Abstract:SummaryThis paper explores the challenges and opportunities for feminists working as women's rights and gender equality specialists in the United Nations as analysed from a practitioner perspective. Part 1 by Joanne Sandler analyses the experience of feminists struggling with the institutional sexism of the UN bureaucratic machine and shows how this played out in the difficult but ultimately successful negotiations around the creation of UN Women. In Part 2, Aruna Rao describes how cross-agency UN Gender Theme… Show more
“…Ultimately, it is about enabling people to stand back and inspect critically the beliefs about themselves and others they take for granted, and then using this expanded understanding to inform an analysis of what needs to change and how they can be part of that process of change. The framework developed by Gender at Work (Kelleher & Rao, n.d.; Sandler & Rao, ) captures very effectively these dimensions of change and the interrelationship between them: …”
Section: Women's Empowerment In Developmentmentioning
With radical roots in the 1980s, women's empowerment is now a mainstream development concern. Much of the narrative focuses on instrumental gains-what women can do for development rather than what development can do for women. Empowerment is treated as a destination reached through development's equivalent of motorways: programmes rolled out over any terrain. But in the process, pathways women are travelling in their own individual or collective journeys of empowerment remain hidden. Revisiting foundational feminist work on empowerment, this article draws on findings from multi-country research programme, Pathways of Women's Empowerment, to explore what works to support these journeys.
“…Ultimately, it is about enabling people to stand back and inspect critically the beliefs about themselves and others they take for granted, and then using this expanded understanding to inform an analysis of what needs to change and how they can be part of that process of change. The framework developed by Gender at Work (Kelleher & Rao, n.d.; Sandler & Rao, ) captures very effectively these dimensions of change and the interrelationship between them: …”
Section: Women's Empowerment In Developmentmentioning
With radical roots in the 1980s, women's empowerment is now a mainstream development concern. Much of the narrative focuses on instrumental gains-what women can do for development rather than what development can do for women. Empowerment is treated as a destination reached through development's equivalent of motorways: programmes rolled out over any terrain. But in the process, pathways women are travelling in their own individual or collective journeys of empowerment remain hidden. Revisiting foundational feminist work on empowerment, this article draws on findings from multi-country research programme, Pathways of Women's Empowerment, to explore what works to support these journeys.
“…The jobs of gender specialists are all the more difficult because many are often hired with little support or resources. Some go so far as to describe their hire to be for cosmetic purposes -to make their organisations appear to be taking gender seriously (I7, I11) [42].…”
Political challenges to prioritizing gender in global health organisations Background Many global health organisations have adopted formal strategies to integrate gender in their programming. In practice, few prioritise the issue. Institutions with considerable global power therefore largely overlook fundamental drivers of adverse health outcomes: gender inequality and harmful gender norms. We analyse the factors shaping attention to gender in organisations involved in global health governance. Methods Drawing on scholarship from the fields of organisational behavior and management, sociology, international relations and the policy process, we undertook a thematic analysis of peer-reviewed scholarship and organisational documents. We also conducted 20 semi-structured interviews over Skype with individuals working at the cross-section of gender and health. Results In seeking to reform the policies and practices of global health organisations, gender proponents confront patriarchal organisational cultures, hostile political environments and an issue that is difficult to address as it requires upsetting existing power structures. Proponents also face three linked challenges internal to their own networks. First, there is little cohesion among champions themselves, as they are fragmented into multiple networks. Second, proponents differ on the nature of the problem and solutions, including whether reducing gender inequality or addressing harmful gender norms is the primary goal, the role of men in gender initiatives, which health issues to prioritise, and even the value of proponent cohesion. Third, there are disagreements among proponents on how to convey the problem. Some advance an instrumental case, while others believe that it should be portrayed as a human rights issue and using any other argument undermines that fundamental justification. Conclusions Prospects for building more gender-responsive global health organisations will depend in part on the ability of proponents to address these disagreements and develop strategies for negotiating difficult organisational cultures and political environments.
“…Since its inception in 1945 there has never been a female Secretary General. Women-related units are underfunded and less respected within the UN system (Miller, Razavi, & United Nations Research Institute for Social Development, 1998;Sandler & Rao, 2012). SWS is part of what one SWS activist calls the "other" UN which is "the UN of volunteers, and the Civil Society movement people…we are there on a fuzzy marginalized voluntary basis.…”
Section: Challenges Of Sws' Global Feminist Public Sociology At the Unmentioning
This article focuses on the experiences and strategies of members of Sociologists for Nations, Feminist Sociology, Global Feminism, Transnational Scholaractivism Author bio: Daniela Jauk is visiting Assistant Professor in the Department of Education at the University of Graz/Austria and an activist/educator in local and transnational feminist communities. She received her PhD in Sociology as a Fulbright student at the University of Akron, OH. Her research interests are feminist strategies of resistance, global feminisms, anti-feminism and qualitative methods. She teaches sociology of genders and sexualities, global sociology, qualitative methodology, and new media in education at several Austrian universities.
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