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
Clarifying the Term “Women's Rights Advocacy” The focal concern of this chapter is advocacy initiatives relating to rights. Advocacy may entail efforts to pass new laws protecting women's rights or to repeal discriminatory ones; ...
Further, this chapter recognizes an expansive understanding of women's rights advocacy developed by Marge Schuler:14 1) Naming or defining a right, 2) Lobbying for legislation that recognizes and protects that right, and 3) Ongoing ...
The Key Activities under the Policy Advocacy program will include: • Monitoring International and Regional women's rights conventions, especially tracking CEDAW • Advocacy for the ratification of international and regional conventions ...
provide a mechanism to help some women, or mark an expectation for government action. Yet as Lisa VeneKlasen and her colleagues have articulated, many rights advocacy programs also entail risks: “[P]eople understand rights in different ...
A central question was therefore whether Americans were assuming both an idealized outcome—and the viability of others adopting or evolving into it.18 When considering common women's rights advocacy programs, one finds that they do seem ...