Contents

Notes on contributors

Acknowledgements

List of abbreviations

PART I
Theory and praxis

  1   Rethinking em(power)ment, gender and development: an introduction

JANE L. PARPART, SHIRIN M. RAI AND KATHLEEN STAUDT

Empowerment and power

Empowerment, power and development

Empowerment, gender and development

Empowerment: local, national and global

Conclusion

  2   Education as a means for empowering women

NELLY P. STROMQUIST

Revisiting the concept of empowerment

Empowerment within formal schooling

Empowerment among adult women

Learning processes in the empowerment of adult women

The contributions of informal learning

Combining the cognitive and the economic dimensions of empowerment

Institutional development and support

Conclusion

PART II
Women’s empowerment in a global world

  3   Envisaging power in Philippine migration: the Janus effect

PAULINE GARDINER BARBER

Migrants, time and local spaces

Empowerment and ‘the local’

Gender in Philippine labour migration

Reading power in migration

Agency, class and the cultural politics of leaving

Contingent sojourns

Empowerment dialectics

  4   Women’s rights, CEDAW and international human rights debates: toward empowerment?

SHAHEEN SARDAR ALI

CEDAW: a tool for women’s empowerment?

‘Complementarity’ of rights: a ‘Muslim’ view of the norm of non-discrimination and equality

Conclusion

  5   Feminizing cyberspace: rethinking technoagency

GILLIAN YOUNGS

Introduction

Cyberspace, boundaries and agency

Women and cyberpolitics

Cyber possibilities and development

Conclusion

PART III
The nation state, politics and women’s empowerment

  6   Engaging politics: beyond official empowerment discourse

KATHLEEN STAUDT

Empowerment terminology

A multilateral case

Empowerment is political

Policy priorities: little dent on gender relations

Democratic spaces: contexts of democracy, peace and/or redistribution?

International technical assistance and ‘democracies’

Bring politics in with women and gender equality agendas

Empowerment in US bipartisan discourse: from global to local

Concluding implications

  7   Movements, states and empowerment: women’s mobilization in Chile and Turkey

MARELLA BODUR AND SUSAN FRANCESCHET

Introduction

Gender ideologies, states and women’s movements

The emergence and evolution of the Chilean women’s movement

The emergence and evolution of the women’s movement in post-1980 Turkey

Conclusion

  8   Political representation, democratic institutions and women’s empowerment: the quota debate in India

SHIRIN M. RAI

Introduction

The Indian experiments with quotas

Women’s interests, women representatives

‘Social backwardness’ and quota politics

The arguments for quotas

The arguments against

Caste, class, gender: dilemmas for feminisms

Conclusion

  9   Gender, production and access to land: the case for female peasants in India

REENA PATEL

Introduction

‘Personal laws’ in India and the Hindu Succession Act 1956

Models, roles and identities

Women’s work, contribution and access to land

Land to the tiller: women and land reforms in India

Conclusion

PART IV
The local/global, development and women’s empowerment

10   Rethinking participatory empowerment, gender and development: the PRA approach

JANE L. PARPART

Introduction

Participatory rural appraisal: the new methodology

Evaluating PRA, participation and empowerment: a gender perspective

Conclusion

11   The disciplinary power of micro credit: examples from Kenya and Cameroon

JOSEPHINE LAIRAP-FONDERSON

Introduction

Appropriating the concept of empowerment

African responses to women’s empowerment

The relevance of the Foucauldian power framework

Disciplinary power of micro credit: examples from Kenya and Cameroon

The impact of micro credit on women’s empowerment

Conclusion

12   Development, demographic and feminist agendas: depoliticizing empowerment in a Tanzanian family planning project

LISA ANN RICHEY

Introduction

The international context of the Integrated Project

The national context of the Integrated Project

The local context of the Integrated Project

The development agenda: local participation and communities’ ‘felt needs’

Demographic goals: promotion of permanent and long-term contraception

The feminist agenda: depoliticizing gender and ‘passive acceptors’

Conclusion

13   Informal politics, grassroots NGOs and women’s empowerment in the slums of Bombay

VANDANA DESAI

Introduction

Women’s informal politics

Empowerment of women: experiences of NGOs

The role of NGOs

Conclusion

PART V
Conclusion

14   Concluding thoughts on (em)powerment, gender and development

KATHLEEN STAUDT, SHIRIN M. RAI AND JANE L. PARPART

Contextualizing chapters: challenges ahead

Index