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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“Unfortunately, legal and customary barriers often prevent women from exercising their full legal rights and utilizing existing laws and protections. Many citizens—both men and women— are unaware of existing laws and legislation that ...
In each case, the officials' biases and attitudes (stemming from custom, practice and competing normative frameworks) preclude honest implementation and enforcement of the laws.33 Each illustration of how people within legal ...
Yet seen through the lens of law and development critiques, there may be issues not only of whom to target, but also of what is ... customary law. Even when civic education or awareness-oriented programs go beyond the “modern” media of ...
... an appropriate subject of study,” Sally Falk Moore in Law as Process, Routledge & Kegan, Paul (1978): pp. 54-81. The chapter includes discussion of Tanzanian society, mixing customary and communist reglementation within communities.
In many parts of Africa, the western colonial law did not reach beyond a limited geographic and demographic range—leaving the rest of the population to continue using and relying on customary law or other sources of reglementation.