Emerging from the 1995 Fourth World Conference for Women in Beijing, the introduction of gender mainstreaming aroused a shift in the development paradigm, bringing gender perspectives to the forefront to identify the links between gendered concerns and how they impact the wider development agenda (Waal, 2010). The principle behind gender mainstreaming emerged in the 1970s[…]
This essay will analyse the three dominating approaches to gender equality in the late 20th century in order to understand the successes and failures that have led to the current feminist movement in the development sector. Women in Development, Gender and Development and Women’s Empowerment demonstrate a notable shift in feminist development theory and by[…]
INTRODUCTION To fully understand the current thinking on integrating men into women’s empowerment programmes, it is important to remember that both femininity and masculinity are constructed from cultural and subjective meanings that incessantly shift and vary, and thus the potential for the approach to empower women in one context might not mean it will have[…]
INTRODUCTION To contextualise development approaches towards women’s empowerment, this chapter will construct a definition of empowerment based on the notion of ‘power’ and how the different ways of understanding this concept have influenced each shift in feminist development discourse. The work of Michael Foucault regarding the different modes of power can be deemed the intrinsic[…]
INTRODUCTION This research will identify the challenges faced by rural women living in the Khyber-Pakhtunkhwa (KPK) region of Pakistan and will aim to inform NGOs and encourage programmes that support rural women to overcome challenges. The research will be conducted in an overt manner and take a qualitative approach to answer the following question: What[…]
INTRODUCTION From radical roots in the late 1980s, the empowerment approach emerged from the shortcomings of ‘Gender and Development’ as a bottom-up strategy for gender equality. Originating in the Global South, empowerment emphasised transformative action through grassroots movements to challenge the deepest structures of social power (Batliwala, 2007). A similar shift in thinking was also[…]
Historically, households have depended on the earnings of women in diminishing poverty, for instance migrant women have been over-represented in the caring sectors of economies while their labour helped their families survive. Women’s labour helped marginalized people survive, yet at present in many countries unequal pay remains a problem for many women, making this a[…]