Mobility matters: women's livelihood strategies in Porto Novo,Benin

This article examines the importance of mobility in the creation of profitable livelihood strategies for women in Porto Novo, Benin. Drawing on surveys and interviews conducted in the late 1990s with over 500 women who use a wide array of strategies, I demonstrate that the importance of mobility to women's livelihood strategies is variable depending on the types of activities in which women are engaged. Specifically, where trade is a central part of a livelihood strategy the type of goods sold mediates the relative importance of mobility. The article also considers the ways in which socio‐economic settings differentially shape women's ability to be mobile. The research further contributes to feminist scholarship by examining the spatialities of social and economic processes in the creation of women's livelihood strategies.     

Hybrid Uptakes of Neoliberal Conservation in Namibian Tourism‐based Development

Neoliberal conservation schemes involving nature‐based tourism are implemented throughout the developing world to address rural poverty. Drawing on socio‐economic surveys and in‐depth interviews, this article uses the case of Uibasen Conservancy in Namibia to investigate social responses to neoliberal conservation. We find that people's aspirations for upward economic and social mobility lead them to participate in neoliberal conservation projects in an attempt to combine economic opportunities created by nature‐based tourism with traditional livelihood strategies. In this case, certain aspects of neoliberal conservation are perceived as a source of hope for non‐elites seeking to achieve economic self‐sufficiency and to ascend social hierarchies. We find that intra‐community power struggles dominate discourses of discontent and local‐level conflict which consequently masks the disruptive and anomic forces of the global tourism industry. We additionally provide insight into specific social contexts that may increase the allure of neoliberal conservation and explain why marginalized individuals may embrace some neoliberal logics despite — or, perhaps, because of — their disruptive tendencies.     

Petztorme Women: Responding to Change in Lihir,Papua New Guinea

The goldmining project on Lihir Island in New Ireland Province, Papua New Guinea, has brought dramatic socio‐economic changes. In this matrilineal society, while women's economic contributions were substantial, their political status was not. Women's participation in decision‐making about the mine has been restricted, mainly because men have excluded them. The mining company established a women's section that has supported the development of women's organizations and a range of economic development projects. The women's organizations provide the context for new political roles for women but have experienced many setbacks that are common in such groups across Papua New Guinea. Through the Lihir experience in the first five years of the mine, this paper examines the tensions and divided loyalties that constrain women's organizations and often lead to the failure of income‐generating women's projects in Papua New Guinea.     

Constructions of Rural Women's Voluntary Work

This article examines the nature and circumstances of women's voluntary work in rural communities. Drawing on original research conducted in two villages in Avon, England, it focuses on three main themes. Firstly, it considers theoretical debates on the conceptualisation of rural women's labour, arguing that traditional divisions between public and private forms of work provide an inadequate basis for understanding either women's labour participation or their domestic lives. The notion of voluntary work as a third sphere is discussed as it relates specifically to the rural labour market and community. Secondly, the article examines voluntary work in terms of the empowerment of women. It addresses issues of women's role and status in the rural community, questioning whether the state's use or reliance on voluntary work in rural areas represents an exploitation of women's position or an opportunity for women to gain influence and power. Thirdly the article evaluates the contribution of women's voluntary work to the conceptualisation and representation of rurality. The focus here is on the way in which voluntary activity supports a particular form and image of the rural community and, in turn, the implications this has for gender divisions and women's identity in contemporary rural England.     

Gender,the work‐life course,and livelihood strategies in a South Indian fish market

This article examines how gender ideologies differentially inform men and women's work‐life courses in the fishing economy of southern India. Drawing on interviews conducted with fish traders in Trivandrum, India in 1993–94 and 1999, we construct economic life histories for men and women traders. These are then used to illustrate how gender creates different patterns of paid work for men and women throughout their life courses and to analyze how men and women formulate livelihood strategies differently as a result.     

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.     

Being Bashed: Western Samoan women's responses to domestic violence in Western Samoa and New Zealand

Given the large impact that domestic violence has on many women's lives, it is surprising that research in this area has largely neglected the ways in which women respond to this problem in different cultural contexts. This article examines variations in Western Samoan women's responses to domestic violence in three different contexts, in rural and urban Western Samoa and in Christchurch, New Zealand. The authors find that processes relating to the individualisation of social relations, changes in women's economic independence, and political mechanisms that provide formal support for battered women go some way to explaining variations in women's responses to abuse in the three contexts. However, the findings rule out any simple link between context and responses to physical abuse and caution us against the naive hope that changes in a single variable will reduce women's vulnerability to violence.     

Landscapes of (neo-)liberal control: the transcarceral spaces of federally sentenced women in Canada

This article maps the racializing, classing and gendering cartographies of cross-spatial marginalization and social control experienced by women who were formerly federally incarcerated in Canada. By investigating women's criminalization, prison and post-prison experiences, this article traces practices of racialization, gendering and classing that underwrite liberal to neo-liberal forms of social control. Results from 68 interviews with women released from federal prisons in Canada show that women's criminalization cannot solely be traced to shifts from liberal to neo-liberal governance, but rather to the ways in which structures of oppression have influenced women's criminalization across liberal to neo-liberal rationalities. This analysis shows how liberal ‘welfarist’ ideas and ideals are embedded in neo-liberal reforms and provide the discursive platforms of an extended and widened network of social control of criminalized women beyond prison walls, across institutions, including a variety of (non-)government actors and the women themselves. This widened web of (neo-)liberal social control constitutes practices that have formed carceral spaces beyond prison walls and have perpetuated and exacerbated women's marginality after their release from federal prisons in Canada.     

Regendering space and reconstructing identity: Bedouin women's translocal mobility into Israeli-Jewish institutions of higher education

This article offers a geographic perspective on the mutually constitutive relations between institutions of higher education and Bedouin women's gendered spaces, identities and roles. Situated beyond Bedouin women's permitted space and embedded in Israeli-Jewish space, institutions of higher education are sites of displacement that present Bedouin women students with new normative structures, social interactions and opportunities for academic learning. As such, they become a discursive arena for the articulation and reconstruction of their previously held conceptions and identities. Often the journey to institutions of higher education signifies for Bedouin women the first opportunity to venture out of their community. Traveling to the university as students, returning home as educated women and embarking on professional careers outside tribal neighborhoods and villages involves moving across and beyond different locales. Such translocal mobility necessitates constant negotiation between seemingly contradictory cultural constructs and the development of varied spatial bridging strategies. The article seeks to contribute to Bedouin gender studies by going beyond the functional role of higher education institutions as well as the gendered hierarchies of women's mobility, placing emphasis, instead, on the effects of socio-spatial contextuality that shapes Bedouin women's experiences.     

Taking Stands: A feminist perspective on 'other' women's activism in forestry communities of northern Vancouver Island

The author examines alternative and possibly contradictory positions associated with 'other' women's political activism in forestry and land use debates. The article traces research on women's activism, noting that the main focus has been placed on community management and social mothering as sources of motivation, political perspective and activity. The author suggests that these explanations have been imbued with a predetermination of appropriate action (progressiveness) that effectively renders as radical the activism by some women while ignoring the activism by others. This separation and privileging has arisen, in part, because of a theoretical preoccupation by feminist researchers with illustrating women's marginality and an empirical focus on public actions. When feminist perspectives have been applied to women's participation in environmental debates, there has been a narrowing of visibility of women's motivations, perspectives, and actions. It is argued that feminist conceptions need to go beyond maternal/community explanations and advocate that activism be considered in terms of its embeddedness in local social and spatial contexts. The author suggests that embeddedness overcomes the implicit reverse hierarchy of marginalisation discourses and includes both private and public spaces and actions in conceptions of women's activism. Turning to northern Vancouver Island, the author illustrates how embeddedness helps to render visible and intelligible, the multiplicity, consistencies and contradictions in women's positions and activities in support of conventional forestry. For these reasons, the author believes that embeddedness is useful as a means to generate dialogue across current divisions among women, forms of activism, and notions of appropriate relations with non-human nature.     

Gender and Household Economic Strategies in Rural Appalachia

In recent decades, many Appalachian households have experienced declining incomes due to the loss of traditional male jobs in the mining and manufacturing sectors. One response to this decline has been an increase in female employment in formal sector activities. Another response is homework, or the home-based production of goods and services for sale in the formal and informal sectors. In rural Appalachia, where formal jobs are often unavailable or inadequate to support a household, many women are engaging in homework as an economic strategy. Consequently, economic restructuring cannot be fully understood without analyzing household strategies and gender relations. This paper examines the intersection of gender, households, and economic restructuring as it relates to women's homework and employment shifts in rural Appalachia. Research for this paper entailed qualitative interviews with 50 West Virginia women who are engaged in the home-based production of goods and services. The study analyzes the variety of homework activities done by rural women, their contribution to household incomes, and the effect of these activities on gender relations and divisions of labor in the home. The research forwarded in this study advances a conceptual understanding of household economic strategies and has some practical applications for women and economic development in underdeveloped regions .     

Rethinking Livelihood Impacts of Biofuel Land Deals in Ghana

During the last decade, debates about the livelihood impacts of large‐scale biofuel projects have focused mainly on either employment creation or on land dispossession. The mediating role of social institutions and communal reciprocity in resource‐access manoeuvring processes have rarely been considered. This comparative study of two biofuel projects in Ghana shows that households affected by land dispossession quickly obtained new productive land areas by switching to fallow farmland or through long‐term reciprocal social networks. The livelihoods of households with members employed by the projects improved in terms of increased income and access to cultivation on project land. Not everyone, however, had the resources and ability to use social networks for job‐seeking and land access negotiation, particularly those considered to be migrants. The authors argue that a context‐specific focus on, and processual examination of, the abilities of individuals and groups to utilize social institutions to sustain their livelihoods during a project's lifetime, are crucial in analysing the impacts of biofuels land deals. Such an approach explores the various forms and uses of livelihood capitals, and shows how new configurations of social and economic relations emerging from land commercialization can reinforce local inequalities.     

Gendered livelihoods and the politics of socio-environmental identity: women's participation in conservation projects in Calakmul,Mexico

A livelihoods approach positions individuals, situated within households, as active agents within processes occurring at various scales. Environmental conservation efforts represent one such process with direct implications for local sustainable livelihoods and the gendered nature of livelihood strategies. In this article, I examine collective processes of socio-environmental identity construction as gendered sustainable livelihood strategies, articulated in and through the activities of women's agricultural organizations in communities bordering the Calakmul Biosphere Reserve in rural southern Mexico. I present group histories and visual evidence from group activities – adapted from participatory rural appraisal (PRA) methodology – to highlight two important concepts. These are: (1) that gendered livelihood strategies are outcomes of negotiations within households and communities, in response to specific gendered opportunities and constraints; and (2) that gendered livelihood strategies consist of linked material and ideological aspects.     

Young women and public leisure spaces in contemporary Beijing: recreating (with) gender,tradition, and place

Feminist geographers and leisure scholars have long argued that one critical way to understand gendered norms and expectations is through examining women's access to and experiences of leisure activities. Set in the context of the rapid economic, political, and social changes that have taken place in Beijing over the past half century, this article draws on in-depth interviews and extensive participant observation to explore the role of newly available public leisure spaces in the lives and leisure of young women in Beijing, in particular by examining the way that these spaces provide an opportunity for the negotiation of new gender norms and identities. Through an analysis of the interaction of gender norms and practices with women's use of and behavior in public leisure spaces, we argue that women's behavior in public leisure spaces in contemporary Beijing remains strongly circumscribed by gendered norms. Rather than their presence itself constituting a challenge to gender expectations, in many cases their leisure behavior and experiences serve to reinforce the social norms that masculinize public leisure spaces. In spite of this, however, the findings of this research suggest that public leisure spaces may, in some cases, provide women with a place from which to challenge gender norms.     

Women and Peace Building: Local Perspectives on Opportunities and Barriers

The UN Security Council Resolution 1325 has made strong provisions to include women in peace‐building interventions and actions. This is, however, rarely observed in practice beyond local‐level activities. This article discusses new qualitative evidence on the opportunities and barriers to women's participation in peace‐building processes, based on a comparative analysis of case studies conducted in Afghanistan, Liberia, Nepal and Sierra Leone. The findings show that women's engagement in peace‐building activities, beyond their immediate social relations, is restricted by institutional, economic, cultural and social obstacles. These barriers prevent the realization of gender equality objectives in peace‐building initiatives. Moreover, local understandings of peace typically place family relations at the centre of how women engage with peace‐building processes, and how other community members perceive women's roles in peace building.     

Women's Organizations,Voluntarism, and Self‐Financing in Solomon Islands: a Participant Perspective

Arguing that the capacity to organize is not foreign to Solomon Islands women, this paper demonstrates their resourcefulness, resilience, and significant but neglected national potential by focusing on a key domain of women's practice and management expertise ‐ women's groups, organizations, and associations, most of which are church‐based, and government programs or projects directed to women. The paper surveys the establishment and operation of different categories of women's groupings before and since independence in 1978. It highlights the commitment to voluntarism and self‐financing that has enabled many groups and organizations to function and even flourish despite recent armed conflict and the resultant near collapse of the economy and the state, especially in the capital, Honiara. It exemplifies the priority shift which has seen many women and their organizations supplement the traditional concerns of home economics, health, education, and community service with overt attention to questions of economic development, political participation, and human rights. The paper concludes by considering the problems facing women's groupings in Solomon Islands, including those generated by women's own attitudes and behaviour as well as gendered and other external constraints.     

Women's Social Networks and Female Friendship in the Ancient Greek City

This paper explores how women used their social networks within the ancient Greek urban environment in two spheres: first with regard to their civic engagement, and second with regard to their social relationships. By examining the types of social networks in which women were involved, how they were used and their impact on social relations, it argues that historians should broaden their conception of women's contribution to the Greek civic environment. Such an approach shows how women negotiated social and economic status within the polis community, how they used their social capital as a resource for social and civic engagement and sheds light on their personal relationships. These relationships not only enhanced women's well‐being and allowed them to determine their own roles in community life, but also formed the basis of their engagement with the polis. Considering the social networks to which women belonged, and the differing types of social capital embedded in them, further enables an examination of female friendship. Recognising the contribution of women to the polis community is necessary in order to understand the wider social and civic relationships within the ancient city.     

Women's Work in Urban Bangladesh: Is there an Economic Rationale?

The general phenomenon that women in Bangladesh engage less frequently in market work than men is commonly explained as the lack of response of female labour to economic imperatives due to the overarching influence of purdah. However, this emphasis on a cultural rationale for gender-differentiated work behaviour diverts attention away from the deep-rooted economic inequalities at the societal level. This article examines women's work in urban Bangladesh from a female labour supply and demand perspective that is rooted in the socio-economic institutional context. The study finds that, despite the strong gender segregation of economic roles, women's roles are more flexible and lend themselves to changing household strategies more easily compared to men's. The evidence indicates that female labour market participation is largely the outcome of the supply effect shaped by the pattern of gender roles and gender-specific access to human capital. Consequently, women are relegated to low-skill market activities and have lower earnings than men, even without any overt discrimination in labour demand. The covert discrimination that leads women to pursue a different pattern of labour use than men is the fundamental gender bias of socio-economic institutions that govern household allocational decisions and dictate gender-specific behaviour.