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
... questions about whether such efforts unduly rely on rights advocacy. This view challenges those choosing positive law as the primary tool for change to check their presumptions about state-enacted law having the power to affect behavior ...
... questions about their results. The referenced activities are drawn from organizations that are either American (in origin and personnel) or multilateral (but arguably substantially influenced by American- and Western-trained lawyers).26 ...
... of Ghana wrote a piece explaining the impediments to implementation of laws protecting women when magistrates, judges, banks and police do not recognize women's property rights, question their ability to provide bail, 44 Chapter Two.
Raj Bardouille, Margaret Grieco. recognize women's property rights, question their ability to provide bail, regard violence against women as a “family matter,” and further victimize a victim of rape. In each case, the officials' biases ...
... questions of changing behaviors, the World Bank may have opened the investigation to probe the actual impacts of public awareness. It may well be possible within the particular cultural contexts of Africa that other mechanisms would be ...