Asia

White Stockings and Black Widows: Women in Chechnya- Myths and Realities

Citation:

Healing, Raven. 2005. “White Stockings and Black Widows: Women in Chechnya- Myths and Realities.” Off Our Backs 35 (3/4): 44-7.

Author: Raven Healing

Topics: Armed Conflict, Combatants, Female Combatants, Gender, Women, Sexual Violence, SV against Women Regions: Asia, Europe Countries: Russian Federation

Year: 2005

Resolution 1325 and Post-Cold War Feminist Politics

Citation:

Harrington, Carol. 2011. “Resolution 1325 and Post-Cold War Feminist Politics.” International Feminist Journal of Politics 13 (4): 557–75. doi:10.1080/14616742.2011.611662.

Author: Carol Harrington

Abstract:

Social movement scholars credit feminist transnational advocacy networks with putting violence against women on the United Nations (UN) security agenda, as evidenced by Resolution 1325 and numerous other UN Security Council statements on gender, peace and security. Such accounts neglect the significance of superpower politics for shaping the aims of women's bureaucracies and non-governmental organizations in the UN system. This article highlights how the fall of the Soviet Union transformed the delineation of ‘women's issues’ at the UN and calls attention to the extent that the new focus upon ‘violence against women’ has been shaped by post-Cold War US global policing practices. Resolution 1325's call for gender mainstreaming of peacekeeping operations reflects the tension between feminist advocates’ increased influence in security discourse and continuing reports of peacekeeper perpetrated sexual violence, abuse and exploitation.

Keywords: Cold War, transnational advocacy networks, new wars, democratization, peacekeeping, human rights, feminism, violence against women, United Nations

Topics: Armed Conflict, "New Wars", Democracy / Democratization, Feminisms, Gender, Women, Gender Analysis, Gender-Based Violence, Gender Mainstreaming, International Organizations, NGOs, Peacekeeping, Rights, Human Rights, UN Security Council Resolutions on WPS, UNSCR 1325, Sexual Violence, SV against Women Regions: Asia, Europe Countries: Soviet Union (former)

Year: 2011

Feminisms in the Aftermath of September 11

Citation:

Eisenstein, Zilliah. 2002. Feminisms In The Aftermath Of September 11. Social Text 20 (3): 79-99.

Author: Zilliah Eisenstein

Abstract:

This essay is about how women's rights as a complicated discourse, and the burkha as a complex symbolic, are the sites from which to understand the complexity of global power struggles at this moment. But first a note of context is necessary to clear some space for thinking—openly, critically, historically—in terms of a before and after of September 11. September 11 has not changed everything. It has just made clear how much context and perspective and location matter. Ask the people of Chile about September 11—when their beloved president, Salvador Allende, was gunned down in a coup d'état supported by the United States. Ask them the meaning of trauma and grief. Think back to the Gulf War and U.S. militarist terrorism of its smart bombs. Think across and beyond to the children of Iraq, today, this minute, who need cancer drugs or textbooks for their schools and cannot have them because of the economic sanctions imposed on their country. Do what women always do—multitask, so that you are not simply concentrated on yourself, or the United States, or this moment.

Keywords: gender analysis, gender and conflict, middle east, iran, September 11, constructivism and gender, feminism, Iraq, MENA

Topics: Development, Feminisms, Gender, Gender Analysis, Gender-Based Violence, Gendered Discourses, Gendered Power Relations, Health, PTSD, Peacebuilding, Peace Processes, Religion, Security, Human Security, Sexuality, Violence, Weapons /Arms Regions: MENA, Asia, Middle East Countries: Iran, Iraq

Year: 2002

Revisiting Representation: Communism, Women in Politics, and the Decline of Armed Conflict in East Asia

Citation:

Bjarnegård, Elin, and Erik Melander. 2013. “Revisiting Representation: Communism, Women in Politics, and the Decline of Armed Conflict in East Asia.” International Interactions 39 (4): 558–74.

Authors: Elin Bjarnegård, Erik Melander

Abstract:

This research note evaluates one of the commonly used measurements for political gender equality: representation of women in parliaments. It demonstrates that caution is called for when interpreting results where this variable is used, because parliamentary representation implies different things in different settings. Societies with more women in parliament tend to have fewer intrastate armed conflicts. We investigate this statistical association with a particular focus on East Asia. This region has seen a shift from extremely intense warfare to low levels of battle deaths at roughly the same time as great strides have been made in the representation of women in parliaments. This research note shows, however, that this statistical association is driven by authoritarian communist regimes promoting gender equality as a part of communist ideology, and these countries’ representative chambers have little influence over politics. Using statistical tests and empirical illustrations from East Asia, the note concludes that the political representation of women is an invalid indicator of political gender equality in East Asia. There is thus a need for nuance in assessing the picture painted in earlier research. In addition, the suggestion that more women in parliament will lead to fewer armed conflicts runs the risk of being forwarded as an oversimplified solution to a complex problem, and we briefly discuss the instrumentalization of gender equality in peace and security studies.

Keywords: armed conflict, communism, East Asia, Gender, representations

Topics: Armed Conflict, Gender, Women, Gendered Power Relations, Gender Equality/Inequality, Governance, Political Participation Regions: Asia, East Asia

Year: 2013

Gender and ‘Peace Work’: An Unofficial History of Israeli-Palestinian Peace Negotiations

Citation:

Aharoni, Sarai. 2011. “Gender and ‘Peace Work’: An Unofficial History of Israeli-Palestinian Peace Negotiations.” Politics & Gender 7 (3): 391–416. doi:10.1017/S1743923X11000274.

Author: Sarai Aharoni

Abstract:

Unlike earlier attempts to theorize Israeli women’s peace activism in civil society, this article examines the involvement of women in backstage roles of formal negotiations during the Oslo Process. On the basis of a qualitative analysis of the organizational structure and gender division of labor in Israeli negotiating bodies, I find that women were placed as midlevel negotiators and professional and legal advisors, and also served as spokeswomen and secretaries. This pattern of participation reveals 1) that the “security logic,” developed by Israeli negotiators led to, and reinforced, a structured gendered division of labor, providing a rational justification for gender inequality; 2) that the ability to control administrative capacities and women workers generated symbolic masculine power and assisted in maintaining asymmetries between Israeli and Palestinian delegations; 3) and that midlevel Israeli negotiators’ narratives reveal the extent to which conceptual confusion and self-contradictory approaches toward the Oslo Accords reinforced women’s overall invisibility. I conclude that patterns of rigid gender roles in official negotiating structures not only minimize women’s meaningful inclusion in peace negotiations but also affect the production of public historical narratives about gender, peace, and war.

Topics: Gender, Women, Gender Roles, Gendered Power Relations, Gender Equality/Inequality, Peace Processes Regions: MENA, Asia, Middle East Countries: Israel, Palestine / Occupied Palestinian Territories

Year: 2011

Between the Human, the Citizen and the Tribal

Citation:

Bora, Papori. 2010. “Between the Human, the Citizen and the Tribal.” International Feminist Journal Of Politics 12 (3): 341-60.

Author: Bora Papori

Abstract:

On 15 July 2004, a public protest was staged in the state of Manipur, in India's Northeast, to oppose the rape and custodial killing of a young Meitei woman, Thangjam Manorama, by soldiers of a counter-insurgency paramilitary battalion, the Assam Rifles, who suspected she was a militant. At this protest, several women appeared nude, holding a banner that read 'Indian army rape us'. This analysis considers how we might read the nudity and the statement 'Indian army rape us'. I argue that the language of law, human rights and women's rights as human rights, are inadequate to analyze the protest and the events surrounding it because they do not situate the protest within larger political struggles in the Northeast. Further, such universalist approaches take categories like 'Indian citizen', 'woman' and 'tribal' as a given and do not allow for an engagement with how these categories are mutually constituted, or the law's complicity in their constitution. Accordingly, concerns about contested notions of citizenship that are at the heart of the Manipur protest cannot be adequately addressed within this framework. Instead, I suggest a postcolonial feminist analytics as an alternative means to engage with the political questions raised by the protest.

Keywords: women and political participation in India, rape as a weapon of war

Topics: Armed Conflict, Citizenship, Democracy / Democratization, Feminisms, Gender, Women, Gender Roles, Gender-Based Violence, Governance, Military Forces & Armed Groups, Paramilitaries, Rights, Human Rights, Women's Rights, Sexual Violence, Male Perpetrators, Rape, SV against Women, Tribe, Violence Regions: Asia, South Asia Countries: India

Year: 2010

Gendering the Arab Spring

Citation:

Al-Ali, Nadje. 2012. "Gendering the Arab Spring." Middle East Journal Of Culture and Communication 5 (1): 26-31.

Author: Nadje Al-Ali

Abstract:

The article discusses the gendered implications of recent political developments in the region. It argues that women and gender are key to both revolutionary and counter-revolutionary processes and developments and not marginal to them. It explores the significance of women’s involvement, the historical context of women’s political participation and marginalization in political transition. Theoretically, developments in the region point to the centrality of women and gender when it comes to constructing and controlling communities, be they ethnic, religious or political; the significance of the state in reproducing, maintaining and challenging prevailing gender regimes, ideologies, discourses and relations; the instrumentalization of women’s bodies and sexualities in regulating and controlling citizens and members of communities; the prevalence of gender-based violence; the historically and cross-culturally predominant construction of women as second-class citizens; the relationship between militarization and a militarized masculinity that privileges authoritarianism, social hierarchies and tries to marginalize and control not only women but also non-normative men.

Topics: Ethnicity, Gender, Women, Men, Masculinity/ies, Gender-Based Violence, Gendered Power Relations, Gender Hierarchies, Military Forces & Armed Groups, Militarization, Political Participation, Rights, Women's Rights Regions: MENA, Asia, Middle East

Year: 2012

An Atlas of Trafficking in Southeast Asia the Illegal Trade in Arms, Drugs, People, Counterfeit Goods and Natural Resources in Mainland Southeast Asia

Citation:

Chouvy, Pierre-Arnaud. 2012. An Atlas of Trafficking in Southeast Asia the Illegal Trade in Arms, Drugs, People, Counterfeit Goods and Natural Resources in Mainland Southeast Asia. London: I.B. Tauris.

Author: Pierre-Arnaud Chouvy

Abstract:

Mainland Southeast Asia is one of the world's key regions for trafficking of illegal goods. It is home to an international trade in small arms, nuclear smuggling rings, human trafficking, contraband and counterfeit goods, illicit currency and smuggled medicinal drugs. The scope and mechanisms of such trafficking, however, are far from understood. An Atlas of Trafficking in Southeast Asia brings together key researchers and cartographic specialists to provide a unique overview of the major forms of illegal trafficking in the region. Featuring 32 specially drawn full-colour maps detailing the trafficking hubs, counter-trafficking facilities and border status for each of the trafficking activities, together with political, historical, topographic, ecological and linguistic regional maps, the atlas provides an unparalleled reference resource that will be welcomed by professionals and academics across a wide range of disciplines. (I.B. Tauris)

Annotation:

Table of Contents:

1. Introduction: Illegal Trades Across National Borders
Pierre-Arnaud Chouvy
2. Drug Trafficking In and Out of the Golden Triangle
Pierre-Arnaud Chouvy
3. Trafficking, Trade and Migration: Mapping Human Trafficking in the Mekong Region
David A. Feingold
4. Arms Trafficking in Mainland Southeast Asia
David Capie
5. The Jagged Edge: Illegal Logging in Southeast Asia
Vanda Felbab-Brown
6. The Illegal Trade in Wildlife in Southeast Asia and Its Links to East Asian Markets
Vanda Felbab-Brown
7. The Trade in Counterfeit Goods and Contraband in Mainland Southeast Asia
Bertil Lintner

Quotes:

“Human trafficking feeds an extensive regional prostitution market with Thailand being infamous the world over for that reason; and in terms of drug trafficking, opium and heroin are produced in bulk within the similarly ill-famed Golden Triangle. Complexity arises from the fact that human trafficking and drug trafficking can be said to be linked in some places, and to some extent, from whether drug consumption by prostitutes – and by many of their clients – is concerned or whether economic havoc created by excessively brutal and rapid eradication of illegal crops pushes women into prostitution. However, as we will see, complexity is likewise increased by the fact that many other illegal trades feed off these two major trafficking activities and their sometimes congruous networks. Some of these trades may, at some point, contribute to one another; they may also proceed, to some extent, from propitious specific regional dynamics (trafficking in drugs and arms in the context of armed conflicts, for example). It is this great diversity and complexity of illegal trading across mainland Southeast Asia that this book addresses, focusing on five of its most pervasive phenomenon: drug trafficking, human trafficking, arms trafficking, wildlife and timber trafficking, and the trade in counterfeit goods and contraband.” (1-2)

“The most active illegal border trade between Burma and Thailand occurred and still occurs at three points: Mae Sai, Mae Sot and Ranong.” (12)

“The evolution of drug trafficking in the Golden Triangle has forged new transport routes in the region and has brought abandoned routes back into service, such as those previously used by communist guerrillas. Other pathways were never abandoned. Traditional caravaners such as the Haw of Thailand and the Hui (Panthay) of Burma are very active in the regional illicit drug trade, and still use routes today that their forebears used at the end of the nineteenth century.” (13)

“Trafficking of various illegal goods almost invariably occurs along a single route, in the same cargo or not.” (14)

“The number and diversity of drug trafficking routes enable other types of smuggling and/or trafficking activities, sometimes by notorious drug traffickers themselves.” (16)

Topics: Displacement & Migration, Gender, Women, Sexual Violence, Trafficking, Arms Trafficking, Drug Trafficking, Human Trafficking, Labor Trafficking, Sex Trafficking Regions: Asia, Southeast Asia

Year: 2012

Trafficking in Humans Social, Cultural and Political Dimensions

Citation:

Cameron, Sally, and Edward Newman. 2008. Trafficking in Humans Social, Cultural and Political Dimensions. New York: United Nations University Press. 

Authors: Sally Cameron, Edward Newman

Abstract:

Brings social, economic and political elements to the policy discussion as well as strategic interventions regarding the fight against "trafficking" (the recruitment and transportation of human beings through deception and coercion for the purposes of exploitation). Trafficking, generally, occurs from poorer to more prosperous countries and regions; however, it is not necessarily the poorest regions or communities which are most vulnerable to trafficking, and so this volume seeks to identify the factors which explain where and why vulnerability increases. –Publisher's description.

“[This] volume examines the proposition that in this era of globalization, liberal economic forces have resulted in the erosion of state capacity and a weakening of the provision of public goods…A certain alignment of factors may be key to understanding trafficking. The principle focus of this volume is to understand the distinction and dialectical interaction between structural and proximate factors.”

Annotation:

Table of Contents:

1. Introduction: Understanding human trafficking/Edward Newman and Sally Cameron

Part I: Themes:

2. Trafficking in humans: Structural factors/Sally Cameron and Edward Newman
3. Globalization and national sovereignty: From migration to trafficking/ Kinsey Alden Dinan
4. Trafficking of women for prostitution/Sally Cameron
5. Migrant women and the legal politics of anti-trafficking interventions/Ratna Kapur
6. Trafficking in women: The role of transnational organized crime/Phil Williams

Part II: Regional experiences

7. The fight against trafficking in human beings from the European perspective/Helga Konrad
8. Human trafficking in East and South-East Asia: Searching for structural factors/Maruja M. B. Asis
9. Human trafficking in Latin America in the context of international migration/Gabriela Rodríguez Pizarro
10. Human trafficking in South Asia: A focus on Nepal/Renu Rajbhandari
11. Trafficking in persons in the South Caucasus – Armenia, Azerbaijan and Georgia: New challenges for transitional democracies/Gulnara Shahinian

Quotes:

Recognize that trafficking is gendered

Gender analysis offers increased possibilities to understand the specifics of why certain women are trafficked into certain regions/industries and develop appropriate (often long-term) responses. As a starting point, women are being trafficked from states offering them limited opportunities outside the hard toil and drudgery of the home, the farm and unregulated markets. “Rescuing” women and sending them home does not affect that, and thus will not alter the principal push factors which make women vulnerable to trafficking. At the same time, there is a failure to understand and acknowledge fully the trafficking of men. While there is some writing about men working in exploitative, indentured or slave-like conditions, much of this has not been contextualized within a trafficking framework. Similarly, there must be greater recognition that children are trafficked. For too long the popular image of trafficking victims – young women coerced into prostitution – has influenced policy responses, but this is only a part of the reality.” (16)

Topics: Displacement & Migration, Migration, Refugees, Economies, Poverty, Gender, Livelihoods, Sexual Livelihoods, Sexual Violence, Rape, Sexual Exploitation and Abuse, Sexual Slavery, Trafficking, Human Trafficking, Sex Trafficking Regions: Americas, Central America, Asia, East Asia, South Asia, Southeast Asia, Europe, Balkans, South Caucasus Countries: Armenia, Azerbaijan, Georgia, Nepal

Year: 2008

Pages

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