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
... question, therefore, addresses the methods utilized by national and local rights advocates: Is a law-focused women's rights advocacy the right tool, or the only tool, for achieving de facto respect for women's rights in Africa at the ...
... question has become: How does one achieve respect for women's rights within culture? I wonder about how the means ... questions 32 Chapter Two.
... questions regarding methods of advancing the respect for and enjoyment of women's rights. Might the approach of advocacy be a mechanism that does not operate effectively everywhere? The issue is how best to achieve dignity and equal ...
... question the degree of political will. In other cases, the establishment of legal protections has little impact because women are not aware of their rights or lack access to mechanisms by which to assert them. This has led to increased ...
... questions about the methods utilized in law and development projects —primarily in Latin America and often funded by the ... question was therefore whether Americans were assuming both an idealized outcome—and the viability of others ...