GENDERED SPACES ON TRIAL: THE INFLUENCE OF REGIONAL GENDER CONTRACTS ON IN‐MIGRATION OF WOMEN TO RURAL NORWAY

While the Nordic literature on rural migration and gender relations has usually focused on the push effects of a patriarchal or traditional gender culture on out‐migration of women, this article centres on the conjoint way in which regional gender contracts and female in‐migration shape one another. On the basis of survey data of women who migrated into Valdres, a rural area in Norway, as well as interview material, three ideal types of rural gender contracts are identified: traditional, modern and alternative. It is further demonstrated that women living by a traditional gender contract are more often attracted to Valdres than women living by modern and alternative gender contracts, and seemingly also tend to stay for a longer period of time. With the help of Halfacree's model of rural space, it is argued that the in‐migration of women serves just as much to sustain the region's traditional gender contract as to challenge it.     

Gender Equality Policies in Rwanda: Public Relations or Real Transformations?

This article examines Rwanda's gender equality policies with the intention of contributing to the ongoing debate in the literature on the meaning of gender equality initiatives in authoritarian states. The article evaluates the transformative potential of Rwanda's gender equality policies with reference to deep‐rooted societal norms and practices within which gender inequalities are embedded. To this end, the article draws on in‐depth interviews conducted in Rwanda with a range of stakeholders, as well as on documentary research. It explores the factors informing the Rwandan commitment to gender equality, and the positive developments this has brought about, before identifying five trends that threaten the transformative potential of Rwandan gender equality policies. The authors conclude that while a strong political will and target‐driven policies offer opportunities for promoting gender equality, the transformative potential is jeopardized by the dominance of an underlying economic rationale; the neglect of the ‘invisible labour’ of women; the formalistic implementation of gender policies and their focus on quantitative results; the limited scope for civil society voices to influence policy; and the lack of grassroots participation.     

Local gender contract and adaptive capacity in smallholder irrigation farming: a case study from the Kenyan drylands

This article presents the local gender contract of a smallholder irrigation farming community in Sibou, Kenya. Women's role in subsistence farming in Africa has mostly been analyzed through the lens of gender division of labor. In addition to this, we used the concept of ‘local gender contract’ to analyze cultural and material preconditions shaping gender-specific tasks in agricultural production, and consequently, men's and women's different strategies for adapting to climate variability. We show that the introduction of cash crops, as a trigger for negotiating women's and men's roles in the agricultural production, results in a process of gender contract renegotiation, and that families engaged in cash cropping are in the process of shifting from a ‘local resource contract’ to a ‘household income contract.’ Based on our analysis, we argue that a transformation of the local gender contract will have a direct impact on the community's adaptive capacity climate variability. It is, therefore, important to take the negotiation of local gender contracts into account in assessments of farming communities' adaptive capacity.     

Gender mainstreaming and the Common Agricultural Policy

While there are many case studies looking at gender mainstreaming in national contexts, this article offers a pan-European perspective to examine how a stated commitment to gender equality at this meta-level works in practice. The European Union's (EU) stated commitment to gender mainstreaming the Common Agricultural Policy (CAP) is critically reviewed. The article reviews theoretical literature on gender mainstreaming, considers the position of women in agriculture across Europe, and examines efforts by the EU to gender mainstream the CAP. It argues that at best, gender mainstreaming focuses on the symptoms of gender inequality in agriculture rather than the causes. Because of this, gender mainstreaming cannot be transformative in this context. Little thought has been given to the practical difficulties of actually gender mainstreaming a policy such as the CAP. The EU's priority for the CAP focuses on the mainstream business goal of a viable agricultural industry and does not pay any heed to gender inequalities in agriculture. In short, the stated commitment to gender mainstreaming is empty rhetoric.     

The quality of gender equality: gender quotas and Swedish film governance

Since 2000, the Swedish Film Institute has been tasked with increasing gender equality by distributing commissioner support more equally between women and men. While this has resulted in an increase in the number of women behind the camera, this study shows that the implementation has been hampered due to a representation of gender equality as being in conflict with the core values of the film governance regime. This representation reveals a lingering gender order and opens avenues for stakeholders to consider behaviour that ignores the gender equality goals as legitimate. It is further argued that the design of gender equality measures creates a conflict between the economic conditions of women’s film making and the possibility to tell stories based on gendered experiences.     

Gender,Vulnerability, and the Experts: Responding to the Maldives Tsunami

This article examines the initial response by national and international agencies to gender issues during the aftermath of the Maldives tsunami, arguing that it was, in general, inadequate. Some agencies took a gender blind approach, ignoring different impacts on men and women, as well as the effects of complex gender relations on relief and recovery efforts. Other agencies paid greater attention to gender relations in their response but tended to focus exclusively on the universal category of the ‘vulnerable woman’ requiring special assistance, whilst at the same time ignoring men's vulnerabilities. This article argues that such language entrenched women as victims, excluding them from leadership and decision‐making roles and as such served to reinforce and re‐inscribe women's trauma. It is suggested that it is partly because of the nature of international bureaucracies and the fact that this disaster drew foreign ‘experts’ from around the world that the response neglected or over‐simplified gender issues.     

The role of gender norms in access to agricultural training in Chikwawa and Phalombe,Malawi

Based on qualitative research conducted in Chikwawa and Phalombe in Malawi, this article discusses how gender relations shape men and women’s access to and participation in agricultural training. It also examines how men and women justify or challenge gender inequalities in relation to access to agricultural information and knowledge. Data on gender and recruitment to and participation in training, barriers to training and access to information as well as farmer to farmer extension models were collected and analysed. A gender relations approach, focusing on power and inequality, was used to analyse the data. The data shows that the perception of men as household heads and women as carers or helpers who are also illiterate and ignorant often has implications on women’s ability to access training and information. Negative stereotypical perceptions about women by their husbands and extension workers militate against women’s access to training and information. Institutional biases within extension systems reproduce gender inequality by reinforcing stereotypical gender norms. Extension officers should be targeted with training on gender responsive adult learning methodologies and gender awareness to help them be more inclusive and sensitive to women’s needs.     

Gender Equality in National Politics: The Views of Australian Male Politicians

Studies of gender and politics have typically been studies of women and politics. In contrast, this paper places men at the centre of its inquiry by drawing on interviews with 15 current federal male politicians. Of concern is exploring the ways in which men conceptualise the question of gender equity in the Australian parliament. Three frameworks are identified in the men's narratives. These are that the parliament is a masculinised space but that this is unavoidable; that the parliament is now feminised and women are advantaged; and that the parliament is gender neutral and gender is irrelevant. It is argued that collectively these framing devices operate to mask the many constraints which exist to marginalise women from political participation and undermine attempts to address women's political disadvantage as political participants. The paper concludes by highlighting the significance of the paper beyond the Australian context and calling for further research which names and critiques political men and their discourses on gender and parliamentary practices and processes.     

Restructuring women’s work; labour market and household gender regimes in the Greater Latrobe Valley,Australia

This article examines the impact of economic restructuring on gender relations. It examines the implications of labour market change for households within a region, in this case the Greater Latrobe Valley, Victoria, Australia. The argument is that the unchanging gender structures of the labour market constrain the intentions and efforts of individuals within households to significantly alter household gender relations. The analysis considers how restructuring has reshaped the regional labour market since 1996, changing opportunities for both men’s and women’s employment. Despite these changes, the regional labour market continues to be underpinned by a ‘male breadwinner’ gender regime and significant occupational and industrial gender segregation. Drawing on four vignettes, the analysis shows that the impetus towards greater gender equality in the household is constrained by a stagnant and stable labour market gender regime.     

‘My Daughter was Genetically Drafted with me’: US‐Vietnam War Veterans,Disabilities and Gender

This article examines war's lasting bodily legacies by focusing on the Vietnam veterans’ Agent Orange movement that arose in the mid‐1970s. This movement pushed for the recognition of the disabling effects of Agent Orange not only on veterans themselves but also on their children. By taking biological responsibility for miscarriages or children's birth defects, veteran‐fathers challenged gender norms that blamed women and required men to hide their grief about both war and children. They also reinforced pitiful representations of children with disabilities in seeking to win benefits for their children. This article studies the representations of and discourses about these children, including how race and gender informed media coverage of the Agent Orange movement. Although women fought on behalf of Vietnam veterans and their families, their roles nevertheless remained circumscribed within conventional gendered expectations and domestic arrangements. The article uses the methods of disabilities, gender, social and cultural history to analyse veterans’ movement records as well as newspapers, Congressional hearings, television news and documentary films. It underscores the centrality of disability as a category of historical analysis and the value of (re)considering the fields of war, gender and reproduction through the analytical lens of disability.     

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.     

Do local needs matter?: the relevance of women’s NGOs in sub-Saharan Africa

This article focuses on the potential of women’s non-governmental organizations (WNGOs) for effectively addressing gender inequality in Sub-Saharan Africa. As the mainstreaming of gender and women’s issues continues to pervade global governance, scholars, and practitioners have questioned whether local WNGOs are capable of formulating projects that are relevant to the communities in which they work. One important challenge is local WNGOs’ dependence on external funding and agendas. The extensive literature on women and development indicates that there is a critical need to develop a more radical, transformative feminist agenda for women’s empowerment. The objective of this quantitative study is to test the association between WNGOs’ emergence and measures of gender inequality in Sub-Saharan Africa. It argues that while there is evidence that WNGOs’ formation represents a legitimate response to African countries’ challenges in terms of gender inequality, the institutionalization of gender within NGOs does not automatically translate into greater gender equality and women’s empowerment. This article identifies some of the gaps and limitations of gender mainstreaming initiatives within African WNGOs. Examining the heterogeneity of women’s organizing and WNGO formation in the region and gaps in development activities, this study highlights the importance of place and space in developing a progressive feminist agenda. The quantitative analysis used in this study, which highlights the uneven geographies and scales of WNGO intervention in Sub-Saharan Africa, contributes to, and calls for more geographic studies on development and gendered activism.     

Gendering normative power Europe: lessons of the Women,Peace and Security agenda

The European Union is seen to operate at the international level by promoting ideas and values, rather than by exerting military or economic power. As a gender actor, the EU has played a key role in the development of formal equality, which is presented as a foundational principle of European integration. It therefore follows that normative power Europe should seek to promote these values in external affairs. This article interrogates the role of the EU as a normative gender actor in relation to its implementation of the Women, Peace and Security (WPS) agenda, set out in UN Security Council Resolution 1325 and related resolutions. Documentary analysis will be supplemented by a detailed assessment of speeches and public statements about the role of the EU as a gender actor in external affairs. This data will be used to assess whether there is a disjuncture between the dominant narrative about gender equality as a fundamental value of the EU and the actions of the organization. It will also allow us to assess whether gender mainstreaming is a tool for public diplomacy or has made a significant change to the way the external relations agenda is formulated and implemented. Additionally, the article will draw attention to the institutional obstacles to the EU performing a role as a gender actor in external affairs. It identifies a critical tension between framing the WPS resolutions as an extension of the EU's equality on the one hand, and understanding that gender mainstreaming is a mere policy tool in international affairs. In doing so, it highlights how competing institutional demands can ultimately undermine core values (e.g. equality) when they are used instrumentally.     

Equality of Women's Economic Status? A Major Bone of Contention in the International Gender Politics Emerging During the Interwar Period*

This study brings together the often disparate scholarship on the League of Nations and the ILO. It follows the interactions between the League, women internationalists, and the ILO, which evolved around the question of woman-specific labor legislation and the equality of women's status. These interactions resulted in a broadening mandate of international gender policies while deepening the institutional and legal distinction between women's ‘political and civil’ as opposed to their ‘economic’ status. The ILO insisted on certain forms of women-specific labor regulation as a means of conjoining progressive gender and class politics, and was anxious to ensure its competence in all matters concerning women's economic status. The gender equality doctrine gaining ground in the League was rooted in a liberal-feminist paradigm which rejected the association of gender politics with such class concerns, and indeed aimed to force back the ILO's politics of gender-specific international labor standards. As a result of the widening divide between the women's policies of the League and the ILO, the international networks of labor women reduced their engagement with women's activism at the League. The developments of the 1930s deepened the tension between liberal feminism and feminisms engaging with class inequalities, and would have problematic long-term consequences for international gender politics.     

Contested Representations: Black women and the St Paul's Carnival

This research focuses on black women's experiences of the annual African-Caribbean carnival in St Paul's, Bristol, as a potential site of resistance. I have chosen to look at how black women challenge conceptions of space on three levels: nationally, locally and within the street. These three spatial levels are permeated by notions of resistance: resistance to dominant notions of Englishness, to representations of place, and to gender roles. I aim to focus on carnival's potential to contest hegemonic discourses, to denaturalise them and to expose them as partial. It is my overall contention that black women challenge the use of space as it is designated on a number of these levels, but that carnival does not enable them to contest their regular gender roles. Through this I hope to develop a 'cultural politics of place', but one which takes account of the intersecting dynamics of 'race' and gender, moving away from a binary model of difference.     

The New Men's History and the Peculiar Absence of Gendered Power: Some Remedies from Early American Gender History

Historians with feminist commitments have expressed reservations about men's history and men's studies. This unease has existed more or less from the first appearance of men's history as a specialised area of inquiry, and shows no signs of abating. The first part of this article explores the sources of this unease. It discusses several guiding premises of men's history and shows that they tend to lead to the occlusion of men's gendered power over women. Nonetheless, the scrutiny of the gender of men is the logical outgrowth of several decades of theoretical and empirical work on gender–witness the many historians of women and gender who have recently turned their attention to the systematic study of manliness and masculinity. With the help of examples drawn from the scholarship on the history of the British colonies in America and the early United States, the second part of this article enumerates several strategies for successfully highlighting men's gendered power in histories of manliness and masculinity.     

Gender In Third World Development Studies: An Overview Of An Underview

This paper reviews twenty years progress in the study of gender in Third World development and the extent to which gender has been incorporated within mainstream development theory and practice. Special reference is made to the role geography has played in this arena. It is argued that while gender as a theoretical framework for explaining women's differential but continued subordination should be reaching maturity, there has been little attempt to formulate cohesive models which integrate micro-and macro-level concepts and which could provide a firm base for future theory-building. More important, studies of gender in the Third World development have seldom addressed the question of development policy or put forward practical solutions for the integration of gender issues in development planning. As a case study of gender in development planning the paper examines the Australian Government's women in development (WID) policy, the ways in which it was informed, and the extent to which it has been implemented.     

Wife Seclusion and the Spatial Praxis of Gender Ideology in Nigerian Hausaland

In much of Nigerian Hausaland the prevailing religio-cultural ideology of female seclusion (if not always the practice) impinges on married Muslim Hausa women to a greater, or lesser, degree. This article examines the intimate relationships between space, gender and ideology in contemporary rural Hausa society, showing the social construction (and connectedness) of gender identities and associated spatial identities, thus illustrating how spatial praxis is based on hegemonic patriarchal gender ideology. Observations and interview material gathered from a village case study in Kano State demonstrate how gender divisions correspond with the ideology and contemporary practice of wife seclusion. Intersecting patterns of gender, space and time are revealed by detailed analyses of time- and space-use data, which scrutinise men's and women's daily activities and mobility patterns. The cross-cutting of gender with class, age and marital status is shown to be highly significant in determining everyday experiences of spatial praxis, especially for women. A materialist feminist theoretical framework is used to explain this gendered geography of Nigerian Hausaland in which men's and women's worlds are spatially segregated, yet complexly interlocked and interdependent beyond simple public‐private divisions of ‘female’ household compounds (private space) and ‘male’ public space. For this peasant society, aspects of the rural economy and ideology emerge as powerful factors in determining the nature of seclusion as part of gender praxis. It is argued that due to various cultural and religious factors socio-economic development in Northern Nigeria has not been translated into improved autonomy for Hausa women.     

The particularities of place: geographies of gendered moral responsibilities among Latvian migrant workers in 1950s Britain

It is now widely accepted that gender relations take a spatially specific form. Distinctive national, regional and local patterns in the ways in which men and women divide paid labour and caring work result in an uneven geography of the total work of social reproduction and, it has been argued, distinctive regional or local gender cultures. It is also clear that the overall gender order and its geography undergo periodic change. Currently in Britain, and in many other industrial nations, the old gender order of industrial Fordism is collapsing and the traditional moral certainties of that period, perhaps most dominant in Britain in the 1950s, are being renegotiated. In the 1950s, women were expected to seek personal development by the direct care of others, whereas men fulfilled their moral obligations towards others by sharing the rewards of their independent work achievements. However, even during the 1950s, there was considerable diversity in the ways in which women and men undertook the social obligations of care and the division of responsibility for the total burden of social reproduction, especially among households in which women's labour market participation was significant. In this paper, drawing on oral histories undertaken with migrant women who came to Britain in the late 1940s from Latvia, I examine the gendered divisions of labour they established in the 1950s and critically assess the significance of spatially differentiated gender cultures for this group.