Power, Gender and Social Change in AfricaRaj Bardouille, Margaret Grieco Cambridge Scholars Publishing, 2009 M03 26 - 359 pages Gender 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
... positions to ensure that they respect the new laws. Limited success with the passage of laws has led to workshops to educate men (and women) who must implement and enforce the laws. Gender budgets have enabled women's rights advocates ...
... sensitive to women's rights and women's needs. Women politicians seeking leadership positions in fact often seem to have been concerned with proving that they are as tough and un-nurturing as Van Allen: Radical Citizenship 61.
... positions as mothers, covering many countries and historical periods, and taking a variety of positions about how to characterize such action. Women's political mobilization to protect their children, rather than to seek their own ...
... positions of power—claims quite common twenty years ago. Paradoxically, the success of the androgynous strategy in gaining public acceptance for female political leaders, even a female candidate for President in 2008, has made it ...
... positions as mothers, nor an argument that employs an essentialist construction of “women” as “mothers.” It is an argument about political strategy: about what activists can take from the available discourse that has emotive power, and ...