Feminisms, Empowerment and Development Changing Women's Lives

The economic and political empowerment of women continues to be a central focus for development agencies worldwide; access to medical care, education and employment, as well as women's reproductive rights remain key factors effecting women's autonomy. This book explores what women are doing to change their own circumstances, and provides in-depth analysis of collective action and institutionalized mechanisms aimed at changing structural relations.

Drawing on unique, original research and approaching empowerment as a complex process of negotiation, rather than a linear sequence of inputs and outcomes, this crucial collection highlights the difficulty of creating common agendas for the advancement of women's power and rights, and argues for a more nuanced, context based approach to development theory and practice.

An indispensible text for anyone interested in gender and development.

Andrea Cornwall is Professor in Anthropology and Development at the University of Sussex, UK, where she is an affiliate of the Centre for the Study of Sexual Dissidence and director of the Pathways of Women's Empowerment programme. As a teenager, she harboured a secret desire to be an agony aunt when she grew up, inspired by clandestine readings of her mother's Cosmopolitan, but became an anthropologist instead, focusing much of her research on gender, sexuality, sex and relationships. Joining the Institute of Development Studies (IDS) as a fellow in 1998, she supported the emergence of work on sexuality and helped establish the Sexuality and Development Programme. She has published widely on gender and sexuality in development and is executive producer of Save us from Saviours, a short film on Indian sex workers' challenge of the rescue industry.

Jenny Edwards works at the Institute of Development Studies at the University of Sussex, UK, and is the Programme Administrative Coordinator for the Women's Empowerment Research Programme Consortium.

1.Introduction: Negotiating Empowerment; Andrea Cornwall and Jenny Edwards
PART I: TOOLS FOR TRANSFORMATION?
2. Legal Reform, Women's Empowerment, and Social Change: The Case of Egypt; Mulki Al-Sharmani
3. Quotas: A Pathway of Political Empowerment?; Ana Alice Alcantara Costa
4. Education: Pathway to Empowerment for Ghanaian Women?; Akosua K. Darkwah
5. Women's Voices, Work and Bodily Integrity in Pre-Conflict, Conflict and Post-Conflict Reconstruction Processes in Sierra Leone?; Hussainatu J. Abdullah, Aisha F. Ibrahim and Jamesina King
6. No Path to Power: Civil Society, State Services, and the Poverty of City Women; Hania Sholkamy
PART II: MOBILISING FOR CHANGE: STRATEGIES AND TACTICS
7. Subversively Accommodating: Feminist Bureaucrats and Gender Mainstreaming; Rosalind Eyben
8. Crossroads of Empowerment: The Organisation of Women Domestic Workers in Brazil; Terezinha Gonalves
9. Reciprocity, Distancing, and Opportunistic Overtures: Women's Organisations Negotiating Legitimacy and Space in Banglades; Sohela Nazneen and Maheen Sultan
10. The Power of Relationships: Love and Solidarity in a Landless Women's Organisation in Rural Bangladesh?; Naila Kabeer and Lopita Huq
PART III: EMPOWERMENT'S HIDDEN PATHWAYS
11. Family, Households and Women's Empowerment in Bahia, Brazil, Through the Generations: Continuities or Change?; Cecilia M.B. Sardenberg
12. Negotiating Islam: Conservatism, Splintered Authority and Empowerment in Urban Bangladesh; Samia Huq
13. Unmarried in Palestine: Embodiment and (dis)Empowerment in the Lives of Single Palestinian Women; Penny Johnson
14. Women Watching Television: Surfing Between Fantasy and Reality; Aanmona Priyadarshani and Samia Afroz Rahim