Grace Davies

Internationally lauded microcredit schemes, avid consumption of "throwaway" cheap fashions, $2 shampoos, and a minority of 'high-powered' women business executives. These all formed part of an energetic discussion on women's economic empowerment chaired by the IDS pathways of women's empowerment RPC yesterday, a theme also due to be addressed as part of the UN Commission on the Status of Women kicking off at the end of this month.

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Jessica Reed

The Pathways of Women’s Empowerment / openDemocracy blog brings together academics, policy makers, activists and journalists concerned about gender and power. As part of our 50.50 initiative, and along with a series of articles and podcasts on the Pathways project, the blog aims to provide a space for the many diverse views of women and men campaigning for greater gender-related justice worldwide.

The Pathways of Womens Empowerment RPC is a DfID funded research and communications programme linking academics, activists and practitioners to find out what works to enhance women's empowerment. You can visit the website and find out more here.

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Jessica Reed

In our first podcast, Jane Gabriel talks to Dr Hania Sholkamy about gender and empowerment in Egypt, and the challenge of engaging with global feminism. Click on the image below to listen now.

You can also read our opening Pathways articles; Andrea Cornwall on moving beyond "development-lite" and Srilatha Batliwala on reclaiming empowerment for the women's movement.

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Jessica Reed

During lunch I found myself chatting with a couple of participants when the topic of the male experience of patriarchy came up. While a lot has been written about the relationships between men and women and between women and women, the topic of men vs. men power dynamics within a patriarchal society remains rarely talked about. Strangely enough, there is little doubt that men suffer from a system of patriarchy too.

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Jessica Reed

Is it fair to label any form of women's resistance groups as atoms of the global feminist movement?

Josephine Ahikire was intrigued by the wording surrounding women's resistance and feminism, and how it systematically separates the two. In her view, what a woman resists is mediated by her situation, which is itself affected by gender, class, employment or poverty issuses - so by definition, it is about feminism.

Ahikire cited as a case study the Aba women's riots of 1929, part of Nigeria's struggle against colonialism: was this an act of feminism? Josephine argued that the gendered nature in which those women experienced colonialism and how they organised resistance made it a feminist act.

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Jessica Reed

Cecilia Sardenberg shared a very telling story about a meeting taking place in Brazil - a progressive country by all accounts- in which a government representative spoke for two hours at a conference about gender and political dialogue, but mentioned the word 'women' maybe twice. As Srilatha Batliwala underlined, it is a worrying trend which speaks volume about the current situation: men in politics don't even feel the use to be politically correct anymore.

Jessica Reed

"Magic bullets" is the name for several forms of action in the gender field which can come across as a magic band-aid that will fix everything. Two of them are micro-credits and women in politics, and according to many women at the conference, they need to be questionned.

Take micro-credits for example: it is now presented as a solution which enables women to single-handily solve all their issues by creating their own micro-businesses. In reality, this is not entirely true (see our related entry written by World Neighbours on the openSummit blog), as the power of decision is still held by those who loan women funds. Without a complete control over their capital, these small communities of women are not empowered, but reliant on micro-crediting.

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Jessica Reed

A lot of skepticism linked to feminist theory steams from the lack of practical initiatives inspired by the second and third wave movements. Josephine Ahikire, senior lecturer in Kampala, would agree with these criticisms: she explained her love and hate relationship with a movement she thinks is often too abstract.

Sure enough, development agencies and individual countries do have gender policies - but they have yet to be really efficient. Their themes are distorted and do not make way for actual changes in women's lives which are not yet fully understood by bureaucrats and other UN agencies. In her words, 'the world is listenning, but the distortions are overwhelming'.

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Jessica Reed

If one thing wasn't missing from the conference, it certainly was humour. The 40 participants might have been holding PHds in gender and development, gender studies and history, but it certainly did not seem to prevent them from being refreshingly silly, making (feminist) jokes and puns, very much to our delight.

After all, the conference started with Cecilia Sardenberg, leader of the Brazilian Hub, exclaiming: "In 2004 we talked about "repositioning feminism". In 2007 we are reclaiming it!".

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