Western Europe

Feminism, Nationalism and the Re-Ordering of Post-War Political Strategies: The Case of the Sinn Féin Women’s Department

Citation:

Gilmartin, Niall. 2017. “Feminism, Nationalism and the Re-Ordering of Post- War Political Strategies: The Case of the Sinn Féin Women’s Department.” Irish Political Studies 32 (2): 268-92.

Author: Niall Gilmartin

Abstract:

Feminist criticisms of nationalism as a patriarchal structure often cite post-war regression, among others, as robust evidence of the pitfalls for women’s participation within such highly gendered movements. Based on in-depth interviews, this article critically examines the case of the Sinn Féin Women’s Department, and in particular focuses on the reasons for its ambiguous demise in the aftermath of the 1994 IRA cessation. While the ending of the Women’s Department appears to perfectly fulfil the consistent pattern of nationalism’s post-war regression, I argue that the roots of its downfall reside not in nationalism as such but in the institutionalisation of Provisional republicanism. As the republican movement ‘professionalised’ itself in preparation for its post-Troubles electoral struggle, we see a marked contrast in the ways in which women’s equality is conceptualised and pursued. In particular, as the radical organising of the Women’s Department is furtively wound down, what emerged in its place, the Equality Department embraced visions and strategies that are largely indistinguishable from any other mainstream political party. Despite Sinn Féin’s progressive record on promoting women, it appears that feminism is now consigned by the republican movement to its ‘revolutionary past’ and the radical politics of yester-year.

Keywords: Republican women, feminism, nationalism, Sinn Fein Women's Department, conflict transition

Topics: Feminisms, Gendered Power Relations, Gender Equality/Inequality, Nationalism, Post-Conflict Regions: Europe, Western Europe Countries: Ireland

Year: 2017

Beyond Wishful Thinking: A FPE Perspective on Commoning, Care, and the Promise of Co-Housing

Citation:

Tummers, Lidewij, and Sherilyn MacGregor. 2019. “Beyond Wishful Thinking: A FPE Perspective on Commoning, Care, and the Promise of Co-Housing.” International Journal of the Commons (13) 1:  62–83. 

Authors: Lidewij Tummers, Sherilyn MacGregor

Abstract:

Co-housing has re-emerged in European cities as a model of common dwelling that aims to be ecologically and socially sustainable. Although it is the subject of growing academic interest, there are significant gaps in knowledge and wishful thinking about its promise that is not substantiated by evidence. We examine co-housing from a feminist political ecology (FPE) perspective with the aim of contributing to research on co-housing, and commoning more generally, as alternative practices in affluent Global North cities. Drawing on extensive research on co-housing in Europe and our observations from joint visits to four co-housing projects in the Netherlands and the UK, we cast critical feminist light on sharing practices at the level of the collectivized household. In addition to identifying synergies and tensions between FPE and recent literature on the radical promise of commoning, we raise questions about the extent to which the seeds of transformative, post-capitalist and post-patriarchal change are being sown in actually existing co-housing projects. We conclude with questions toward an agenda for co-housing research that moves beyond wishful thinking.

Keywords: co- housing, social reproduction, commons/commoning, gender justice, intersectionality

Topics: Economies, Feminisms, Feminist Political Ecology, Gender, Gendered Power Relations, Patriarchy, Households, Intersectionality, Justice Regions: Europe, Northern Europe, Western Europe Countries: Netherlands, United Kingdom

Year: 2019

Challenging Identity Hierarchies: Gender and Consociational Power-Sharing

Citation:

Kennedy, Ronan, Claire Pierson, and Jennifer Thomson. 2016. “Challenging Identity Hierarchies: Gender and Consociational Power-Sharing.” The British Journal of Politics and International Relations 18 (3): 618-33.

Authors: Ronan Kennedy, Claire Pierson, Jennifer Thomson

Abstract:

Consociational democracy has become the most influential paradigm in the field of powersharing institutional design and post-conflict peacebuilding. Consociation institutes representation for certain formerly excluded groups. However, it simultaneously inhibits effective political representation for groups that do not align with the societal divisions that consociation seeks to accommodate, specifically the ‘additional’ cleavage of gender. Given the extensive use of the consociational model as a peacebuilding tool in divided states and the growing awareness of the disproportionate negative effect of conflict on women, there is a surprising lack of consideration of the effect that consociational power-sharing has on women’s representation. This article considers the specific impact that the consociational model has on women’s representation. We argue that because gender is an integral factor in conflict, it should therefore be integral to postconflict governance. With empirical reference to contemporary Northern Ireland, it is illustrated that consociationalism is a ‘gender-blind’ theory.

Keywords: consocationalism, Gender, Northern Ireland, post-conflict, power-sharing

Topics: Gender, Governance, Post-Conflict Governance, Peacebuilding, Political Participation, Post-Conflict Regions: Europe, Western Europe Countries: Ireland

Year: 2016

Feminising Politics, Politicising Feminism? Women in Post-Conflict Northern Irish Politics

Citation:

Thomson, Jennifer. 2019. “Feminising Politics, Politicising Feminism? Women in Post-Conflict Northern Irish Politics.” British Politics January, 1–17.

Author: Jennifer Thomson

Abstract:

2018 marks the twentieth anniversary of the Good Friday/Belfast Agreement and the establishment of devolved governance in Northern Ireland. Yet, whilst devolution has largely been held to have positive effects in Scotland and Wales with regards to both women’s descriptive and substantive representation, this impact has been less discernible in Northern Ireland. Of the four regions of the United Kingdom, politics in Northern Ireland is arguably the most unfeminised—women have routinely seen lower descriptive representation in the Northern Irish Assembly and policy-making in areas such as reproductive rights lies far behind the rest of the UK. The article explores why politics is so unfeminised in the post-conflict context in Northern Ireland, by looking at efforts to feminise formal politics (especially the various peace/inter-party agreements and attempts to include women in formal politics) and efforts to politicise feminist activism (the work of the women’s sector to influence policy-making in the province). It then explores some of the academic explanations as to why the feminisation of politics remains so difficult in Northern Ireland.

Keywords: women, Gender, Northern Ireland, post-conflict, Peace agreeements

Topics: Gender, Women, Governance, Post-Conflict Governance, Post-Conflict Regions: Europe, Western Europe Countries: Ireland

Year: 2019

Gender and the Nuclear Weapons State: A Feminist Critique of the UK Government’s White Paper on Trident

Citation:

Duncanson, Claire, and Catherine Eschle. 2008. “Gender and the Nuclear Weapons State: A Feminist Critique of the UK Government’s White Paper on Trident.” New Political Science 30 (4): 545–63.

Authors: Claire Duncanson, Catherine Eschle

Abstract:

This article enquires into the connections between gender and discourses of the nuclear weapons state. Specifically, we develop an analysis of the ways in which gender operates in the White Paper published by the UK government in 2006 on its plans to renew Trident nuclear weapons (given the go-ahead by the Westminster Parliament in March 2007). We argue that the White Paper mobilizes masculine-coded language and symbols in several ways: firstly, in its mobilization of techno-strategic rationality and axioms; secondly, in its assumptions about security; and, thirdly, in its assumptions about the state as actor. Taken together, these function to construct a masculinized identity for the British nuclear state as a “responsible steward.” However, this identity is one that is not yet securely fixed and that, indeed, contains serious internal tensions that opponents of Trident (and of the nuclear state more generally) should be able to exploit.

Topics: Gender, Masculinity/ies, Gendered Discourses, Governance, Weapons /Arms, Weapons of Mass Destruction (WMD) Regions: Europe, Western Europe Countries: United Kingdom

Year: 2008

Questioning Financial Governance from a Feminist Perspective

Citation:

Young, Brigitte, Isabella Bakker, and Diane Elson, eds. 2011. Questioning Financial Governance from a Feminist Perspective. Abingdon, Oxon: Routledge.

Authors: Brigitte Young, Isabella Bakker, Diane Elson

Annotation:

Summary:
Questioning Financial Governance from a Feminist Perspective brings together feminist economists and feminist political economists from different countries located in North America and Europe to analyze the 'strategic silence' about gender in fiscal and monetary policy, and financial regulation. This silence reflects a set of assumptions that the key instruments of financial governance are gender-neutral. This often masks the ways in which financial governance operates to the disadvantage of women and reinforces gender inequality. This book examines both the transformations in the governance of finance that predate the financial crisis, as well as some dimension of the crisis itself. The transformations increasingly involved private as well as public forms of power, along with institutions of state and civil society, operating at the local, national, regional and global levels. An important aspect of these transformations has been the creation of policy rules (often enacted in laws) that limit the discretion of national policy makers with respect to fiscal, monetary, and financial sector policies. These policy rules tend to have inscribed in them a series of biases that have gender (as well as class and race-based) outcomes. The biases identified by the authors in the various chapters are the deflationary bias, male breadwinner bias, and commodification bias, adding two new biases: risk bias and creditor bias. The originality of the book is that its primary focus is on macroeconomic policies (fiscal and monetary) and financial governance from a feminist perspective with a focus on the gross domestic product and its fluctuations and growth, paid employment and inflation, the budget surplus/deficit, levels of government expenditure and tax revenue, and supply of money. The central findings are that the key instruments of financial governance are not gender neutral. Each chapter considers examples of financial governance, and how it relates to the gender order, including divisions of labour, and relations of power and privilege. (Summary from WorldCat)
 
Table of Contents:
1. Macroeconomic regimes in OECD countries and the interrelation with gender orders
Friederike Maier
 
2. Changing macroeconomic governance and gender orders: the case of Canada
Isabella Bakker
 
3. EU macroeconomic governance and gender orders: the case of Austria
Christa Schlager
 
4. Taxation, employment, and gender: the case of state taxes in the USA
Caren Grown
 
5. Central banks, employment, and gender in developing countries
James Heintz
 
6. IMF policies and gender orders: the case of the Poverty Reduction and Growth Facility
Tonia Warnecke
 
7. The role of gender in governance of the financial sector
Brigitte Young
 
8. Macroeconomic governance, gendered inequality, and global crises
Adrienne Roberts.
 

Topics: Development, Economies, Governance, International Financial Institutions, Privatization Regions: Americas, North America, Europe, Western Europe Countries: Austria, Canada, United States of America

Year: 2011

The Gender of Globalization: Women Navigating Cultural and Economics Marginalities

Citation:

Kingsolver, Ann, and Nandini Gunewardena, eds. 2008. The Gender of Globalization: Women Navigating Cultural and Economics Marginalities. Oxford: School for Advanced Research Press.

Authors: Ann Kingsolver, Nandini Gunewardena

Annotation:

Summary:
As "globalization" moves rapidly from buzzword to cliche, evaluating the claims of neoliberal capitalism to empower and enrich remains urgently important. The authors in this volume employ feminist, ethnographic methods to examine what free trade and export processing zones, economic liberalization, and currency reform mean to women in Argentina, Sri Lanka, Mexico, Ghana, the United States, India, Jamaica, and many other places (Summary from Jacket).
 
Table of Contents:
1. Feminist methodology as a tool for ethnographic inquiry on globalization
Faye V. Harrison
 
2. Disrupting subordination and negotiating belonging : women workers in the transnational production sites of Sri Lanka
Nandini Gunewardena
 
3. Making hay while the sun shines : Ghanaian female traders and their insertion into the global economy
Akosua K. Darkwah
 
4. Clothing difference : commodities and consumption in Southeastern Liberia
Mary H. Moran
 
5. Progressive women, traditional men : globalization, migration, and equality in the northern periphery of the European Union
Ulrika Dahl
 
6. Neoliberal policy as structural violence : its links to domestic violence in black communities in the United States
William L. Conwill
 
7. Gendered bodily scars of neoliberal globalization in Argentina
Barbara Sutton
 
8. Geographies of race and class : the place and placelessness of migrant Filipina domestic workers
Rhacel Salazar Parreñas
 
9. Sticking to the union : anthropologists and "union maids" in San Francisco
Sandy Smith-Nonini
 
10. "The Caribbean is on sale" : globalization and women tourist workers in Jamaica
A. Lynn Bolles
 
11. In the fields of free trade : gender and plurinational en/countering of neoliberal agricultural policies
Ann Kingsolver
 
12. Globalization, "swadeshi", and women's movements in Orissa, India
Annapurna Pandey
 
13. Complex negotiations : gender, capitalism, and relations of power
Mary Anglin and Louise Lamphere
 
14. Navigating paradoxical globalizations
Ann Kingsolver
 
15. Reconstituting marginality : gendered repression and women's resistance
Nandini Gunewardena.
 

Topics: Economies, Globalization, Multi-National Corporations, Privatization Regions: Africa, North Africa, West Africa, Americas, Caribbean countries, North America, South America, Asia, South Asia, Europe, Western Europe Countries: Argentina, Ghana, India, Jamaica, Liberia, Philippines, Sri Lanka, United States of America

Year: 2008

Feminisms in Development: Contradictions, Contestations and Challenges

Citation:

Cornwall, Andrea, Elizabeth Harrison, and Ann Whitehead. 2007. Feminisms in Development: Contradictions, Contestations and Challenges. Zed Books.

Authors: Andrea Cornwall, Elizabeth Harrison, Anna Whitehead

Annotation:

Summary:
The political project of reasserting feminist engagement with development has proceeded uneasily in recent years. This text examines how the arguments of feminist researchers have often become depoliticised by development institutions and offers accounts of the pitfalls and compromises of the politics of engagement (Summary from WorldCat).
 
Table of Contents:
1. Gender myths that instrumentalise women : a view from the Indian frontline
Srilatha Batliwala and Deepa Dhanraj
 
2. Dangerous equations? : how female-headed households became the poorest of the poor : causes, consequences and cautions
Sylvia Chant
 
3. Back to women? translations, re-significations, and myths of gender in policy and practice in Brazil
Cecilia Sardenberg
 
4. Battles over booklets : gender myths in the British aid programme
Rosalind Eyben
 
5. Not very poor, powerless or pregnant : the African woman forgotten by development
Everjoice Win
 
6. 'Streetwalkers show the way' : reframing the debate on trafficking from sex workers' perspective
Nandinee Bandyopadhyay with Swapna Gayen [and others]
 
7. Gender, myth and fable : the perils of mainstreaming in sector bureaucracies
Hilary Standing
 
8. Making sense of gender in shifting institutional contexts : some reflections on gender mainstreaming
Ramya Subrahmanian
 
9. Gender mainstreaming : what is it (about) and should we continue doing it?
Prudence Woodford-Berger
 
10. Mainstreaming gender or 'streaming' gender away : feminists marooned in the development business
Maitrayee Mukhopadhay
 
11. Critical connections : feminist studies in African contexts
Amina Mama
 
12. SWApping gender : from cross-cutting obscurity to sectoral security?
Anne Marie Goetz and Joanne Sandler
 
13. The NGO-ization of Arab Women's Movements
Islah Jad
 
14. Political fiction meets gender myth : post-conflict reconstruction, 'democratisation' and women's rights
Deniz Kandiyoti
 
15. Re-assessing paid work and women's empowerment : lessons from the global economy
Ruth Pearson
 
16. Announcing a new dawn prematurely? human rights feminists and the rights based approaches to development
Dzodzi Tsikata
 
17. The chimera of success : gender ennui and the changed international policy environment
Maxine Molyneux.
 

Topics: Development, Economies, Poverty, Gender Mainstreaming, Households, International Financial Institutions, NGOs Regions: Africa, MENA, Americas, South America, Asia, South Asia, Europe, Western Europe Countries: Brazil, India, United Kingdom

Year: 2007

Gender Budgeting in G7 Countries

Citation:

International Monetary Fund. 2017. “Gender Budgeting in G7 Countries.” Washington, D.C.: International Monetary Fund

Author: International Monetary Fund

Annotation:

"Executive Summary:
At the request of the Italian Presidency of the G7, the IMF has prepared a paper on gender-budgeting as a contribution to the G7 initiative on equality. The paper provides an overview of gender-responsive budgeting concepts and practices in the G7 countries. It summarizes recent trends in gender equality in G7 and advanced countries, noting that while equality has improved overall, exceptions and gaps remain.
 
Recognizing that many fiscal policies have gender-related implications, this paper:
Sets out the main fiscal policy instruments, both expenditure and tax, that have a significant impact on gender equality.
Provides a conceptual framework for the public financial management (PFM) institutions that play an enabling role in implementing gender-responsive fiscal policies. These instruments include gender budget statements, gender impact assessments, performance-related budget frameworks, and gender audits. Ministries of finance have an especially important role in promoting and coordinating gender budgeting, and associated analytical tools.
Provides an assessment of the status of gender budgeting in the G7 countries. In preparing the paper, the IMF carried out a survey of PFM institutions and practices in the G7, as well as in three comparator countries that are relatively strong performers in developing gender-responsive budgeting (Austria, Belgium, and Spain). This information was complemented by other sources, including recent studies by the OECD and the World Bank.
 
The main policy implications and conclusions of the paper include:
Well-structured fiscal policies and sound PFM systems have the potential to contribute to gender equality, furthering the substantial progress already made by the G7 countries.
While G7 countries have made effective use of a wide range of fiscal and non-fiscal policies to reduce gender inequalities, there has generally been less progress in developing effective gender-specific PFM institutions; embedding a gender dimension in the normal budgeting and policy-making routines varies across G7 countries and is not done systematically.
Fiscal policy instruments of relevance to increasing gender equality include the use of tax and tax benefits to increase the supply of female labor, improved family benefits, subsidized child-care, other social benefits that increase the net return to women’s work, and incentives for businesses to encourage the hiring of women" (IMF)

Topics: Gender, Women, Gender Budgeting, Gendered Power Relations, Gender Equality/Inequality, International Financial Institutions Regions: Americas, North America, Asia, East Asia, Europe, Central Europe, Southern Europe, Western Europe Countries: Austria, Belgium, Canada, France, Germany, Italy, Japan, Spain, United States of America

Year: 2017

Motivated Migrants: (Re)framing Arab Women’s Experiences

Citation:

Killian, Caitlin, Jennifer Olmsted, and Alexis Doyle. 2012. “Motivated Migrants: (Re)framing Arab Women’s Experiences.” Women’s Studies International Forum 35 (6): 432–46. doi:10.1016/j.wsif.2012.09.006.

Authors: Caitlin Killian, Jennifer Olmsted, Alexis Doyle

Abstract:

Much of the existing literature on Arab migration either assumes women do not migrate or focuses on their experiences in the diaspora. Using two unique data sets, one collected in a source country (Palestine) and the other in a host country (France), we are able to make visible a type of migration that has remained largely invisible to date. Combining quantitative analysis and a case study approach, we examine patterns as well as the motivations for Arab women's migration, categorizing motivations as political, educational, and employment-related, but also highlighting how political and economic forces, as well as educational and familial motives, are difficult to disentangle, and may shift over time. We also contextualize our findings historically by exploring the multifaceted manner in which structural factors, such as political systems and economic forces, influence both decisions to leave one's home and reception in the host country in gendered ways. In particular, we find that in recent decades new opportunities have emerged for women to migrate to pursue educational goals.

Topics: Displacement & Migration, Migration, Economies, Economic Inequality, Education, Gender, Women Regions: MENA, Asia, Middle East, Europe, Western Europe Countries: France, Palestine / Occupied Palestinian Territories

Year: 2012

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