What Are Women’s Rights Good For? Contesting and Negotiating Gender Cultures in Southern Africa

2015 ◽  
Vol 58 (3) ◽  
pp. 97-128 ◽  
Author(s):  
Judith Van Allen
Keyword(s):  
South African ◽  
Southern Africa ◽  
Women's Rights ◽  
Gender Violence ◽  
Legal Rights ◽  
Women’S Rights ◽  
Gender Justice ◽  
Policy Shift ◽  
Good For ◽  
And Gender

Abstract:Currently, feminist activists are engaged in problematizing and reframing “rights” claims in southern Africa. This article discusses three cases of such activism, all of which show the limitations but also the potential of using rights claims to transform gender cultures and gain economic and gender justice. These cases involve the successful challenge to the gender discriminatory 1982 Botswana Citizenship Act; the policy shift of Women and Law in Southern Africa from a focus on legal rights advocacy to a synthesis of rights and kinship-based claims; and initiatives by South African gender activists to confront the contradiction between the country’s constitutional guarantees of women’s rights and high levels of gender violence.

The Fragmentation of Gender in Post-Invasion Iraq

2017 ◽  
pp. 426-443 ◽  
Author(s):  
Zahra Ali
Keyword(s):  
Women's Rights ◽  
Gender Issues ◽  
Political Regime ◽  
Legal Rights ◽  
Women’S Rights ◽  
Gender Based Violence ◽  
Iraqi Women ◽  
Gender Based ◽  
And Gender ◽  
Political Economic

This chapter explores the evolution of gender and women’s rights struggles in Iraq since the establishment of the Personal Status Code in 1959 and shed light on the ethnosectarian fragmentation of women’s legal rights in post-invasion Iraq. The chapter argues that in order to explore women’s rights and conditions of lives in Iraq it is essential to explore the evolution of women’s rights and gender issues historically and through a complex lens of analysis rather than applying a predefined argument involving an undifferentiated “Islam” or age-old gender-based violence. It seeks to show that gender issues have been entangled with issues of nationhood, religion, and with the nature of the political regime since the very foundation of the Iraqi Republic in 1958. First, the chapter examines the debates and mobilizations around women’s legal rights in Iraq. Secondly, it highlights the development of political, economic, and military violence since the 1980s and its impact on gender norms and relations. Finally, it analyzes the specific context of ethnosectarian fragmentation in which Iraqi women have lived and mobilized since 2003.

scholarly journals Building Transnational Feminist Alliances: Reflections on the Post-2015 Development Agenda

2019 ◽  
Vol 41 (2) ◽  
pp. 255-273 ◽  
Author(s):  
Awino Okech ◽  
Dinah Musindarwez
Keyword(s):  
Women's Rights ◽  
Women’S Rights ◽  
Gender Justice ◽  
Women's Development ◽  
Policy Advocacy ◽  
Feminist Activism ◽  
2030 Agenda ◽  
Development Agenda ◽  
Movement Building ◽  
And Gender

Abstract This article reflects on transnational feminist organising by drawing on the experiences of the African Women’s Development and Communication Network (FEMNET) during the consultations leading up to the 2030 Agenda for Sustainable Development. First, we re-examine some of the debates that have shaped the field of women’s rights, feminist activism and gender justice in Africa, and the enduring legacies of these discourses for policy advocacy. Second, we analyse the politics of movement-building and the influence of development funding, and how they shape policy discourses and praxis in respect of women’s rights and gender justice. Third, we problematise the nature of transnational feminist solidarity. Finally, drawing on scholarship about transnational feminist praxis as well as activism, we distil some lessons for feminist policy advocacy across geo-political divides.

CLASS, GENDER, AND LIBERALISM IN PARLIAMENT, 1868–1882: THE CASE OF THE MARRIED WOMEN'S PROPERTY ACTS

2003 ◽  
Vol 46 (1) ◽  
pp. 59-87 ◽  
Author(s):  
BEN GRIFFIN
Keyword(s):  
Women's Rights ◽  
Legal Rights ◽  
Women’S Rights ◽  
Proper Understanding ◽  
Parliamentary Debates ◽  
Radical Reform ◽  
The Poor ◽  
Gender Hierarchy ◽  
Married Women's Property Acts ◽  
And Gender

The class and gender identities created by male politicians are vital to a proper understanding of how and why parliament increased women's legal rights in the nineteenth century. An examination of the parliamentary debates on the Married Women's Property Acts of 1870 and 1882 reveals that it is misleading to divide men into supporters and opponents of women's rights, because even some of those who supported the most radical reform did so in the belief that the gender hierarchy should be left intact. At the same time, politicians were reluctant to accept that their own homes should be affected by changes to women's rights, both because they feared that these changes would reduce their domestic authority and create discord in their homes, and because they did not think that the critique of male behaviour which justified the reforms should apply to them or their class. Their ability to confine both charges of abuse and the effects of the acts to the poor was essential to the successful passage of the Married Women's Property Acts. Rather than see this as the defeat of a liberal individualist vision, it was in fact the victory of an alternative strand of Victorian liberalism.

Women’s Rights as Human Rights

2019 ◽  
pp. 57-99
Author(s):  
Margaret A. McLaren
Keyword(s):  
Human Rights ◽  
Women's Rights ◽  
Gender Violence ◽  
Women’S Rights ◽  
Social Rights ◽  
Economic Rights ◽  
Human Rights Movement ◽  
And Gender ◽  
Complex Relationships ◽  
Comprehensive Framework

This chapter assesses the human rights framework as a paradigm for global gender justice. First, it examines the gains made by the “women’s rights as human rights” movement; this movement brought issues of sexual and gender violence under the purview of human rights. Next, the chapter argues for the importance of economic and social rights, and supports the indivisibility of legal, political, social, and economic rights. However, some postcolonial feminists challenge the rights framework’s claim to universality, and care ethicists criticize its strong individualism. The chapter proposes that a feminist social justice approach provides a more comprehensive framework for negotiating the complex relationships among gender, class, religious, and racial and ethnic identities and oppression than a human rights framework.

The Long Road to Gender Equality

2019 ◽  
Vol 26 (4) ◽  
pp. 512-518
Author(s):  
Mary Daly
Keyword(s):  
Gender Equality ◽  
Women's Rights ◽  
Women’S Rights ◽  
Gender Justice ◽  
Gender Policies ◽  
And Gender ◽  
Class And Status ◽  
Global And Local ◽  
Geographical Scope ◽  
Roll Out

Abstract This piece reflects upon the significance of The Logics of Gender Justice. I make the case that this is one of the most significant works on the development of women's rights and gender justice. It offers depth of understanding of the policy and politics precipitating or blocking the roll-out of a range of such rights across time and place. Its geographical scope is both global and local. It offers a framework of analysis and a set of empirical insights that will galvanize scholarship, and not just in the field of gender. I am particularly intrigued by the differentiation between class- and status-based gender policies. I can see promise here—especially from a politics perspective—but to my mind this is not a watertight differentiation between policies. The possibility of an intersectional understanding of gender-related rights and policies is also downplayed by the Htun and Weldon's framework on my reading.

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