Ethnicity, development and gender: Tsáchila indigenous women in Ecuador

In recent decades, indigenous populations have become the subjects and agents of development in national and international multicultural policy that acknowledges poverty among indigenous peoples and their historic marginalization from power over development. Although the impact of these legal and programmatic efforts is growing, one persistent axis of disadvantage, male–female difference, is rarely taken into account in ethno-development policy and practice. This article argues that assumptions that inform policy related to indigenous women fail to engage with indigenous women's development concerns. The institutional separation between gender and development policy (GAD) and multiculturalism means that provisions for gender in multicultural policies are inadequate, and ethnic rights in GAD policies are invisible. Drawing on post-colonial feminism, the paper examines ethnicity and gender as interlocking systems that structure indigenous women's development experiences. These arguments are illustrated in relation to the case of the Tsáchila ethno-cultural group in the South American country of Ecuador.     

After Beijing: emphasis on poverty eradication

In March 1996, during its first meeting since the Fourth World Conference on Women, the UN Commission on the Status of Women (CSW), called for a gender perspective to be integrated into policies and programs dealing with poverty, child and dependent care, and the media. Three expert panels examined each of these areas through a format which encouraged dialogue and led to the adoption of 17 resolutions, decisions, and agreed conclusions as well as a recommendation that the UN adopt a multi-year work program for the CSW to allow it to review progress in elimination of the 12 main obstacles to women's advancement identified at Beijing. Among the resolutions adopted by the CSW were calls to 1) take a broad and integrated approach to poverty eradication, 2) enhance women's empowerment and autonomy, 3) promote equity and equality in the public domain, 4) promote women's employment, 5) give women social and economic protection when they are unable to work, 6) counteract negative images of women and sex-stereotyping in the media, 7) reduce the representation of violence against women in the media, 8) strengthen the role of women in global communications, 9) encourage the participation of men in child and dependent care, and 10) recognize women's double burden of work. The CSW also agreed to pursue further discussions about drafting an optional protocol to the 1979 Convention on the Elimination of All Forms of Discrimination Against Women. Among its other actions, the CSW called for mechanisms to protect the rights of women migrant workers, to protect women and children during armed conflicts, to include gender-based human rights violations in UN activities, and to address the root factors which lead to social ills such as trafficking in women and girls. In addition, the CSW submitted a draft resolution demanding that Israel protect the rights of Palestinian women and their families.     

Women and children last: the poverty and marginalization of one-parent families

The spatial distribution and socioeconomic status of one-parent families in Great Britain and Australia are described, and reasons for the increase in this type of family are analyzed. The author finds that "one-parent families, largely composed of women and children, constitute one of the most rapidly-growing family types. Evidence from Britain and Australia reveals their extreme marginalization in the labour market, and their concentration into public housing. These problems are related to patriarchal structures within society, particularly the expectations of traditional gender roles and the segregation of women's job opportunities."     

The Return to Social Policy and the Persistent Neglect of Unpaid Care

The failure of orthodox economic policies to generate growth and eradicate poverty has led to renewed interest in social policies. The return to ‘the social’ has seen contending conceptualizations of social policy, premised on different values, priorities and understandings of state responsibility, vying for influence. This article argues that the currently dominant agenda of social sector restructuring is likely to entrench gender inequalities in access to social services and income supports because of its failure to recognize the structures that underpin those inequalities, which are pervasive across labour markets and the unpaid care economy. Despite the ‘pro‐poor’ and occasionally ‘pro‐women’ rhetoric, the design of social policies remains largely blind to these gender structures. Addressing them would require a major rethinking of dominant approaches, placing redistribution more firmly at the heart of policy design, valuing and supporting unpaid care, and providing incentives for it to be shared more equally between women and men, and between families/households and society more broadly.     

Thousands gather in Beijing for fourth women's conference

The Fourth World Conference on Women, to be held in Beijing in September 1995, is expected to issue a Platform for Action to advance the status of women, identify priority actions to be taken by the international community, and mobilize those at both the policy making and grass-roots levels to implement these goals. The draft Platform for Action addresses the following critical areas: poverty, women's education, reproductive health and sexuality, violence and armed conflict, economic disparity, power-sharing, institutions, human rights, mass media, environmental degradation, and female children. Parallel to the UN conference, a Nongovernmental Forum on Women will meet, with an emphasis on the concept of sustainable human development.     

E-mail Communication and the Policy Process in the State Legislature

E-mail has changed the policy process in state legislatures because political actors now have a new way to present their message to state legislators. What little research has been conducted on this topic examines e-mail communication generally and does not compare results by policy actor. Using an original survey of state legislators in eight states, we test for systematic effects of variables on general e-mail views and for effects specific to particular policy actors. We find that legislators have a nuanced approach to e-mail usage in the policy process with their assessment of its impact differing significantly for constituents, intermediary groups, and policy insiders. Only gender consistently shapes legislators' beliefs about e-mail with all groups, but institutional features, legislator characteristics, and legislator beliefs shape views on e-mail with different target groups. Clearly, legislators are attuned to the audience communicating via e-mail, and they value e-mail with each group differently.     

银川城市生活需求的性别差异及规划建议——基于女性主义视角的研究

本文在引入西方女性主义地理学以及城市居民行为空间和生活需求研究的基础上,以银川市为案例,实地调研和问卷调查分析了当今城市社区生活需求的性别差异,对中国两性居民在城市中的生存状态及其对满足生活需求的基础设施的评价,总结居民生活需求的性别差异特征。文章充实了国内关于生活需求性别研究的实证研究,指出性别差异在城市社区规划和建设中被忽视和女性通常处于弱势地位的现实,提出今后城市建设需重视公共交通和步行交通的规划,强调公共设施的人性化和多元化,加大社区服务力度,提高女性居民的社区参与度。     

Gender mainstreaming and rural development policy; the trivialisation of rural gender issues

This paper considers gender mainstreaming of the EU Rural Development Programme. The EU promotes the gender mainstreaming of rural development policies because retaining women in rural areas is seen as crucial to the long-term viability of rural areas. A review of literature and scan of policy documents demonstrates that few rural development plans address gender issues, and generally only by including some separate projects for women. Little is done to address the systemic features of gender inequality and to realise inclusive developments that address the needs of all social groups. The de-politicisation of rural gender issues results in policy makers ticking the obligatory gender box without envisioning any real change in the agenda or process of rural development policy making. I argue that a more fruitful way to go forward is to re-politicise gender in rural development and to tease out at the local level how changing gender relations and rural development coincide.     

Policy Coherence and Component-Driven Policymaking: Arctic Policy in Canada and the United States

This research extends theorizing about the implications of political environments to the content of policy areas. We consider the case of Arctic policy in Canada and the United States as an example of what we label as component-driven policymaking. We show how the lack of a clear constituency and the lack of a stable policy subsystem for the Arctic create a policy environment for which the politics of particular issues dominate Arctic policymaking. The result is a policy space labeled Arctic policy that lacks policy coherence. We suggest that similar features of component-based policymaking help explain limited policy coherence for a variety of policy areas such as policies for children, families, rural areas, urban areas, and women in the United States.     

Gender equality and economic empowerment in the Solomon Islands and Fiji: a place-based approach

The economic empowerment of women is emerging as a core focus of both economic development and gender equality programmes internationally. At the same time, there is increasing importance placed on measuring outcomes and quantifying progress towards gender and development goals. These trends raise significant questions around how well gender differences are understood, especially in economies dominated by the informal sector and characterised by a highly gendered division of labour, as is the case in many Pacific countries. How well do existing international and national indicators of gender equality reflect the experiences and aspirations of Pacific women and men? What do concepts such as gender equality and economic empowerment mean in this geographical context? How might local attitudes and practices be identified and measured? In this paper, we draw on Boaventura De Sousa Santos’ call to recognise and value knowledges of the majority world that have been rendered either largely invisible or non-credible by mainstream development and human rights policy agendas. Reflecting on an action research project conducted with partner organisations in Fiji and the Solomon islands, we explore a more nuanced place-based approach to understanding and measuring gender equality and economic empowerment. This approach takes account of diverse economic practices, such as non-market transactions, and forms of non-cash exchange and unpaid labour, and recognises the imbalance in women’s and men’s household and care work.     

Partisanship and the gender gap: support for gender quotas in Australia

The percentage of women elected in the Australian Parliament is comparatively low. This poor track record has generated debate within political parties about the necessity of gender quotas (or targets) to increase women’s representation. Using the 2016 Australian Election Study, this paper proposes to test support for different measures aiming to increasing women’s representation in Australian politics. More specifically, I investigate the role of partisanship in explaining gender differences in support for gender quotas. I find that differences in support for quotas are greater among women, and among men, than between women and men. The paper also demonstrates that the role of political values in explaining differences in support for gender quotas is non-uniform. Indeed, attitudes towards government intervention, minority rights, and gender equality are more crucial in explaining differences in support for legislative quotas among men than among women.     

Masculine hegemony,the state and the incorporation of gender equity discourse: The case of Australian sport

Although the impact of affirmative action, equal opportunity and gender equity programs on the lives of Australian women have been explored in a number of areas, state interventions related to sport have received scant attention from public policy analysts. This paper examines how the Australian Sports Commission has framed its gender equity policy in the mutually reinforcing hegemonic discourses of masculinity and corporate managerialism. It is argued that the Commission's articulation of gender equity policy in terms of ‘market‐oriented individualism’ is both constituted by, and constitutive of, the shift from a ‘patriarchal‐welfare state’ to a ‘patriarchal‐managerial state’ in Australia. The paper also provides an example of the tensions between bureaucratic and feminist discourses in the state sphere.     

The rights of a Florida wife: slavery, U.S. expansion, and married women's property law

Civil law rules were adopted in Florida that granted married women property rights long before legal reforms occurred in northern states. This article analyzes white wives' property and law in Florida between 1820 and 1860. Initially, married women's property rights were inadvertently protected by treaty law and limited to women who married before 1818. Wives' right to own separate property in Florida was subsequently reconfirmed in statute and extended to include later marriages. In contrast, nonwhites generally lost the rights and property they had enjoyed under Spain's civil law in the same period. This contrast reveals that in Florida (and other southern borderlands) it was not concern for women, or simply legal precedent, but the desire to incorporate new territory and expand slavery that influenced the development of marital property law. This challenges previous histories, which have excluded the earlier acts in the Southern borderlands and emphasized those passed in the Northeast beginning in the late 1840s. While those later acts were influenced by the early woman's rights movement and by concern for families reduced to poverty during the rise of market capitalism, this case study indicates that expansion of United States territory and slavery were responsible for the earlier married women's property rights in southern borderland territories such as Florida.     

中国内地女性主义地理学研究进展和展望

女性主义地理学主要研究女性与空间、地方的互动和重构,西方女性主义地理学发展源于20世纪70年代,我国相关研究进展相对缓慢。文章通过关键词搜索,利用主题分析法将研究文献分为女性与城乡空间、就业空间、家庭空间、女性人才与地理、文学艺术空间、旅游六个主题,归纳和分析目前研究进展,并提出相关建议,以期引起国内学者更多关注。总起来说,国内女性主义地理学的研究问题紧密地与国家和社会的重大问题相关联,体现了很强的现实关怀,结论对中国未来的政策有借鉴作用。但研究中主要借鉴了西方理论,缺少自己发展的基本概念和理论。未来学者们应继续以现实问题为导向,关注本土情境和中国经验,从性别、空间、可持续的交叉领域切入,生产本土女性主义地理学知识。     

Reconceptualizing gender and reconstructing social life: Ugandan women and the path to national development

This article focuses on how women's responses to crisis and social change in Uganda signal attempts to achieve a more gender-equal social life while facilitating national development. After an introduction, the article reviews research on women's response to change and points out the limitations of this research. In the next section, the article provides a historical overview of Uganda's gender system and the political and economic changes that occurred during the 1970s and early 1980s. The third main section argues that while the social structural changes created widespread hardship, they also provided openings for women to advance their interests. Thus, the National Resistance Movement of the mid-1980s responded to the mobilization of women by creating new avenues for women to participate in political life and have control over financial resources. Traditional ideologies, divisions of labor, and the social construction of gender have also been altered by such factors as the involvement of women in the guerrilla movement and the key developmental role played by nongovernmental organizations and women's groups. The article continues by considering the effect of these changes on contemporary gender relations. Data from a sampling of women and men from two regions of the country and of small business owners provide the basis for a discussion of the different strategies (such as small scale entrepreneurship and networking) employed by women to meet their daily and longterm needs. It is concluded that women's attempts to change their lives have influenced macrolevel social structure. However, it remains to be seen whether these postinsurgency gains can be sustained.     

基于女性主义视角的我国居住空间历史变迁研究

女性主义的研究扩展到建筑学与规划学领域。其实自古以来的居住空间规划与设计都是权力外化的体现,女性虽然有使用权,但却没有支配权。女性与居住空间的关系不仅是衡量女性自身发展状况的重要维度,也是折射居住空间随社会进步的一面镜子。文章从女性主义出发,认为居住空间是女性气质化的空间,以历史的角度说明居住空间中女性角色地位的变化,研究历史对当今居住空间的影响,初步探索女性与居住空间关系的基本构架。     

"Give the ladies a chance": gender and partisanship in the Prohibition Party, 1869-1912

In the nineteenth-century Prohibition Party, American women ascribed new gendered meanings to party work traditionally performed by male partisans, and also drew upon their gendered roles as women, mothers, and wives to create new partisan strategies. This article investigates the political culture that sustained a remarkable departure from traditional Democratic and Republican practices, and further explores why women's contributions to the Prohibition Party declined in the early-twentieth century. In so doing, it traces how gender and gender roles shaped the meaning of party and politics, and elucidates the interplay between institutions, constituencies, and policy during one of America's most tumultuous political eras.     

From trusteeship to development: how class and gender complicated Kenya's housing policy, 1939–1963

Colonial rule required the control of territory, nowhere more than in cities. In the early twentieth century, colonial policy in Kenya and the rest of East and Southern Africa had only grudgingly accommodated Africans in urban areas. After 1939 policy changed, not only in response to poor local conditions and social unrest but also because London's new colonial development policy made a place for African workers in towns. From 1940, new housing and colonial policies acknowledged the importance of the discourses of class and gender. Administrators stabilised an African working class by building better municipal housing, and then sought to fashion a middle class by promoting home ownership. They began to promote housing for families, having recognised that African women could help to make their men at home in the city, and to educate children to become good citizens. The evolution of Kenya's housing policy illuminates the characteristic pressures, calculations, and responses of colonial rule that were being played out internationally in the late colonial period.     

Gender and Australian Aid Policy: can women's rights be advanced within a neo-liberal framework?

The issue of gender and development has been an important part of the development discourse since the Mexico City Women Conference in 1973. This concern has been very slow to transform itself into policy. For development agencies including AusAID it has been a subsidiary policy area or an add-on, as a recipe might say'add women and stir'. The White Paper of 2007 brought gender to the centre of policy as an overarching principle. The question that arises is the extent to which these policies fit into or are driven by the neo-liberal paradigm underpinning the aid program, or if these policies can challenge it by positing a rights agenda. The 2007 Gender policy tries to sit between the two in that it focuses on the economic role that women can play in fostering growth on the one hand, and the denial of human rights that marginalisation and disempowerment represents. This paper will explore the development of gender policy in AusAID, and compare it with the development of policy of other agencies that follow the neo-liberal framework in particular the World Bank and ADB. Finally the paper will make some suggestions for the new Labor government to strengthen the Policy.