Class

Sexual Violence in Burundi: Victims, Perpetrators, and the Role of Conflict

Citation:

Dijkman, Nathalie E. J., Catrien Bijleveld, and Philip Verwimp. 2014. “Sexual Violence in Burundi: Victims, Perpetrators, and the Role of Conflict.” HiCN Working Paper 172, Institute of Development Studies, University of Sussex, Brighton.

Authors: Nathalie Dijkman, Catrien Bijleveld, Philip Verwimp

Abstract:

In this paper we shed light on sexual violence in Burundi in the aftermath of its civil war. By presenting the results of a mixed-method research we discuss five topics: prevalence of sexual violence, a profile of victims, a profile of perpetrators, sexual violence’s relation to civil war and its current legal reactions and challenges. By means of multivariate regression analyses we predict women’s vulnerability to sexual- and gender based violence (GBV) in the context of war compared to everyday life. We find that age, schooling, living in an IDP camp and household wealth before the civil war have significantly different effects on GBV in both contexts. Many uniformed and armed men committed sexual violence during the war, and it appears that today ex-combatants and military continue to do so. From qualitative interviews we find several factors that connect Burundi’s past conflict to today’s violence, among which a weakened solidarity in communities and a problematic integration of excombatants in society. Impunity marks life in today’s Burundi, in particular in relation to persisting sexual violence. A thorough reconciliation or adjudication process since the civil war, as well as today’s difficulties to prosecute and pursue perpetrators, are among the main challenges for countering sexual violence in Burundi.

Topics: Age, Armed Conflict, Civil Wars, Class, Combatants, Male Combatants, Displacement & Migration, IDPs, Education, Gender, Gender-Based Violence, Justice, Impunity, Post-Conflict, Sexual Violence, SV against Women Regions: Africa, East Africa Countries: Burundi

Year: 2014

Frontier Finance: The Role of Microfinance in Debt and Violence in Post-Conflict Timor-Leste

Citation:

Johnston, Melissa Frances. 2020. “Frontier Finance: The Role of Microfinance in Debt and Violence in Post-Conflict Timor-Leste.” Review of International Political Economy, April, 1–25. doi: 10.1080/09692290.2020.1733633. 

Author: Melissa Frances Johnston

Abstract:

Microfinance programs targeting poor women are considered a ‘prudent’ first step for international financial institutions seeking to rebuild post conflict economies. IFIs continue to visibly support microfinance despite evidence and growing consensus that microfinance neither reduces poverty nor breaks the cycle of domestic violence. In the case of Timor-Leste, a feminist political economy approach reveals how microfinance engendered debt allows for the control, extraction, and accumulation of profits and resources by an elite class and exacerbates gender-based violence. Timorese elite classes have benefitted from microfinance during the Indonesian occupation and in today’s post-conflict regime. Extractive debt relations between elite classes and ordinary citizens are enabled by a gender order that is regulated by brideprice and characterized by gendered circuits of violence. Brideprice weds the exchange of women to the class system in which the (violent) control of women is paramount to retaining political power. Microfinance adds liquidity and high interest rates to the debt relations of brideprice helping to create the very conditions for poor women’s disempowerment in a fragile state. Thus, the success of microfinance is predicated on systems of gender inequality and gendered circuits of violence, debt, and the exchange of women.

Keywords: microfinance, debt, feminist political economy, peacebuilding, brideprice, gender-based violence

Topics: Class, Coloniality/Post-Coloniality, Economies, Domestic Violence, Feminisms, Feminist Political Economy, Gender, Women, Gender-Based Violence, Gendered Power Relations, Gender Equality/Inequality, International Financial Institutions, Political Economies, Post-Conflict, Violence Regions: Oceania Countries: Timor-Leste

Year: 2020

Cities and the City: Spatio-Temporal Imaginaries of Class and Gender in Barranquilla and Cali, Colombia

Citation:

Castro, Maria Victoria and Lina Buchely. 2018. “Cities and the City: Spatio-Temporal Imaginaries of Class and Gender in Barranquilla and Cali, Colombia.” Gender, Place & Culture 25 (12): 1719-37.

Authors: Maria Victoria Castro, Lina Buchely

Abstract:

This paper analyzes the spatio-temporal imaginations of women in the upper, middle, and lower classes of Barranquilla and Cali. These two intermediate Colombian cities are becoming increasingly important in terms of Colombia's urbanization and modernization plans. The text explores the ‘mobility tragedy’ as one of the main urban issues of Colombian cities, and the homogeneous and linear way in which this ‘tragedy’ supposedly affects women. Using focus groups, the authors show that mobility has differential effects according to the gender and class of the urban inhabitants of the two cities, who, from their differential experiences, build different spatio-temporal imaginaries and representations of urban spaces that are never pre-established elements. Based on the findings of the fieldwork carried out during 2016 and 2017, the authors propose a conceptualization of urban spaces, associated with the life experiences of their inhabitants. This approach emphasizes the distributive effects of mobility on men and women. This is a call to see ‘cities’ within the city, shedding light on the fact that some women take on greater burdens within the city than their male counterparts, destroying the longing for urban spaces as neutral constructions and showing how space and the ways in which different urban systems attempt to manage it through mobility mechanisms, operate as governmentality: they grant meaning to people's lives without them recognizing such mechanisms as influential.

Keywords: city, gender studies, inequality and mobility, legal geography, women

Annotation:

Topics: Class, Gender, Women, Infrastructure, Urban Planning Regions: Americas, South America Countries: Colombia

Year: 2018

Intersections of Gender, Mobility and Violence in Urban Pakistan

Citation:

Anwar, Nausheen H., Sarwat Viqar, and Daanish Mustafa. 2018. “Intersections of Gender, Mobility and Violence in Urban Pakistan.” In Social Theories of Urban Violence in the Global South: Towards Safe and Inclusive Cities, edited by Jennifer Erin Salahub, Markus Gottsbacher, and John de Boer, 15-31. Routledge Studies in Cities and Development. Abingdon; New York: Routledge.

Authors: Nausheen H Anwar, Sarwat Viqar, Daanish Mustafa

Annotation:

Summary:
This chapter explores the intersections of gender, mobility, and violence by analysing gender as a key mediator of mobility in two urban areas of Pakistan: Karachi and the twin cities of Rawalpindi-Islamabad. Karachi is the commercial hub of the country, Islamabad is the federal capital, and Rawalpindi is the headquarters of the all-powerful Pakistani military. Much journalistic, and some academic, attention has been paid to the various kinds of violence in Karachi: terrorist activity, ethnic violence, and extrajudicial killings by law-enforcement agencies. As women and men move through public spaces-streets, neighbourhoods, and the larger city-they indicate different aspects of mobility. The chapter suggests that certain mobilities, mostly masculine, impact the immobility of other genders; and that these gendered mobilities are inextricably bound with social norms, class, ethnicity, and violence. The larger context of dominant masculinity inhibits women's mobility, as do its claims about the appropriate and "natural" behaviours of men and women in public and private spaces. (Summary from Taylor & Francis Group)

Topics: Class, Ethnicity, Gender, Gender Analysis, Masculinity/ies, Intersectionality, Violence Regions: Asia, South Asia Countries: Pakistan

Year: 2018

Navigating Gender Using Transportation: Theme and Variations in Urban India

Citation:

Campbell, Morgan Frances. 2018. “Navigating Gender Using Transportation: Theme and Variations in Urban India.” PhD Diss., New Jersey: School of Graduate Studies, Rutgers University.

Author: Morgan Frances Campbell

Abstract:

Starting with the knowledge of overt patriarchal structures and gender norms that affect when, where, and why women in urban India travel in public, this dissertation is an inquiry into how different groups of working women literally navigate gender and class positions while using various transportation modes. The geographies of Bengaluru and Delhi were chosen for the significant physical and social transformations that reflect realities of globalization, conflicting political ideologies, internal migration, and rapid urbanization. These changes are embedded within slick metro systems, the millions of new car owners, company provided transportation for employees of multinationals, and failing public bus systems. They are transcribed onto the bodies of urban women in which a tension between mobility in a literal sense and immobility with respect to gender norms and socio-economic hierarchies constantly plays out. The project investigates the daily mobility practices of four populations of working women: women in Bengaluru’s IT sector, young, unmarried women staying in Delhi’s working women’s hostels, women working in Delhi’s retail sector, and women bus conductors in Bengaluru. A mixed methods approach of surveying, interviewing, and participant observation is utilized in order to understand what modes these women use for commuting in the city and why these modes are chosen. The primary aim is to locate the influence gender and class has on these commuting decisions. Rooted in Right to the City activism, social exclusion research, and feminist epistemologies, this project is motivated by the reality that transportation decisions for women are inherently gendered, especially in respect to concern for personal security. At the same time, transportation mobility cannot be reduced to gender alone. Urban women do not constitute a cohesive user category and policies that improve the mobility of one group can exacerbate socio-economic inequalities of others. To illustrate this, a comparative analysis is used. However, by focusing on qualitative evidence, the project locates individual agency within these women, the various ways in which women navigate through and around physical and social structures that restrict women’s mobility. To conclude, this dissertation argues that the act of commuting in the city is one salient and important way in which a renegotiation of gender norms and class positions can be achieved.

Annotation:

Topics: Class, Gender, Gender Roles, Women, Infrastructure, Information & Communication Technologies, Transportation Regions: Asia, South Asia Countries: India

Year: 2018

‘Women with No Femininity’: Gender, Race and Nation-Building in the James Bay Project.

Citation:

Desbiens, Caroline. 2004. “‘Women with No Femininity’: Gender, Race and Nation-Building in the James Bay Project.” Political Geography 23 (3): 347–66.

Author: Caroline Desbiens

Abstract:

This paper seeks to gender the nation-state through an analysis of the links between gender, colonial history and governmentality in Québec’s James Bay region. In the early 1970s, a new governmental framework was introduced in Northern Québec with the construction of a large-scale hydroelectric complex. The James Bay project coincided with an intensive period of nation-building by Francophones in the province, which led to the 1980 referendum on separation from Canada. Looking at the space of the labor camps, I explore the differential positioning of men and women in dominant narratives of the nation-state. While both men and women who worked in James Bay were cast as heroes of the nation, everyday geographies in the work camps reveal several axes of difference on the basis of gender, race and class. By looking at the production of these geographies and the dual positioning of women as both “outcasts” and “daughters” of the patriarchal state, I call for a broader understanding of difference in the elaboration of a feminist political geography.

Keywords: Gender, labor, colonial history, nation-building, political geography

Topics: Class, Coloniality/Post-Coloniality, Feminisms, Gender, Gendered Power Relations, Patriarchy, Infrastructure, Energy, Race Regions: Americas, North America Countries: Canada

Year: 2004

Extractives vs Development Sovereignty: Building Living Consent Rights for African Women

Citation:

The WoMin Collective. 2017. “Extractives vs Development Sovereignty: Building Living Consent Rights for African Women.” Gender & Development 25 (3): 421-37.

Author: The WoMin Collective

Abstract:

This article focuses on the right of consent for women and their communities in respect of extractives and large-scale (or ‘mega’) infrastructure projects that affect their access to, and control over, land and natural resources indispensable to their lives and livelihoods. As we point out, the right of consent is determined by prevailing deeply unequal power structures. Poor women confront a double exclusion from power and decision-making about land and resource use – on the basis of both their class and gender. The political economy of power and vested interest surrounding these projects at all levels from the community to the international spheres mean that communities, and women within them, rarely enjoy the right of consent on a free, prior, informed, and ongoing basis. In addition, women are locked out of rights of land ownership in communities living under common property and this, combined with other patriarchal power relations in family and community, inhibits their voice and influence in community decision-making. This is the second exclusion they suffer, this time on the basis of their gender. Consent, even if legislated or institutionalised in policy and systems of state, corporate, or multilateral bodies is rarely granted but rather won through struggle and demand. The article will present an inspiring case in the South African context where unequal power has been inverted and a unique community, with women playing a leading role, has claimed the right of consent in practice through struggle. It concludes with some suggestions for the work needed to strengthen women’s rights of consent in respect of mega ‘development’ projects in Africa.

Keywords: resource extraction, land, Rights, women, Gender, inequality, consent, development, exclusion, social struggle

Topics: Class, Extractive Industries, Gender, Women, Gendered Power Relations, Patriarchy, Gender Hierarchies, Gender Equality/Inequality, Infrastructure, Livelihoods, Political Economies, Rights, Land Rights, Property Rights Regions: Africa, Southern Africa Countries: South Africa

Year: 2017

Social Provisioning as a Starting Point for Feminist Economics

Citation:

Power, Marilyn. 2004. “Social Provisioning as a Starting Point for Feminist Economics.” Feminist Economics 10 (3): 3–19.

Author: Marilyn Power

Abstract:

The past decade has seen a proliferation of writing by feminist economists. Feminist economists are not identified with one particular economic paradigm, yet some common methodological points seem to be emerging. I propose making these starting points more explicit so that they can be examined, critiqued, and built upon. I use the term ‘‘social provisioning’’ to describe this emerging methodology. Its five main components are: incorporation of caring and unpaid labor as fundamental economic activities; use of well-being as a measure of economic success; analysis of economic, political, and social processes and power relations; inclusion of ethical goals and values as an intrinsic part of the analysis; and interrogation of differences by class, race-ethnicity, and other factors. The paper then provides brief illustrations of the use of this methodology in analyses of US welfare reform,gender and development, and feminist ecological economics.

Keywords: social provisioning, welfare reform, gender and development, feminist political economics, feminist ecological economics, feminist methodology

Topics: Class, Development, Economies, Care Economies, Feminist Economics, Ethnicity, Feminisms, Feminist Political Economy, Gender, Race Regions: Americas, North America Countries: United States of America

Year: 2004

Locating Ecofeminism in Encounters with Food and Place

Citation:

Mallory, Chaone. 2013. “Locating Ecofeminism in Encounters with Food and Place.” Journal of Agricultural and Environmental Ethics 26 (1): 171–89.

Author: Chaone Mallory

Abstract:

This article explores the relationship between ecofeminism, food, and the philosophy of place. Using as example my own neighborhood in a racially integrated area of Philadelphia with a thriving local foods movement that nonetheless is nearly exclusively white and in which women are the invisible majority of purchasers, farmers, and preparers, the article examines what ecofeminism contributes to the discussion of racial, gendered, classed discrepancies regarding who does and does not participate in practices of locavorism and the local foods movement more broadly. Ecofeminism, it is argued here, with its focus on the ways that race, class, gender, and place are ontologically entangled, helps to highlight the ways identity and society are made and re-made through our encounters with food.

Keywords: ecofeminism, local foods, gender and raced embodiment, co-ops, community supported agriculture, philosophy of place

Topics: Agriculture, Class, Feminisms, Ecofeminism, Livelihoods, Race Regions: Americas, North America Countries: United States of America

Year: 2013

The Lives of Women in a Land Reclamation Project: Gender, Class, Culture and Place in Egyptian Land and Water Management

Citation:

Rap, Edwin, and Martina Jaskolski. 2019. “The Lives of Women in a Land Reclamation Project: Gender, Class, Culture and Place in Egyptian Land and Water Management.” International Journal of the Commons 13 (1): 84–104.

Authors: Edwin Rap, Martina Jaskolski

Abstract:

This article links feminist political ecology with the academic debate about commoning by focusing on the gendered distribution of common pool resources, in particular land and water. The research is set in the context of a coastal land reclamation project in Egypt’s Nile Delta, in a region where conflicts over resources such as arable land and fresh water are intensifying. Drawing on recent literature on commoning, we analyse the conditions under which different groups of resource users are constrained or enabled to act together. The article presents three case studies of women who represent different groups using land and water resources along the same irrigation canal. Through the concepts of intersectionality, performativity, and gendered subjectivity, this article explores how these women negotiate access to land and water resources to sustain viable livelihoods. The case studies unpack how the intersection of gender, class, culture, and place produces gendered subject positions in everyday resource access, and how this intersectionality either facilitates or constrains commoning. We argue that commoning practices are culturally and spatially specific and shaped by pre-existing resource access. Such access is often unequally structured along categories of class and gender in land reclamation and irrigation projects. 

Keywords: common pool resources, commoning, Egypt, feminist political ecology, Gender, intersectionality, Nile, performativity

Topics: Class, Feminisms, Feminist Political Ecology, Gender, Women, Humanitarian Assistance, Context-Appropriate Response to Trauma, Infrastructure, Water & Sanitation, Intersectionality, Livelihoods, Rights, Land Rights Regions: Africa, MENA, North Africa, Middle East Countries: Egypt

Year: 2019

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