender plays a hugely significant and too often under-considered role in predicting how accessible resources such as education, wage-based employment, physical and mental health care, adequate nutrition and housing will be to an individual or community. According to a 2001 World Bank report titled Engendering Development—Through Gender Equality in Rights, Resources, and Voice, enormous disparities exist between men and women in terms of basic rights and the power to determine the future, both in Africa and around the globe. A better understanding of the links between gender, public policy and development outcomes would allow for more effective policy formulation and implementation at many levels. This book, through its discussion of the challenges, achievements and lessons learned in efforts to attain gender equality, sheds light on these important issues. The book contains chapters from an interdisciplinary group of scholars, including sociologists, economists, political scientists, scholars of law, anthropologists, historians and others. The work includes analysis of strategic gender initiatives, case studies, research, and policies as well as conceptual and theoretical pieces. With its format of ideas, resources and recorded experiences as well as theoretical models and best practices, the book is an important contribution to academic and political discourse on the intricate links between gender, power, and social change in Africa and around the world. |
From inside the book
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Some of these processes were in place before the MDGs, and what is particularly important about these global efforts is the increasing emphasis placed on women's rights being at the core of any strategy to achieve equality between women ...
Second, the focus was particularly “legalistic”—ignoring in many ways some fundamental lessons of development, such as being needs-driven, seeking to build capacity, and concerns for sustainability. Third, and most importantly, ...
not the goal, but rather the means of achieving that goal: women's rights legal advocacy—particularly in Africa, but with some reflection on how that may reflect on practices here in the United States. The question arises within the ...
To their astonishment, the reactions were vehement anger—particularly from Islamic clerics. The women, not believing that they were proposing a law that defied or undermined their own Islamic beliefs, were quite taken aback.
The focus on advocacy—building individual and organizational capacity—may be a heavily legalistic approach that is particularly suited to the context of the United States but is oddly out of place elsewhere.