Gender Equality/Inequality

Citation:

Claire Salmon, and Jeremy Tanguy. 2016. “Rural Electrification and Household Labor Supply: Evidence from Nigeria.” World Development 82: 48–68.

Authors: Claire Salmon, Jeremy Tanguy

Abstract:

 In Nigeria, the most populated African country, rural electrification is a critical issue because of the low household elec- trification rate and the poor quality of the grid. This energy poverty has harmful economic and social consequences in rural areas, such as low productivity, lack of income-generating opportunities and poor housing conditions. In this paper, we consider electrification as a technical shock that may affect household time allocation. Using the 2010–11 General Household Survey, we investigate how electrification affects female and male labor supply decisions within rural households in Nigeria. Focusing on husband–wife data, we consider potential dependence in spouses’ labor supply decisions and address the challenge of zero hours of work using a recent copula-based bivariate hurdle model (Deb et al., 2013). In addition, an instrumental variable strategy helps identify the causal effect of electrification. Our results underline that this dependence in spouses’ labor supply decisions is critical to consider when assessing the impact of electri- fication on these outcomes. Electrification increases the working time of both spouses in the separate assessments, but the joint analysis emphasizes only a positive effect of electrification on husbands’ working time. In line with the household labor supply approach, our findings highlight that, within the household, the labor supply decisions of one spouse significantly affect those of the other spouse. Thus, if we neglect the effect of electrification on the spouse of the individual examined, we may fail to assess how this individual has been actually affected by this common shock on both spouses. Our results suggest that these within–household relationships promote hus- bands’ working time at the expense of wives’ working time.

Keywords: rural electrification, labor supply, developing countries, joint decision making, copulas, bivariate hurdle model

Topics: Gender, Women, Gendered Power Relations, Gender Equality/Inequality, Infrastructure, Energy, Livelihoods, Rights Regions: Africa, West Africa Countries: Nigeria

Year: 2016

Citation:

Caglar, Gülay, Elisabeth Prügl, and Susanne Zwingel, eds. 2013. Feminist Strategies in International Governance. London: Routledge.

Authors: Gülay Caglar, Elisabeth Prügl, Susanne Zwingel

Abstract:

The struggle for women’s rights and to overcome gender oppression has long engaged the efforts of inter-governmental and non-governmental organizations. Feminist Strategies in International Governance provides a new introduction to the contemporary forms of this struggle. It brings together the voices of academics and practitioners to reflect in particular on the effectiveness of human rights strategies and gender mainstreaming. It covers three international issue areas in which feminists currently seek change: women’s human rights and violence against women; the participation of women in peace-making and their protection during conflict; and the gendered effects of development, economic and financial governance. The book combines a critical reflection on the current state of feminist politics with an introduction to urgent issues on the contemporary international agenda. In addition, the book draws on innovative conceptualizations from constructivism in international relations, legal anthropology and discourse theory to provide new framings of current feminist struggles. Offering an accessible guide to the engendering of international governance and examining the challenges for international feminist politics in the future, this work will be of great interest to students and scholars of international organizations, gender politics and global governance. (Routledge)

Topics: Feminisms, Gender, Women, Gender-Based Violence, Gender Mainstreaming, Gendered Power Relations, Gender Equality/Inequality, Globalization, Governance, International Law, International Human Rights, International Organizations, NGOs, Peacebuilding, Peace Processes, Rights, Human Rights, Women's Rights

Year: 2013

Citation:

Hawkesworth, Mary. 2012. Political Worlds of Women: Activism, Advocacy, and Governance in the Twenty-First Century. Westview Press. https://westviewpress.com/books/political-worlds-of-women/.

Author: Mary Hawkesworth

Abstract:

Keywords: gender & politics, human rights, political science

Topics: Citizenship, Displacement & Migration, Migration, Gender, Women, Gender Mainstreaming, Gendered Power Relations, Gender Equality/Inequality, Justice

Year: 2012

Citation:

Author: Sabrina Mahtani

Abstract:

The year 2012 marked ten years since the end of Sierra Leone’s brutal eleven-year civil war, which had and continues to have a significant impact on girls and women. Sierra Leone reflects the global trend, with women representing a minority of the prison population. With so many competing needs, Sierra Leone often places penal reform low on the priority list of postwar reconstruction efforts. Women in conflict with the law are often seen as perpetrators and thus as less deserving of the limited assistance efforts available than “victims,” such as women who have suffered gender-based violence. The nature of imprisonment, lack of empowerment, and social stigma make female prisoners and former prisoners nearly invisible, resulting in neglect of their experiences and voices. Building on six years of work with girls and women in conflict with the law, this article seeks to examine the factors behind the growing rates of incarceration of women in Sierra Leone. It explores how marginalization, low socioeconomic status, gender disparities in many areas of social and political life, and weak state institutions result in the law having a particular negative effect on women. The difficult experiences of women in detention and the continuing challenges of reintegration can cause further victimization and have detrimental effects on children. International and domestic gender reform efforts need to incorporate and support this neglected population as part of wider gender justice efforts.

Topics: Armed Conflict, Civil Wars, Civil Society, Gender, Women, Girls, Gendered Power Relations, Gender Equality/Inequality, Post-Conflict, Rights Regions: Africa, West Africa Countries: Sierra Leone

Year: 2013

Citation:

Ghebrezghiabher, Habtom M., and Pnina Motzafi-Haller. 2015. “Eritrean Women Asylum Seekers in Israel: From a Politics of Rescue to Feminist Accountability." Journal of Refugee Studies 28 (4): 570-594.

Authors: Habtom M. Ghebrezghiabher, Pnina Motzafi-Haller

Abstract:

Despite acclaimed gender equality during the struggle for liberation and post independence in their country, the entrenched system of gender-based inequality has forced many Eritrean women to flee their country. On their difficult flight and during their journey, Eritrean women were exposed to blackmail, sexual abuse and rape. Those who made it through the difficult journey sought asylum in Israel but have not been able to escape gender violation and discrimination in their host state. This article traces the experience of Eritrean woman asylum seekers in Israel from the moment of their escape from Eritrea, through their torturous journey and after their entry into a state that refuses to consider their right to refugee status. Data were obtained using in-depth interviews with women asylum seekers in Israel, records of radio interviews and Paltalk discussions in the Tigrigna language, and close reading of unpublished reports by human rights activists and of Hebrew-language Israeli newspapers. Analysis of these diverse bodies of data reveals that gender is largely ignored by the few scholars who attempted to document the Eritrean asylum seekers experience in Israel. Drawing on post-colonial feminist Canadian scholar Sherene Razack (1999), who urges us to develop 'a more political understanding of why women flee', we examine here the experience of Eritrean women asylum seekers in Israel within a critical feminist analytical framework that documents their agency within changing historical and political circumstances and forces. We use this larger historically specific framework to disengage from the trope of 'pity and rescue' and offer instead a critical examination of how Eritrean women act as agents from the moment they decide to flee their country and until they settle in Israel. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Topics: Armed Conflict, National Liberation Wars, Displacement & Migration, Migration, Gender, Women, Gender-Based Violence, Gendered Power Relations, Gender Equality/Inequality, Violence Regions: East Africa, Asia, Middle East Countries: Eritrea, Israel

Year: 2015

Citation:

den Boer, Andrea, and Valerie Hudson. 2004. “The Securtiy Threat of Asia’s Sex Ratios.” SAIS Review of International Affairs 24 (2): 27–43. doi:10.1353/sais.2004.0028.

Abstract:

“Security demographics" has become a new subfield of security studies in recent years as scholars envision the security implications of long-term demographic change. This subfield provides important new insight into the problem of population, social stability and conflict, but our research suggests that an additional demographic factor must be taken into account when assessing social stability and security of a state - that of sex ratios. What are the security implications for a population whose males, particularly those of the young adult population, significantly outnumber females? China and India, as well as several other Asian states, are currently undergoing various demographic transitions, one of the most important being the increasingly high sex ratios of young segments of these populations. We argue that internal instability is heightened in nations displaying the high level of exaggerated gender inequality indicated by high sex ratios, leading to an altered security calculus for the state. Possibilities of meaningful democracy and peaceful foreign policy are diminished as a result. The high sex ratios in China and India in particular have implications for the long-term security of these nations and the Asian region more broadly. 

Topics: Democracy / Democratization, Gendered Power Relations, Gender Equality/Inequality, Security Regions: Asia, East Asia, South Asia Countries: China, India

Year: 2004

Citation:

Sunder Rajan, Rajeswari. 2003. The Scandal of the State: Women, Law, Citizenship in Postcolonial India. Durham: Duke University Press.

Author: Rajeswari Sunder Rajan

Annotation:

Summary:

"The Scandal of the State is a revealing study of the relationship between the postcolonial, democratic Indian nation-state and Indian women’s actual needs and lives. Well-known for her work combining feminist theory and postcolonial studies, Rajeswari Sunder Rajan shows how the state is central to understanding women’s identities and how, reciprocally, women and “women’s issues” affect the state’s role and function. She argues that in India law and citizenship define for women not only the scope of political rights but also cultural identity and everyday life. Sunder Rajan delineates the postcolonial state in implicit contrast with the “enlightened,” postfeminist neoliberal state in the West. Her analysis wrestles with complex social realities, taking into account the influence of age, ethnicity, religion, and class on individual and group identities as well as the shifting, heterogeneous nature of the state itself."

“The Scandal of the State develops through a series of compelling case studies, each of which centers around an incident exposing the contradictory position of the Indian state vis-à-vis its female citizens and, ultimately, the inadequacy of its commitment to women’s rights. Sunder Rajan focuses on the custody battle over a Muslim child bride, the compulsory sterilization of mentally retarded women in state institutional care, female infanticide in Tamilnadu, prostitution as labor rather than crime, and the surrender of the female outlaw Phoolan Devi. She also looks at the ways the Uniform Civil Code presented many women with a stark choice between allegiance to their religion and community or the secular assertion of individual rights. Rich with theoretical acumen and activist passion, The Scandal of the State is a powerful critique of the mutual dependence of women and the state on one another in the specific context of a postcolonial modernity.” (Duke University Press)

Perception, treatment, abuse, and exploitation of women are all described as effects of corruption.

Acknowledgments xiii

1. Introduction: Women, Citizenship, Law, and the Indian State 1

I. Women in Custody

2. The Ameena “Case”: The Female Citizen and Subject 41

3. Beyond the Hysterectomies Scandal: Women, the Institution, Family, and State 72

II. Women in Law 

4. The Prostitution Question(s): Female Agency, Sexuality, and Work 117

5. Women Between Community and State: Some Implications of the Uniform Civil Code Debates 147

III. Killing Women 

6. Children of the State?: Unwanted Girls in Rural Tamilnadu 177

7. Outlaw Woman: The Politics of Phoolan Devi’s Surrender, 1983 212

Notes 237

References 279

Index 301

Topics: Coloniality/Post-Coloniality, Corruption, Gender, Gendered Power Relations, Gender Equality/Inequality, Religion, Rights, Women's Rights Regions: Asia, South Asia Countries: India

Year: 2003

Citation: Kantor, Paula. 2009. “Women’s Exclusion and Unfavorable Inclusion in Informal Employment in Lucknow, India: Barriers to Voice and Livelihood Security.” World Development 37 (1): 194–207. doi:10.1016/j.worlddev.2008.05.002.

Author: Paula Kantor

Abstract:

This paper provides comparative analyses across women’s employment-status groups to examine how processes of exclusion and constrained and adverse inclusion shape different women’s labor market opportunities and outcomes in Lucknow, India. It examines under what conditions, if at all, women’s labor contributes to household-poverty reduction and for which work types paid employment leads to increased voice for women in the household, one dimension of a process of empowerment. It finds that women’s labor force participation has a meager influence on household and individual level development outcomes largely due to the inter-related processes of exclusion and inclusion, where social norms and responsibilities for reproductive work can lead to constrained inclusion in the labor market, adversely affecting women’s terms of incorporation. The findings have relevance for programming focusing on improving the range and quality of choices for women in the paid economy.

Keywords: South Asia, India, informal employment, women, exclusion

Topics: Development, Economies, Gender, Women, Gendered Power Relations, Gender Equality/Inequality, Households, Livelihoods Regions: Asia, South Asia Countries: India

Year: 2009

Citation:

Dharmapuri, Sahana. 2011. “Just Add Women and Stir?” Parameters 41(1): 56-70.

Author: Sahana Dharmapuri

Annotation:

Topics: Gender, Gendered Discourses, Gendered Power Relations, Patriarchy, Gender Hierarchies, Gender Equality/Inequality, Political Participation, UN Security Council Resolutions on WPS, UNSCR 1325

Year: 2011

Citation:

Authors: Sima Wali, Elizabeth Gould, Paul Fitzgerald

Abstract:

“The article examines the link between the crises in women's health and human rights in Afghanistan and the political circumstances that caused them. The wall of silence that separated the political events of Communist era from their human consequences perpetuates humanitarian crises and frustrates relief workers and activists in their efforts to end crimes against humanity. As a result of the division between humanitarian crises and the political discourse that would alter them, conflicts remain unresolved, leaving the victims exposed to multiple abuses.”

(EBSCO host)

Topics: Armed Conflict, Ethnic/Communal Wars, Gender, Women, Gender Balance, Gendered Power Relations, Gender Equality/Inequality, Justice, Crimes against Humanity, Military Forces & Armed Groups, Militarism, Post-Conflict, Post-Conflict Reconstruction, Rights, Human Rights, Women's Rights, Security, Human Security Regions: Asia, South Asia Countries: Afghanistan

Year: 1999