Agency,Periodisation and Change in the Gender and Women's History of Colonial India

The paper begins with a critique of the ‘imperialism‐nationalism’ paradigm and its concomitant privileging of the period 1885–1947, which has dominated the writing of modern Indian history. It is argued here that the fixation with the ‘birth‐of‐the‐nation’ theme has led to the neglect of women's agency; that it has resulted in many inconsistencies, dilemmas and unresolved issues regarding a range of topics within Indian gender‐relations; and that this periodisation inhibits the reclamation of terms such as ‘feminist’ and ‘feminism’. The second half of the essay proposes that women's agency can be recovered via a new chronology and a new template for understanding agency within which scholars will be enabled to retrieve the conscious voices of Indian women and record change in gender relations.     

Universalized categories,dissonant realities: gendering postconflict reconstruction in Nepal

International agencies, nongovernmental organizations, governmental agencies, and development policy-makers have sought to incorporate ‘gender mainstreaming’ into postconflict policies and programs in an effort to ameliorate the unequal gender impacts of war. This article uses narratives of widow heads of household collected through field research in Nepal in 2008 and 2011 to illustrate how postconflict development discourses purporting to engage with gender not only take a narrow view of gender (i.e., by equating it to women-focused activities), but also neglect the complex and dynamic realities of women's lives. Postconflict interventions employ simplistic assumptions that neglect gender-specific postconflict insecurities and oppressions (such as systematic violence against women). By neglecting the crucial significance of social networks for widows' survival, postconflict reconstruction assumes women to be individualized receptacles for development/empowerment. The crucial role of social networks in constraining women's agency is obscured. At the same time, assumptions of homogeneity ingrained in universalized categories such as ‘widow’ and ‘conflict-affected’ obfuscate women's multiple identities, roles, and agency in their struggles for survival. The insights emerging from field research suggest a greater attunement of postconflict development interventions to women's lived experiences and social settings.     

Foucault,realism and the power discourse in international relations

The work of Michel Foucault highlights the need to rethink the assumptions of disciplines such as international relations which have tended to remain narrow, universalist and positivist. In particular, the key concept of power has largely escaped critical inquiry. This article seeks to open up the power discourse in international relations by exploring the limits of traditional approaches such as realism and even critical theory, arguing for a ‘post‐positivist’ approach which incorporates Foucault's insights into the nature of power. Indeed, it goes beyond much of the ‘Third Debate’ in directly focusing on power and rearticulating its form and content as a category of analysis in international relations.     

Out of the dark but not out of the cage: women's empowerment and gender relations in the Dangme West district of Ghana

In Ghana, strategies to address poverty among rural women have often been linked to women's empowerment programmes with credit as a core component of these. Yet, many programmes focus on the economic benefit to women without necessarily looking at the impact on gender relations at the household level and its implications on women. Using quantitative and qualitative data from the Dangme West district of Ghana, this article shows how poverty reduction programmes with credit components can reduce women's vulnerability to poverty and empower them. But much more needs to be done to complement these efforts. The study shows that women beneficiaries as against women non-beneficiaries have significantly improved their socio-economic status through access to financial and non-financial resources. This has in certain instances improved gender relations at the household level, with women being recognized as earners of income and contributors to household budget. However, some women still regard their spouses as ‘heads’ and require their consent in decisions even in issues that have to do with their own personal lives. Moreover, the improved economic status of women has resulted in a ‘power conflict’, creating confrontation between spouses. The article recommends that, as part of their programmes, assisting organizations and institutions must address ‘power relations’, the basis of gender subordination at the household level, otherwise socio-cultural norms and practices, underpinned by patriarchal structures, will remain ‘cages’ for rural women.     

Gender as national interest at the UN Security Council

The United Nations Security Council has often been identified as a key actor responsible for the uneven trajectory of the international Women, Peace and Security (WPS) agenda. It is, however, the Council members—who also seek to advance their national interest at this intergovernmental forum—that are pivotal in the Council's deliberations and shape its policies. Yet, little attention has been paid to this aspect of deliberative politics at the Council in feminist scholarship on WPS. This article seeks to address this gap in the literature. It notes that gender has increasingly become part of foreign policy interests of UN member states, as evidenced by practices such as invocation of ‘women's rights’ and ‘gender equality’ in broader international security policy discourse. The article demonstrates that this national interest in gender has featured in WPS‐related developments at the Security Council. Using specific illustrations, it examines three sets of member states: the permanent and non‐permanent members as well as non‐members invited to take part in Council meetings. The main argument of this article relates to highlighting member states’ interests underpinning their diplomatic activities around WPS issues in the Security Council, with the aim to present a fuller understanding of political engagements with UNSCR 1325, the first WPS resolution, in its institutional home.     

Is international affairs too ‘hard’ for women? Explaining the missing women in Australia's international affairs

Women are demonstrably under-represented at senior levels in Australia's international affairs. Empirical evidence shows a continuing gender imbalance in leadership positions, including in the Department of Foreign Affairs and Trade, the Department of Defence and academia. Two explanations commonly offered are that women are less motivated or lack interest in ‘hard’ international relations. These explanations are found to be unconvincing, given studies showing similar levels of ambition and interest at recruitment. Four alternative explanations are offered to account for the scarcity of female leaders in Australia's international affairs: the legacy of direct discrimination, continued indirect discrimination, inadequate support for women who balance work and family responsibilities, and socially constructed gender norms. Instead of the subject matter of international relations being too ‘hard’, or inherently masculine, it appears that it is the combined impact of these factors that has made it ‘hard’, or difficult, for women to progress to senior levels. In order to show how these barriers can be overcome, three case studies are presented of women who have achieved senior positions: Professor Emeritus Helen Hughes, Her Excellency Ms Penny Wensley and Professor Hilary Charlesworth. These examples suggest strategies that women can use to further their careers and measures that can be implemented in workplaces to improve the representation of senior women in Australia's international affairs.     

Negotiating Authority between UNHCR and ‘The People’

Refugee camps are exceptional places that are left to the benevolent governing of international humanitarian agencies, and offer unique opportunities to explore the making and un‐making of public authority. This article examines how certain groups of young men in a refugee camp in Tanzania manage to establish public authority by relating to ideas of a Burundian moral order, while at the same time relating to the ‘development‐speak’ of international relief operations. The refugees' attempts to establish public authority are highly contested and highly politicized, clashing with the relief agencies' vision of the camp as non‐political. Ironically, the young men who engage in politics in the camp are also closely linked to these relief agencies in their role as brokers between the agencies and the ‘small people’. Public authority is partly produced by the powers that are delegated to them by the agencies and partly formed in the ‘gaps' in the agencies’ system. Similarly, authority rests in part on the respect that these brokers gain from other refugees — a respect that is earned in numerous ways, including outwitting the international organizations — and in part on the recognition that they get from the very same organizations. In other words, public authority rests on complex relations between legitimacy and recognition and between sovereignty and governmentality.     

Earth Mother Myths and Other Ecofeminist Fables: How a Strategic Notion Rose and Fell

The notion that women are ‘closer to nature’, naturally caring for land, water, forests and other aspects of the environment, has held powerful sway in certain development circles since the 1980s. Along with the rise in global environmental concern, ‘women, environment and development’ (WED) perspectives gained ground among many donor agencies and NGOs, complementing and sharing core assumptions with earlier‐established ‘women in development’ (WID) discourses. The materialist dimensions of WED were bolstered by fables about women's natural, cultural or ideological closeness to nature grounded in varieties of ecofeminist analysis. This proved a seductive mix for agencies wishing simultaneously to promote environmental protection and WID, as well as for certain forms of feminist activism and sisterhood‐construction, such as those around the 1992 United Nations Conference on Environment and Development. This contribution revisits these narratives and the politics of this strategic fix in the development of international environmentalism and explores the sustained critiques of these ecofeminist fables by feminist scholars and activists from the early 1990s onwards. It provides a critical review of the approach to gender and the environment in some current donor, NGO and other policy documents, which draw little from the feminist critiques of the 1990s. The author reflects on how, and for whom, women–nature links might have practical or strategic value today.     

Unequal Knowledges in Jharkhand,India: De‐Romanticizing Women’s Agroecological Expertise

Taking the Jharkhand region of India as a case study, this article uses empirical data to intervene in ‘women, environment and development’ and ecofeminist debates regarding women’s environmental knowledge. The article first outlines the adoption of gender/environmental issues into development planning and considers the dangers of overestimating women’s agroecological knowledges and assuming that they can easily participate in development projects. It then highlights the local complexities of environmental knowledge possession and control with reference to gender and other variations in agricultural participation, decision‐making and knowledge transfers between villagers’ natal and marital places. Particular emphasis is placed on the economic, socio‐cultural and ‘actor’ related factors that supplement gender as an influence on task allocation, decision‐making, knowledge distribution and knowledge articulation. The article concludes that given the socio‐cultural constraints women face in accumulating and vocalizing environmental knowledge, simplistic participatory approaches are unlikely to empower them. Instead, more flexible, site‐specific development initiatives (coupled with wider structural change) are required if opportunities are to be created for women to develop and use their agroecological knowledges.     

Queering women,peace and security

The aim of the eight Women, Peace and Security (WPS) United Nations Security Council resolutions, beginning with UNSCR 1325 in 2000, is to involve women in peacebuilding, reconstruction and gender mainstreaming efforts for gendered equality in international peace and security work. However, the resolutions make no mention of masculinity, femininity or the LGBTQ (lesbian, gay, bisexual, transgender and queer) population. Throughout the WPS architecture the terms ‘gender’ and ‘women’ are often used interchangeably. As a result, sexual and gender‐based violence (SGBV) tracking and monitoring fail to account for individuals who fall outside a heteronormative construction of who qualifies as ‘women’. Those vulnerable to insecurity and violence because of their sexual orientation or gender identity remain largely neglected by the international peace and security community. Feminist security studies and emerging queer theory in international relations provide a framework to incorporate a gender perspective in WPS work that moves beyond a narrow, binary understanding of gender to begin to capture violence targeted at the LGBTQ population, particularly in efforts to address SGBV in conflict‐related environments. The article also explores the ways in which a queer security analysis reveals the part heteronormativity and cisprivilege play in sustaining the current gap in analysis of gendered violence.     

‘Homes’ and being ‘at home’ in New Zealand: women's place-making in internationalised higher education

Research on students' experiences in internationalised higher education largely assumes students' autonomy and privileges their public selves. New Zealand research is no exception. Little attention has been paid to students' lives beyond classroom contexts; how national policy and institutional practices shape students' everyday experiences and ‘home’ lives similarly and differently. In addition, gender is afforded scant attention or considered only as a secondary concern, and people whose partners or family members are international students are invisible. This article endeavours to address the relative inattention to gender in international education research and the invisibility of women whose partners are international students. It draws on data from interviews with 17 women involved in a broader doctoral research project during 2005 and 2006. The women were either migrant or international students or had partners enrolled as international students. The article uses ‘home’ as a lens for examining women's situated and transnational place-making and factors that promoted or precluded a sense of belonging in New Zealand. It draws connections between women's accounts of ‘home’ and feeling ‘at home’, and broader politics, policies and institutional practices in New Zealand higher education.     

Russia,humanitarian intervention and the Responsibility to Protect: the case of Syria

Western analysis perceives Russian approaches to issues of humanitarian intervention and the Responsibility to Protect (R2P) as running counter to western‐inspired international norms. This debate has surfaced with some vigour over Russia's policy in the Syria conflict where, in order to protect its strategic interests in Syria, an obstructionist Moscow has been accused of ignoring humanitarian considerations and allowing time for the Assad regime to crush the opposition by vetoing a resolution threatening to impose sanctions. While Russian approaches are undoubtedly explained by a desire to maximize its growing political influence and trade advantages to serve its legitimate foreign policy interests, and while Moscow's attitudes to intervention and R2P exhibit important differences from those of the major western liberal democracies, its arguments are in fact framed within a largely rational argument rooted in ‘traditional’ state‐centred international law. This article first highlights key arguments in the scholarly literature on intervention and R2P before going on to examine the evolution of Russian views on these issues. The analysis then focuses on the extent to which Moscow's arguments impact on international legal debates on the Libya and Syria conflicts. The article then seeks to explore how Russian approaches to intervention/R2P reflect fundamental trends in its foreign policy thinking and its quest for legitimacy in a negotiated international order. Finally, it attempts to raise some important questions regarding Russia's role in the future direction of the intervention/R2P debates.     

Beyond Naivety: Women,Gender Inequality and Participatory Development

In recent years, participatory development has become an established orthodoxy among development agencies across the political spectrum; at the same time, the importance of consulting with and recruiting women has been highlighted in most discussions of participatory strategies. Drawing on the author's own research and a range of secondary sources, this article focuses on gender aspects of participatory projects. The evidence suggests that gender inequalities in resources, time availability and power, influence the activities, priorities and framework of participatory projects just as much as ‘top-down’ development and market activities. Contrary to the view of a number of writers and activists on participatory development, increasing the numbers of women involved in participatory projects cannot, therefore, be seen as a soft alternative to specific attention to change in gender inequality. Meeting the demands of poor women in the South will require not only local participatory projects, but a linking with wider movements for change in the national and international development agenda.     

Constructing a Gender Policy for Joint Forest Management in India

Policy makers and advocates of joint forest management (JFM) agree that women should be full participants and that their involvement is especially important because of the nature of women's work. This article examines how JFM policy has addressed gender in India. It argues that policy has been informed by instrumentalist positions in the debate over women's relationship to the environment. Consequently, gender planning in JFM has focused on two issues: formal representation for women in local institutions, and identifying women's ‘special’ values, knowledge and uses of forest resources. The scant evidence suggests that the impact of JFM on women has generally been negative. Finally, the article suggests that gender policy in JFM needs to be based on a more sophisticated understanding of gender relations and a wider examination of the gendered context of JFM processes.     

Taking Care into Account: Leveraging India's MGNREGA for Women's Empowerment

The potential of India's Mahatma Gandhi National Rural Employment Guarantee Act (MGNREGA) for women's empowerment is immense. Studies examining gender‐related issues in MGNREGA have attested to the high levels of participation of women on worksites, and their positive experiences of working in MGNREGA. This article argues, however, that an exclusive focus on increased participation of women does not serve an agenda of promoting ‘women's empowerment’. By ignoring the dynamics and processes of unpaid care work, both the making and the implementation of the Act fall short of the goal of women's empowerment. The author argues that this invisibilizing of care arises from the gendered nature of the interactions of formal and informal institutions that have shaped MGNREGA. The article examines the gendered debates during the formulation of the Act and analyses the gendered nature of its implementation. It concludes that a true focus on women's empowerment requires that women's lived experiences are taken into account, especially those relating to their unpaid care responsibilities. MGNREGA's potential for women's empowerment can only be achieved through adequate implementation and monitoring of its gender provisions, which in turn depend on changing the formal and informal institutions that underpin policy processes.     

Does a multi‐tier NATO matter? The Atlantic alliance and the process of strategic change

This year NATO will celebrate its 60th anniversary. So far the world's most powerful military alliance has been a remarkable success story. However, as the first decade of the new century draws to a close there appears to be a widening strategic rift among the allies. ‘Two‐tier NATO’ is by now an established piece of shorthand in international strategic debate to indicate an ‘alliance à la carte’ divided into two or more factions of member states with divergent interests. Evidently, the alliance increasingly struggles to reach consensus on a whole range of strategic issues. So is NATO on a path to disintegration and, ultimately, to failure? This article argues that the organization has developed from a fixed ‘two‐tier’ into a rather fluid ‘multi‐tier’ alliance. On many issues the alliance is in fact divided into several different camps that are pushing in different directions. Thus, allies can be grouped into one of three tiers: a ‘reformist’, a ‘status‐quo’ and a ‘reversal’‐oriented one. While the evolution of such a multi‐tier alliance will not inevitably result in NATO's demise unmanaged, this manifestation of camps will continuously disrupt the organization's strategic agility. The article finds that if NATO is to maintain strategic vitality, it needs to develop new institutional mechanisms and establish a consensus on its strategic posture in the changing international order and to make ‘variable geometry’ work.     

Frank Cass THE JOURNAL OF DEVELOPMENT STUDIES

Much environment and development discourse assumes that women are the ‘natural’ constituency for conservation interventions. This article attempts to illuminate this assumption with the lens of a gendered critique of environmentalisms (technocentric, ecocentric and non-western). How do the intellectual roots of Western environmentalisms influence the positions, or non-positions, of contemporary environmentalism with regard to gender? What does research on environmental perceptions in non-Western societies imply about gender differentiation in environmental relations? The article concludes that there are no grounds for assuming an affinity between women's gender interests and those of environments and that such a view is symptomatic of the gender blind, ethnocentric and populist character of western environmentalisms. By contrast the application of gender analysis to environmental relations involves seeing women in relation to men, the disaggregation of the category of ‘women’, and an understanding of gender roles as socially and historically constructed, materially grounded and continually reformulated. The issue of how far women's gender interests and environmental interests go hand in hand leads us to pose a broader question of the degree to which environmental conservation is premissed upon social inequality.     

The International Character of a Trimmer: Interest,Reason of State,and Balance of Power in Halifax's Political Thought

This article argues that George Savile's thought casts light on international relations in the seventeenth century. Halifax's life and works concern not only England's domestic politics, but also its foreign affairs. Indeed, he develops a clear vision of international politics. This article analyses Halifax's international thought, in particular three concepts that are closely related to one another: ‘interest’, ‘reason of state’, and ‘balance of power’. Through the study of these ideas, this article will try to point out both the novelty of Halifax's thought compared with that of his contemporaries, and to reverse the stereotypical understanding of his intellectual legacy and political behaviour. The ‘trimmer’ contrasts with Louis XIV's attempt to establish a universal monarchy across Europe, outlining a doctrine of moderation that seeks to ensure liberty, security, and restraint in international relations.     

Genderism and the Bathroom Problem: (re)materialising sexed sites, (re)creating sexed bodies

This article introduces the possibilities of a new term, ‘genderism’, to describe the hostile readings of, and reactions to, gender ambiguous bodies. Genderism is used here to articulate instances of discrimination that are based on the discontinuities between the sex with which an individual identifies and how others, in a variety of spaces, read their sex. The article suggests that intersections between queer theories, that destabilise the dichotomy of man/woman, and performative geographies, that recognise the (re)formation of space, could facilitate, and indeed necessitate, a consideration of how the illusion of dichotomous sexes is (re)formed at the site of the body (re)constituting men and women in context. Nine women, who participated in a wider research project about non‐heterosexual women's lives, spoke of being mistaken for men yet understanding themselves and living as women. Using these narratives the ‘bathroom problem’, where women are read as men in toilets and as a result subjected to abusive and even violent reactions, is examined. These policing behaviours demonstrate the instability of sexed norms as well as how sites can be (re)made ‘woman only’ and simultaneously ‘women's’ bodies (re)produced. The article then examines how women negotiate the policing of sexed spaces such that bodies, sexed sites (toilets) and the location of these sites (nightclubs, service stations) are mutually constituted within sexed regimes of power. In this way the article aims to explore how sexed power relations (re)form the mundane ‘stuff’ of everyday life by examining moments where boundaries of gender difference are overtly (en)forced.