Livelihoods

Martial Races and Enforcement Masculinities of the Global South: Weaponising Fijian, Chilean, and Salvadoran Postcoloniality in the Mercenary Sector

Citation:

Higate, Paul. 2012. "Martial Races and Enforcement Masculinities of the Global South: Weaponising Fijian, Chilean, and Salvadoran Postcoloniality in the Mercenary Sector." Globalizations 9 (1): 35-52.

Author: Paul Higate

Abstract:

Set against the backdrop of the occupations of Iraq and Afghanistan, the private militarised security industry has grown rapidly over the last decade. Its growth into a multi-billion dollar enterprise has attracted the interest of scholars in international relations, legal studies, political science, and security studies who have debated questions of regulation and accountability, alongside the state's control on the monopoly of violence. While these contributions are to be welcomed, the absence of critical sociological approaches to the industry and its predominantly male security contracting workforce has served to occlude the gendered and racialised face of the private security sphere. These dimensions are important since the industry has come increasingly to rely on masculine bodies from the global South in the form of so-called third country and local national men. The involvement of these men is constituted in and through the articulation of historical, neocolonial, neoliberal, and militarising processes. These processes represent the focus of the current article in respect of Fijian and Latin American security contractors. Their trajectories into the industry are considered in respect of both "push" and "pull" factors, the likes of which differ in marked ways for each group. Specifically, states and social groups in Fiji, Chile, and El Salvador are appropriating what is described in the article as an ethnic bargain as one way in which to make a contribution to the global security sector, or "in direct regard to the Latin American context” to banish its more dangerous legacies from the domestic space. In conclusion, it is argued that the use of these contractors by the industry represents a hitherto unacknowledged gendered and racialised instance of the contemporary imperial moment.

Keywords: masculinities, security industry, mercenary, global security sector

Topics: Coloniality/Post-Coloniality, Gender, Men, Masculinity/ies, Livelihoods, Militarized Livelihoods, Military Forces & Armed Groups, Private Military & Security, Security Regions: Americas, Central America, South America, Oceania Countries: Chile, El Salvador, Fiji

Year: 2012

The Cry for Land: Agrarian Reform, Gender and Land Rights in Uzbekistan

Citation:

Kandiyoti, Deniz. 2003. “The Cry for Land: Agrarian Reform, Gender and Land Rights in Uzbekistan.” Journal of Agrarian Change 3 (1-2): 225-56.

Author: Deniz Kandiyoti

Abstract:

Agrarian reform in Uzbekistan has been informed by contradictory objectives and priorities. Legislation has oscillated between measures to increase private access to land, in line with populist pressures and the structural reform agenda of international agencies, and counter–measures to tighten and restrict such access in response to the Government imperative of retaining control over the production and export earnings of cotton. Drawing on fieldwork carried out in the provinces of Andijan and Khorezm in 2000–1, this article analyses the role of gendered divisions of labour in the maintenance of a commercial cotton sector alongside a smallholder economy that has become the mainstay of rural livelihoods since the post–Soviet collapse of public sector employment and wages. It also discusses the outcomes of different types of farm restructuring and highlights the gender differentiated outcomes of a reform process that forces a growing number of women out of the recorded labour force into casual, unremunerated and informal work.

Keywords: post-Soviet reform, farm reconstruction, Gender

Topics: Economies, Gender, Women, Gendered Power Relations, Gender Equality/Inequality, Governance, Livelihoods, Rights, Land Rights, Property Rights, Women's Rights Regions: Asia, Central Asia Countries: Uzbekistan

Year: 2003

Land Rights, Gender Equality and Household Food Security: Exploring the Conceptual Links in the Case of India

Citation:

Rao, Nitya. 2006. “Land Rights, Gender Equality and Household Food Security: Exploring the Conceptual Links in the Case of India." Food Policy 31: 180-193.

Author: Nitya Rao

Abstract:

This paper seeks to critically examine the conceptual linkages between the issue of land rights for women, with household food security on the one hand and gender equality on the other. After a brief analysis of shifts in both international and national policy discourse and practice in terms of control over land as vital for food security, it seeks to analyse the implications of this for gender relations. The paper argues that in a context of diversified rural livelihoods, the contribution of agricultural production to household subsistence has been declining. This trend has been reinforced by a decline in public investment, stagnant growth and fluctuating prices for agricultural products. Men have been able to access the better paid, non-farm jobs, while leaving women behind to manage agricultural production. The renewed link between production and food security in agricultural policy has however meant allowing men not to have responsibility for household food security. While a right to land for women is a positive development, it appears also to be leading to an enhancement of work burdens, without much change in terms of status or decision-making authority.

Keywords: gender equality, land rights, household food security, gender relations, agricultural policies

Topics: Agriculture, Economies, Food Security, Gender, Women, Men, Gendered Power Relations, Gender Equality/Inequality, Households, Livelihoods, Rights, Land Rights, Women's Rights, Security Regions: Asia, South Asia Countries: India

Year: 2006

Women and Land Tenure in Southern Africa: A Human Rights-Based Approach

Citation:

Mutangadura, Gladys. 2004. “Women and Land Tenure in Southern Africa: A Human Rights-Based Approach.” Paper prepared for Session Two: Gender, Land Rights and Inheritance, Church House, Westminister, London, United Kingdom, November 8-9.

Author: Gladys Mutangadura

Abstract:

Land is considered the most fundamental resource to women's living conditions, economic empowerment and, to some extent, their struggle for equity and equality. More than 60% percent of women in Southern Africa are dependent on land for their livelihoods. Despite the importance of land to women in the sub-region, their land rights are still largely discriminated against. A combination of statutory and customary laws favoring male ownership of property disadvantage women's rights to own land. The traditional exclusion of women from property and land ownership on gender grounds is the most damaging global human rights violation experienced in many developing countries. Without rights to land, women's economic and physical security is compromised. Using evidence from selected countries in Southern Africa, this paper uses a human rights approach to argue that women's equality and land rights are violated if their rights to land are not honored. The paper offers recommendations on strategies that can be adopted by countries to enable women to equitably access, own and control land.

Topics: Gender, Women, Gendered Power Relations, Gender Equality/Inequality, Gender Equity, Land Tenure, Livelihoods, Rights, Human Rights, Land Rights, Property Rights, Women's Rights Regions: Africa, Southern Africa

Year: 2004

Gender, Traditional Authority, and the Politics of Rural Reform in South Africa

Citation:

Rangan, Haripriya, and Mary Gilmartin. 2008. “Gender, Traditional Authority, and the Politics of Rural Reform in South Africa.” Development and Change 33 (4): 633-658.

Authors: Haripriya Rangan, Mary Gilmartin

Abstract:

The new South African Constitution, together with later policies and legislation, affirm a commitment to gender rights that is incompatible with the formal recognition afforded to unelected traditional authorities. This contradiction is particularly evident in the case of land reform in many rural areas, where women's right of access to land is denied through the practice of customary law. This article illustrates the ways in which these constitutional contradictions play out with particular intensity in the 'former homelands' through the example of a conflict over land use in Buffelspruit, Mpumalanga province. There, a number of women who had been granted informal access to communal land for the purposes of subsistence cultivation had their rights revoked by the traditional authority. Despite desperate protests, they continue to be marginalized in terms of access to land, while their male counterparts appropriate communal land for commercial farming and cattle grazing. Drawing on this protest, we argue that current South African practice in relation to the pressing issue of gender equity in land reform represents a politics of accommodation and evasion that tends to reinforce gender biases in rural development, and in so doing, undermines the prospects for genuinely radical transformation of the instituted geographies and institutionalized practices bequeathed by the apartheid regime.

 

Keywords: women's land rights, customary law, gender inequality, informal access to communal land, New South African Constitution

Annotation:

  • Examines the key contradictions emerging from the post-apartheid Constitution's delineation of traditional authority, customary law, gender rights, and democratic governance, and shows how these `constitutional contradictions' have turned former Bantustans (spaces of concentrated settlement for the majority of ethnic African populations) into terrains of contention regarding issues of control over land allocation, the location of competing land-uses, and the validity of customary practices.
  • Contradictions: 1) new Constitution has formally abolished homelands and Bantustans, but continues to protect the status of “traditional” authorities who were appointed to exercise control within these jurisdictions; 2) while post-apartheid constitution protects status of traditional authorities, also enshrines Dem. Bill of Rights based on governance through elected officials; 3) while the Constitution accords equal rights to women and men, it simultaneously endorses the exercise of traditional customary law in former Bantustan areas. Rangan et al. argues that gender equity and land reform is viewed too often as a social issue, seen as “a social restructuring in space” rather than a process of reshaping `instituted geographies’. The article emphasizes the “geographic dimensions” of gender equity.
  • These geographical dimensions are crucial because they not only reveal the ways in which institutions and institutionalized practices shape class and gendered access to land-based resources, but also indicate how changes to existing modes of access might affect the livelihood abilities and social well-being of women and men in rural communities.The reconstruction and development program initiated in 1994 the RDP identified land and agrarian reform as the most important issue facing the country and sought to address the subject of women's rights to land through intense national debate.

Quotes:

“Despite these efforts with legislation and policy, there appears to have been very little positive advancement of gender rights and land reform in post-apartheid South Africa…Tenure insecurity for women-headed households in rural areas has grown worse since the enactment of interim legislation in 1994 to protect informal land right.”(635)

“The problems emerge in large part because most development theorists and policy-makers are unable to recognize the fact that the process of linking gender equity with land reform involves bringing together two distinctive kinds of geographical agendas to make a single and complex geographic project.” (636)

"Gender equity is fundamentally a geographic initiative that seeks to redefine institutionalized relationships and customary practices of everyday life in communities, but the only way in which the post-apartheid government has dealt with the geographic dimensions of such processes is through the technocratic jargon of `decentralization' and `devolution' to local governments. While such terms may imply support for `community control' or `grassroots democracy', they do not indicate how devolution and decentralization will address issues of gender equity at the regional and local levels alongside the prevalence of traditional authority and customary law.”(654)

Topics: Gender, Women, Gender Equity, Governance, Constitutions, Livelihoods, Rights, Land Rights, Women's Rights Regions: Africa, Southern Africa Countries: South Africa

Year: 2008

Human Security and Reconstruction Efforts in Rwanda: Impact on the Lives of Women

Citation:

Gervais, Myriam. 2004. “Human Security and Reconstruction Efforts in Rwanda: Impact on the Lives of Women.” Development in Practice 13 (5): 542-550.

Author: Myriam Gervais

Abstract:

This paper evaluates the pertinence of interventions sponsored by aid agencies that seek to meet the security needs of women in post-reconstruction Rwanda. Personal security, economic security, and socio-political security are used as the main methodological reference marks and indicators. The information and data used in the paper were gathered during several visits to Rwanda in 2001 and 2002. The study reveals that efforts have brought about positive impacts on the lives of women. However, findings also show that specific strategies aimed at increasing women's security would better benefit them if they were more consistently planned so as to take into consideration the ways in which issues of poverty, gender, and security intersect.

Keywords: women's land rights, women, economic security, socio-political security, reconstruction

Annotation:

  • The author examines a sample of initiatives and evaluates how pertinent the interventions sponsored by aid agencies that seek to meet the security needs of women have been. A look at the projects undertaken in Rwanda during the reconstruction period reveals that there were two types of initiatives aimed at supporting women's efforts to respond to the crisis caused by conflict and genocide: the formation of solidarity groups and production associations, and the establishment of advocacy groups and women's collectives. These associations have also taken on the task of providing legal and medical assistance services, forming groups to assist survivors, and providing business advice. The document describes how with the collaboration of local people, some non governmental organisations (NGOs) built houses in various parts of the country and tended to the most needy. By giving priority to the most vulnerable and by making this a condition for funding, NGO projects promoted the taking into account of women's needs in housing programmes. In many cases, women signed individual contracts recognised by communal authorities. The signing of a contract between a woman, the local authority, and the NGO brought about a major change: women and girls were recognised as owners of their homes. The document then considers other issues such as economic security and socio-political security.

Quotes:

“Promoting human security in post-conflict societies means taking specific actions that support a safe environment, social harmony, equal status, and equitable access to resources and to the decision-making process.” (542)

“Gender-based violence still remains high during reconstruction periods, proving that peace is not enough to ensure women’s security. In many cases, women are also confronted with radically changed realities: they have to assume new roles and new responsibilities at the family and community levels, and in so doing they are more susceptible to new forms of insecurity.” (543)

“Rwanda’s agriculture-based economy was completely destroyed by the war, forcing most of its population to live in a state of extreme precariousness. The food shortages caused by the destruction of crops and the severe reduction in cultivated land was aggravated by the inability of many households to obtain the labour they needed. In 1996, 34 per cent of families—with an average of six to seven young dependants— were headed by widows, unmarried women, and wives of prisoners suspected of genocide…64 per cent  of labour force in basic production is female.” (544)

“It is conventionally considered unacceptable for women to inherit from their families. Since girls who are heads of family enjoy no protection, they live in a climate of permanent insecurity and are vulnerable to attempts at intimidation and sexual assault, particularly at night.”(545)

“Following the genocide, one of the challenges for female heads of household was to secure a cultivable plot of land in order to ensure their family’s subsistence. One frequently observed way of doing this was to join an associative group.” (546)

Topics: Gender, Women, Girls, Gender-Based Violence, Gendered Power Relations, Gender Equality/Inequality, Gender Equity, Genocide, Households, Livelihoods, NGOs, Post-Conflict, Post-Conflict Reconstruction, Rights, Land Rights, Property Rights, Women's Rights, Security, Human Security Regions: Africa, Central Africa, East Africa Countries: Rwanda

Year: 2004

Land, Dowry, Labour: Women in the Changing Economy of Midnapur

Citation:

Gupta, Jayoti. 1993. “Land, Dowry, Labour: Women in the Changing Economy of Midnapur.” Social Scientist 21 (9-11): 74-90.

Author: Jayoti Gupta

Keywords: dowry, Gender, gender roles, womens rights, women's land rights

Annotation:

  • This paper explores the situation of women returning to their homes and communities after their countries have experienced major conflicts. In that context, it assesses the range of barriers and challenges that women face and offers some thinking to address and remedy these complex issues.  As countries face the transition process, they can begin to measure the conflict’s impact on the population and the civil infrastructure.  Not only have people been displaced from their homes, but, typically, health clinics, schools, roads, businesses, and markets have deteriorated substantially.  While the focus is on humanitarian aid in the midst of and during the immediate aftermath, the focus turns to development-based activities for the longer-term.
  • Development activities provide a significant opportunity to ensure that gender is central to the transitional process. Here we take gender centrality to be a first principle of response – namely planning, integrating and placing gender at the heart of the development response to conflict.  First, many of the post-conflict goals cannot be implemented when the population is starving, homeless, and mistrustful of government-sponsored services.  Women constitute the overwhelming proportion of refugees misplaced by war; not responding to their specific needs to return home dooms the reconstruction process.  Second, women are central to any socioeconomic recovery process.
  • This paper looks at the need to integrate development and post-conflict, and then turns to an analysis of why gender matters.  It then looks at the development as both a short and long-term process, using the model of “social services justice” to describe immediate needs as the country begins the peace stabilization process.  Social services justice serves as an “engendered” bridge between conflict and security, running the temporal spectrum from humanitarian relief through post conflict to longer-term development, any of which is inclusive of transitional justice.  The goal throughout is to respond to the immediate needs of the population post-conflict, ranging from livelihoods to health to education.

Topics: Development, Displacement & Migration, Refugees, Economies, Gender, Women, Gender Mainstreaming, Gendered Power Relations, Livelihoods, Peacebuilding, Post-Conflict, Post-Conflict Reconstruction, Rights, Land Rights, Property Rights, Women's Rights Regions: Asia, South Asia Countries: India

Year: 1993

Gender and Land Rights Revisited: Exploring New Prospects via the State, Family and Market

Citation:

Agarwal, Bina. 2003. “Gender and Land Rights Revisited: Exploring New Prospects via the State, Family and Market.” Journal of Agrarian Change 3 (1-2): 184-224.

Author: Bina Agarwal

Abstract:

The question of women's land rights has a relatively young history in India. This paper briefly traces that history before examining why gendering the land question remains critical, and what the new possibilities are for enhancing women's land access. Potentially, women can obtain land through the State, the family and the market. The paper explores the prospects and constraints linked to each, arguing that access through the family and the market deserves particular attention, since most arable land in India is privatized. On market access, the paper makes several departures from existing discussions by focusing on the advantages, especially for poor women, of working in groups to lease in or purchase land; using government credit for land rather than merely for micro–enterprises; and collectively managing purchased or leased in land, the collectivity being constituted with other women, rather than with family members. Such group functioning is shown to have several advantages over individual or family–based farming. This approach could also help revive land reform, community cooperation and joint farming in a radically new form, one centered on poor women. 

Keywords: women's land rights, inheritance, land market access, group farming, land reform

Topics: Class, Economies, Gender, Women, Livelihoods, Rights, Land Rights, Women's Rights Regions: Asia, South Asia Countries: India

Year: 2003

Post-Conflict Bosnia and Herzegovina: Integrating Women's Special Situation and Gender Perspectives in Skills Training and Employment Promotion Programmes

Citation:

Walsh, Martha. 1997. Post-Conflict Bosnia and Herzegovina: Integrating Women's Special Situation and Gender Perspectives in Skills Training and Employment Promotion Programmes. Geneva: International Labor Office.

Author: Martha Walsh

Abstract:

This report is an input to the ILO Action Programme on Skills and Entrepreneurship Training for Countries Emerging from Armed Conflict. The programme has undertaken several country-level research activities of which the author's report is one example. The report examines the gendered consequences of war. They include gender role changes emanating from exigencies of the conflict-affected context; weakened community structures, cohesion and trust and their impact on women's coping strategies and vulnerability after war; increase in numbers and vulnerability of female-headed households; and greater differences between men and women in their opportunities in the post war labour market. The limited focus men receive in programmes set up to tackle war-related physiological traumas could add to the high level of male violence against women in postwar households. The report also shows how prewar differences amongst women influence the impact of war on them, as well as how other causes of vulnerability, such as ethnicity, disability and age, need to be tackled in post war technical assistance projects. The study finds that ongoing postwar projects do not contribute substantially to empowering women, nor do they target women's strategic needs. Whilst many women's organisations exist in the country, the extent of their contribution is limited since they do not engage in the public arena. The report makes a number of proposals regarding policy and programme to guide future action.

Annotation:

Quotes:

“The way in which men and women experience and deal with the consequences of conflict depends on gender roles and relations prior to the conflict and how they were renegotiated during wartime.” (2)

“...in Bosnia, where class, ethnicity, and residential status are key elements in determining a woman’s position and have proved to be a source of conflict between women and women’s organizations.” (2)

“There has always been a profound bias against rural people, which has been worsened by heavy refugee flows from rural to urban...displaced women in urban areas must compete with other groups of women, such as families of dead soldiers, for housing and other resources.” (3)

“Conflict creates a confusing and contradictory dynamic in which gender identities are reified and polarized while at the same time women’s roles are expanded into male-dominated arenas.” (4)

“The rape of women during wartime is an intentional and strategic act of brutality. It is designed to degrade women as the moral guardians of their traditions and to demoralize the community in which they live.” (9)

Topics: Armed Conflict, Ethnic/Communal Wars, Combatants, DDR, Displacement & Migration, Ethnicity, Gender, Women, Gender Roles, Gender-Based Violence, Gendered Power Relations, Health, PTSD, Trauma, Households, Livelihoods, NGOs, Post-Conflict, Post-Conflict Reconstruction, Security, Sexual Violence, SV against Women Regions: Europe, Balkans, Eastern Europe Countries: Bosnia & Herzegovina

Year: 1997

Refugee and Returnee Women: Skills Acquired in Exile and their Application in Peacetime

Citation:

Vázquez, Norma. 1999. Refugee and Returnee Women: Skills Acquired in Exile and their Application in Peacetime. Washington, DC: International Center for Research on Women.

Author: Norma Vázquez

Abstract:

The large number of displaced and refugee women in El Salvador is a direct result of the government's indiscriminate repression of the country's poor, peasant population during the 1970s and 1980s. During this period, many people who feared for their lives were forced to flee the country. The women who spent most of the war in the Colomoncagua and Mesa Grande refugee camps in Honduras recall their experience as a catalyst for important life changes. The refugee camps, established in response to a humanitarian disaster, turned women's lives upside down, lives that had been characterized by isolation, exclusive dedication to household chores and care of the family, and strict compliance with a moral code based on obedience to masculine authority. Besieged by both the Honduran and the Salvadoran armies, but supported by a number of international and national organizations, refugee women developed abilities in the public realm that they had never before needed for their survival. Despite these advances, the women never questioned their traditional role in the home during their time in the camps, or during repatriation. New activities were simply integrated with old responsibilities. Somewhat paradoxically, the women have come to view the changes that occurred during the time of exile in a positive light, and to think of the return to El Salvador and onset of peace as events that--while important and desirable--made them take a step backward on the road to empowerment. The experience of women throughout the war-asylum-repatriation-peace cycle forms a kind of kaleidoscope, characterized by nostalgia for what they learned and experienced while in the camps, and by simultaneous recognition that peace and freedom are basic rights that are inherent to any long-term of social transformation.

Annotation:

Quotes:

“On their return to El Salvador...the women took with them the communal systems of education, medical care, and production that had enabled them to be self-sufficient in the resettlement camps. This process of adopting new systems was critical because, upon returning to El Salvador, the women no longer had the support of the international organizations that had guaranteed their survival in the refugee camps.” (6)

“It became clear that following repatriation, women had lost their new roles and reverted to traditionally submissive lives.” (6)

Topics: Class, Displacement & Migration, Refugees, Refugee/IDP Camps, Gender, Women, Gendered Power Relations, Masculinism, Households, International Organizations, Livelihoods, Post-Conflict, Post-Conflict Reconstruction Regions: Americas, Central America Countries: El Salvador

Year: 1999

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