Political Economies

Citation:

Stienstra, Deborah. 2015. “Northern Crises: Women’s Relationships and Resistances to Resource Extractions.” International Feminist Journal of Politics 17 (4): 630–51. 

Author: Deborah Stienstra

Abstract:

Using feminist disability studies and intersectionality, this article draws upon the ongoing resource extractions in Labrador, Canada to argue for examining local communities and relationships as one way to understand gender and global social, economic and environmental crises. The article explores how crises in Labrador have been constituted and maintained around global agendas of economic and resource development, historical and current colonial practices and a limited and constrained international relations with local Indigenous nations. The lives of women and their communities in Labrador illustrate one wave of a global crisis that extinguishes diversity and connection to the land in a race to extract natural resources, maintain global military power and gain profit in the global economy. The actions over the past thirty years by NATO and the Canadian federal, provincial and municipal governments, coupled with transnational mining corporations such as Vale, have “normalized” crisis in the communities and reduced the capacity of these communities and Indigenous nations to respond to the issues arising as a result of the Muskrat Falls hydroelectric development project. Yet the women and their communities illustrate their agency and reject an analysis of them exclusively as victims. Together with researchers and activists, the women in Labrador have built a community of practice in the Feminist Northern Network.

Keywords: feminist disability studies, indigenous, intersectionality, resource development, hydroelectricity

Topics: Coloniality/Post-Coloniality, Development, Economies, Environment, Extractive Industries, Gender, Women, Globalization, Indigenous, Political Economies, Rights, Indigenous Rights Regions: Americas, North America Countries: Canada

Year: 2015

Citation:

Young, Brigitte, and Christoph Scherrer, eds. 2010. Gender Knowledge and Knowledge Networks in International Political Economy. Baden-Baden: Nomos.

Authors: Brigitte Young, Christoph Scherrer

Abstract:

Topics: Gender, Women, Gendered Power Relations, Gender Equality/Inequality, Gender Equity, International Organizations, Political Economies

Year: 2010

Citation:

Siddiqi, Dina M. 2009. “Do Bangladeshi Factory Workers Need Saving? Sisterhood in the Post-Sweatshop Era.” Feminist Review 91 (1): 154–74. doi:10.1057/fr.2008.55.

Author: Dina M. Siddiqi

Abstract:

This article revisits the figure of the ‘third world sweatshop worker’, long iconic of the excesses of the global expansion of flexible accumulation in late twentieth-century capitalism. I am interested in how feminist activists concerned with the uneven impact of neo-liberal policies can engage in progressive political interventions without participating in the ‘culture of global moralism’ that continues to surround conventional representations of third world workers. I situate my analysis in the national space of Bangladesh, where the economy is heavily dependent on the labour of women factory workers in the garment industry and where local feminist understandings of the ‘sweatshop economy’ have not always converged with global feminist/left concerns about the exploitation inherent in the (now not so new) New International Division of Labor. The tensions or disjunctures between ‘global’ and ‘local’ feminist viewpoints animate the concerns of this article. I argue that de-contextualized critiques derived from abstract notions of individual rights, and corresponding calls for change from above – calls on the conscience of the feminist and the consumer, for instance – can entail troubling analytical simplifications. They highlight some relations of power while erasing others, thereby enacting a different kind of violence and at times undermining mobilizations on the ground. I draw attention to the multiple fields of power through which much of the activism across borders continues to be produced and reproduced discursively. This kind of framing fits all too easily into existing cultural scripts about gender and race elsewhere, and produces ethical obligations to ‘save’ women workers.

Keywords: Bangladesh, garment industry, globalization, sweat shops, transnational feminism

Topics: Economies, Feminisms, Gender, Women, Globalization, Livelihoods, Political Economies, Race, Rights, Human Rights, Violence Regions: Asia, South Asia Countries: Bangladesh

Year: 2009

Citation:

Lind, Amy. 2010. “Gender, Neoliberalism and Post-Neoliberalism: Re-Assessing the Institutionalisation of Women’s Struggles for Survival in Ecuador and Venezuela.” In The International Handbook of Gender and Poverty: Concepts, Research, Policy. Cheltenham, UK: Edward Elgar Publishing.

Author: Amy Lind

Topics: Development, Economies, Economic Inequality, Poverty, Gender, Women, Globalization, Political Economies, Post-Conflict Regions: Americas, South America Countries: Ecuador, Venezuela

Year: 2010

Citation:

Koster, Marian. 2010. “Poverty and Female-Headed Households in Post-Genocide Rwanda.” In The International Handbook of Gender and Poverty: Concepts, Research, Policy. Cheltenham, UK: Edward Elgar Publishing.

Author: Marian Koster

Topics: Development, Economies, Poverty, Gender, Women, Genocide, Households, Political Economies, Post-Conflict Regions: Africa, Central Africa, East Africa Countries: Rwanda

Year: 2010

Citation:

Chant, Sylvia. 2010. “The Unbearable Heaviness of Being: Reflections on Female Altruism in Cambodia, Philippines, The Gambia and Costa Rica.” Progress and Development Studies 10 (2): 145–59.

Author: Sylvia Chant

Abstract:

Reviewing existing scholarship and drawing on our own experience of microlevel qualitative research on gender in countries in three regions of the Global South (Cambodia, the Philippines, Costa Rica and The Gambia), this article examines patterns of women’s altruistic behaviour within poor family-based households. As a quality and practice labeled as ‘feminine’, the article illuminates the motives, dimensions and dynamics that characterise this apparently enduring female trait. It also makes some tentative suggestions as to how the links between women and altruism might be more systematically examined, problematized and addressed in development, and gender and development (GAD) analysis and policy.

Topics: Development, Economies, Gender, Women, Gender Roles, Households, Political Economies, Post-Conflict Regions: Africa, West Africa, Americas, Central America, Asia, Southeast Asia Countries: Cambodia, Costa Rica, Gambia, Philippines

Year: 2010

Citation:

Chant, Sylvia, ed. 2010. The International Handbook of Gender and Poverty: Concepts, Research Policy. Cheltenham: Edward Elgar Publishing. http://www.e-elgar.com/shop/the-international-handbook-of-gender-and-poverty?___website=uk_warehouse.

Author: Sylvia Chant

Abstract:

In the interests of contextualising (and nuancing) the multiple interrelations between gender and poverty, Sylvia Chant has gathered writings on diverse aspects of the subject from a range of disciplinary and professional perspectives, achieving extensive thematic as well as geographical coverage. This benchmark volume presents women’s and men’s experiences of gendered poverty with respect to a vast spectrum of intersecting issues including local to global economic transformations, family, age, ‘race’, migration, assets, paid and unpaid work, health, sexuality, human rights, and conflict and violence.

(Edward Elgar Publishing)

Topics: Armed Conflict, Economies, Poverty, Gender, Women, Men, Health, Livelihoods, Political Economies, Sexual Violence, Violence

Year: 2010

Citation:

Drummond, Lisa. 2006. “Gender in Post-Doi Moi Vietnam: Women, Desire, and Change.” Gender, Place & Culture 13 (3): 247–50.

Author: Lisa Drummond

Abstract:

On the eve of doi moi's twentieth anniversary, this group of papers examines the impact of ‘economic renovation’ on the lives of Vietnam's women. Economically, the transformation is unarguable. Socially, the impacts have been as deep, but more uneven and possibly less predictable. These four papers examine different aspects of contemporary Vietnamese women's experience through the lens of desire: mothers confronting the age-old desire for sons under the government's small-family policy, young women's desire to explore sexuality in the strict moral environment of the countryside, piece-workers' desire for better conditions and better lives but unable to mobilize their proletarian class position in a socialist regime, and the desire of authors to evoke women's war-time roles to create a shared national remembrance of suffering, sacrifice, and loss. In their diverse ways, these papers offer unusual insights and rare glimpses into the lives of women in post-doi moi Vietnam.

Topics: Civil Society, Class, Economies, Gender, Women, Political Economies, Post-Conflict, Sexuality Regions: Asia, Southeast Asia Countries: Vietnam

Year: 2006

Citation:

Ruwanpura, Kanchana N. 2007. “Awareness and Action: The Ethno-Gender Dynamics of Sri Lankan NGOs.” Gender, Place & Culture 14 (3): 317–33. doi:10.1080/09663690701324987.

Author: Kanchana N. Ruwanpura

Abstract:

Non-governmental organizations (NGOs) are the modus operandi in the development arena at this juncture. Many, including feminists, place much faith in these actors for creating a progressive space for social, political, and economic activities to be undertaken. This article employs fieldwork evidence from eastern Sri Lanka, carried out in 1998–1999 and early 2004, to challenge this simplistic reading. The primary social group that was studied during the fieldwork period was female-headed households. This article argues that there are different types of NGO working in multiple ways in the region, and it is important to distinguish between these differences. NGOs that primarily execute development-oriented projects without considering the ethno-nationalist and gender politics are culpable of the violence of development. It is only when NGOs are in local communities for the long haul that they are able to develop a commitment to reassess and evaluate the social transformative potential of their activities. Using a feminist political economy perspective this article argues that it is important and necessary that NGOs confront social, political, and economic structures, including ethnic identity politics, if their activities are to lead to transformative feminist politics. In other words, NGOs would have to do more than pay lip service to gender mainstreaming, as is more often the case. These actors need to recognize and understand the potency of ethno-nationalist politics, social structures, social exclusion, and social injustice in order to create social spaces that are enabling of women's agency in the local communities within which they work and operate.

Keywords: ethnic-dynamics, NGOs and civil society, community activism, social/political transformation, eastern Sri Lanka

Topics: Civil Society, Economies, Ethnicity, Gender, Women, Gender Mainstreaming, NGOs, Political Economies, Political Participation Regions: Asia, South Asia Countries: Sri Lanka

Year: 2007

Citation:

Yea, Sallie. 2012. “‘Shades of Grey’: Spaces In and Beyond Trafficking for Thai Women Involved in Commercial Sexual Labour in Sydney and Singapore.” Gender, Place & Culture 19 (1): 42–60. doi:10.1080/0966369X.2011.617906.

Author: Sallie Yea

Abstract:

In this article I explore the migration trajectories of some Thai women trafficked internationally for commercial sexual exploitation, suggesting that many figuratively ‘cross the border’ between coerced and consensual existence in volatile migrant sex industries during the course of their migration experiences, thus complicating debates around the notion of choice in ‘sex’ trafficking. In exploring these women's transitions I seek to understand why women who had either never previously been sex workers or who were sex workers operating without duress, but who were then trafficked for commercial sexual exploitation remain in, or re-enter volatile forms of migrant sex work at a later point under voluntary arrangements. In answering this question I focus on the temporal and spatial aspects of individual women's experiences in migrant sex industries drawing in detail on the narratives of two Thai women trafficked to Sydney, Australia and Singapore. I make some suggestions about methodologies used in trafficking research that can assist in bringing to light some of these complex time–space dimensions of women's experiences through their shifting positions in commercial sexual labour. The article also reflects on the implications of these women's trajectories for the ‘prostitution debate’ as it relates to trafficking for commercial sexual exploitation by suggesting that many trafficked women occupy ambiguous or in-between positions in migrant sex industries, neither easily distinguishable by the label of victim of trafficking or migrant sex worker.

Keywords: sex trafficking, commercial sexual labour, methodologies, migration trajectories, Thailand

Topics: Displacement & Migration, Forced Migration, Gender, Women, Livelihoods, Sexual Livelihoods, Political Economies, Sexual Violence, Sexual Exploitation and Abuse, Sexual Slavery, Trafficking, Human Trafficking, Sex Trafficking Regions: Asia, Southeast Asia Countries: Thailand

Year: 2012