Dairy Livestock Interventions for Food Security in Uganda: What are the Implications for Women's Empowerment?*

Women are increasingly the target of agricultural development programs aimed at reducing poverty and food insecurity, especially in sub-Saharan Africa. Some feminist scholars argue that such efforts are driven more by concerns about the efficient use of resources than the rights of women and do little to transform gendered power relations. We examine how development interventions that target women affect household well-being, especially food insecurity, empower women, and transform gendered power relations. Our study uses the case of the Gates Foundation funded East Africa Dairy Development (EADD) program in Uganda. Our methods include the Women's Empowerment in Agriculture Index survey and in-depth interviews of women farmers and key informants, within the EADD program. We argue that the livestock sector provides critical insights into women's empowerment because livestock are not “socially neutral” in their gendered effects. Our study found that: (1) ownership of dairy cows enhanced important dimensions of women's empowerment and gender equity that benefited women and households; (2) women's labor responsibilities for dairy cows disempowered some women by increasing their time poverty and; (3) ownership of dairy cows provided a means for women to disrupt entrenched social norms related to gender roles within the household and agriculture.     

Empowered Women,Failed Patriarchs: Neoliberalism and Global Gender Anxieties

Notions of “empowered women,” promoted by NGOs, economists, and feminists beginning in the 1970s, do not necessitate a countervailing notion of “failed patriarchs.” However, our review of the feminist literatures on globalization, development, and migration in the United States, the former Soviet Union, and South Asia suggests that discourses of empowered women and failed patriarchs are fused in the specter of the “reverse gender order.” A presumption of this new order is that global capitalism has liberated women to such an extent that they have surpassed men who are now the truly “disadvantaged.” Drawing on these literatures as evidence, we argue that the large‐scale incorporation of poor and working‐class women into global capitalism relies upon an ideology of the family that keeps women's labor “cheap” and draws support from the feminist idea that work is empowering for women. Diverse nationalisms uphold the ideology of the family as central to capitalist expansion, providing culturally resonant justifications for women's unpaid reproductive work, while men are breadwinners. Thus, poor and working‐class men experience a painful dissonance between breadwinning expectations and economic opportunities. We show that these tensions between ideologies and material conditions make women's responsibility for reproductive work a structural feature of neoliberalism.     

“Back There We Had Nothing to Eat”: The Case of Transnational Food Insecurity

This article discusses migrant food insecurity in the United States from the perspective of Mexican and Central American migrant women. Many describe migrating because they had nothing to eat in their countries of origin. Migration is thus framed as a necessary strategy for overcoming food insecurity. I argue that these women's perspectives are unique in the migration literature because food security comprises a gendered labour from which men are frequently spared. Unfortunately, food insecurity still prevails in these women's households in the US. Assuming a “double‐duty” workday of earning wages and overseeing care within households, these women experience the added burden of ensuring food security of households “back there.” Thus, I argue that the food practices of Mexican and Central American migrant women provide a unique lens through which to understand the increased feminization of transnational migration from Latin America to other regions of the world.     

Defining Women's Global Political Empowerment: Theories and Evidence

Although women's access to political power has increased tremendously, nowhere are women equal to men in their influence over and exercise of political authority. Scholarship on women's political empowerment is uneven and incomplete. This article interrogates ‘women's political empowerment’, considering its definition, measurement, and application. First, we establish that academics and practitioners have not articulated a clear definition of women's political empowerment. To fill this gap, we put forward a new definition that conceptualizes women's political empowerment as a transformative process. We then review existing social science literature on women's political empowerment. We argue that scholars must expand research to develop a broader vision of women's political empowerment and develop measures that capture this breadth.     

The Social Imaginaries of Women's Peace Activism in Northern Uganda

The metanarrative of global feminism is often constructed as a progressive and emancipatory movement emanating from the West and fostering radical politics elsewhere in the world. Such a view is not only ethnocentric but, critically, it fails to engage with the complex ways in which feminist politics travel and are evinced in specific localities. In this article, I seek to understand how marginalized women in the “Global South” – particularly in Africa – interpret, experience and negotiate feminist ideas to wield political power within the context of their social and moral worlds. I focus on women's organized resistance to violence and armed conflict, known as “women's peace activism.” Using a case study of a women's peace movement in Uganda mediated by an international feminist organization called Isis Women's International Cross-Cultural Exchange, I conducted in-depth qualitative interviews with a wide range of activists in the organization and in its network in postconflict areas in Northern Uganda. I argue that the feminist peace discourse is most meaningful when its universal values of equity and securing the dignity of women are appropriated and re-signified through the cultural institutions and the collective memory of activists in their local settings.     

What are women's political interests? Connecting theory to empirical approaches in cross‐national perspective

Parliamentarians and other elected officials have the power to “act for” women and improve their substantive representation. Yet, women are not a homogeneous group with identical individual goals. Given the diversity of women, especially considering the social intersections within a multiplicity of socioeconomic and cultural arrangements across the globe, the identification of “women's political interests” worldwide is problematic. Does the concept of “women's interests” grasp the diversity of women's collective political demands? How can this concept be used to study women's substantive representation in legislative bodies? This article presents theoretical perspectives on the concept and their connection to empirical approaches to the identification of women's interests.     

Scientific Acedia

Abstract

Using a gendered context, this paper examines women's fear management strategies. Using twenty-six in-depth interviews with married and divorced participants, the researcher considers one question: “How does gender influence fear management strategies among newly married and divorced women?” Results depict a unique intersection between strategies women use to manage fear of crime and the ways they “do gender” that vary by the marriage context, providing insight into women's fear of crime.     

Confronting “Victim” Discourses: The Identity Work of Battered Women

In this article I explore how battered women both draw from and reject victim discourses in their processes of self‐construction and self‐representation. Data gathered from semistructured interviews with forty women who experienced violence from an intimate partner in a heterosexual relationship demonstrate that available “victim” discourses are both enabling and constraining. Four common representations of a victim emerged as most influential to women's identity work: as someone who suffers a harm she cannot control; as someone who deserves sympathy and/or requires some type of action be taken against the victimizer; as someone who is culpable for her experiences; and as someone who is powerless and weak. “Victim empowerment” and “survivor” discourses also played a role in how women understood and made sense of their experiences. In their attempts to construct identities for themselves, battered women become caught between notions of victimization, agency, and responsibility.     

'Woman,Speak with a Loud Voice!'

This paper seeks to contribute to the critique of mainstream development discourse by conveying the ideas and issues raised by rural South African women. Building upon feminist and post-colonial discourses, this paper shifts the epistemological location of knowing to the women affected by development programmes and policies. Based upon interviews and discussions with over 600 women in rural communities, we offer a brief characterization of the South African context of rural women's lives, followed by rural women's comments about development, their daily struggles, and empowerment. Rural women's comments reveal a conception of development that is tied to their localized problem-solving skills and opportunities. Their response to the absence of development opportunities within their communities is to forge a space where they can negotiate between institutional spheres of power in order to address their needs. We argue that traditional development approaches overlook the space, or interstice, rural African women occupy between the modern state and traditional authority. For persons interested in development issues, rural women's experiences direct our attention to the in-between spaces as potential sites of empowerment.     

Exploring gender approach to climate change and agroecology: Women farmer's search for agency in India

Employing the frame of gender and political ecology, this paper analyses the synergies of indigenous knowledge, agroecological farming and local conservation as a sustainable mitigation and adaptation strategy for climate change in Tehri Garhwal in the state of Uttarakhand, India. The study is based on field research conducted between 2017 and 2018 exploring how women's roles in regenerative agriculture provide them with agency. the nature of which has not been explored. While there is a need to mainstream such practices to sustain the commons and women's empowerment through structural, institutional and financial support, it is crucial to analyze the scope of this empowerment. This paper highlights the predicament of women farmers as their ability to exercise agency in the agricultural space does not necessarily translate into overall empowerment or a transformation of existing gender- and caste- based hierarchical power relations in society, as the latter will require interventions along multiple fronts.     

More Powerful Forces? Women,Nonviolence, and Mobilization

In this survey of studies of women's nonviolent mobilization, I scrutinize “more powerful forces,” the mobilizing forces of marginalized social actors that add to and make possible the development of broad‐based people power. The study of people power has yet to extensively consider the contribution of marginalized social actors. Specifically, I ask: (i) What do women contribute to the development of nonviolent protest power and (ii) What can we learn about mobilizing power, the power of people to protest nonviolently and gain the franchise they seek, when we expand our analytical lens to incorporate women's roles? How do we account for the gendered but often unseen actions taken by marginalized social actors? My focus on women in nonviolent mobilization stems directly from my research on gendered invisibility with an empirical focus on women's gendered socialization. Here, I review how gendered social structures shape women's power of participation and success in nonviolent mobilization.     

Understanding Sheng Nu (“Leftover Women”): the Phenomenon of Late Marriage among Chinese Professional Women

In the past few decades, there has been a rise in the number of single, unmarried Chinese professional women, which is known as the sheng nu or “leftover women” phenomenon. Through an interactionist grounded theory method, this study has located the interactional constraints faced by 50 single Chinese professional women that were issued by their male romantic partners and parents, respectively. “Discriminatory” and “controlling” gendered constraints issued by the women's male suitors and partners reflected the persistence of the Chinese patriarchal structure, and this was found to be the leading cause of the women being “leftover” in the marriage market. Parents' traditional views continued to exert strong influences on the women's marital choices, but this was seen to conflict with their more “modern” views toward advocating and supporting the women's strong economic achievements. The four different types of Chinese professional women that were constructed based on their different partner choice strategies not only gave rise to an in‐depth and nuanced understanding of the sheng nu phenomenon in China, but could also be generalized toward understanding the marital choices of single professional women in other patriarchal societies who faced similar dilemmas in reconciling interactional constraints imposed by men and parents alike.     

And roses too: How “Better Work” facilitates gender empowerment in global supply chains

Women's increasing entry into paid work has not been accompanied by a corresponding change in the gender division of unpaid labor in the household and community. Though women participate in the labor market, the expectation is that they will also take responsibility for the household. To what degree does women's waged work in the garment industry transform gender norms and dynamics in their home lives? To what extent do the choices they make translate to their household-level empowerment? This practice-focused article examines these questions by looking at data collected on gender dynamics at work and at home in the clothing industries of Bangladesh, Cambodia, Kenya, Lesotho, and Vietnam. While women's empowerment through garment sector employment remains circumscribed by low wages, financial insecurity, and gendered expectations, we find that international interventions, namely the International Labor Organization's Better Work program, has expanded women's abilities to exert agency over their earnings within the context of household resource allocation and has decreased the negative effects of ongoing and systemic financial precarity.     

Women's rights in Peru: insights from two organizations

In this article we explore the appropriation of ideas about women's rights in Lima, Peru through an ethnographic study of two non‐governmental organizations. SEA is a local NGO grounded in the Catholic Church's liberation theology movement, which seeks to promote integrated human development, and is linked to the worldwide Catholic Church. DEMUS, the second NGO, with feminist roots, actively fights gender discrimination and belongs to networks of international women's human rights movements and UN organizations. We argue that the struggle for women's rights is part of a broader struggle for recognition and equality for the poor, shaped by changing notions of national identity, citizenship and diversity. Our research revealed clear examples of vernacularization, whereby local context, values and culture played a decisive role in the adoption of women rights ideas. Encounters with other concepts and movements, including social justice, family violence and women's mobilization, intimately shaped the vernacularization of women's rights. Ultimately, the adoption of rights ideas involved changes in women's individual and collective empowerment.     

Western Donor Assistance and Gender Empowerment in the Palestinian Territories and Beyond

Since the end of the Cold War, the quest to spread democracy has become the rallying call of many Western donor agencies. Reflecting this new agenda, new program priorities prevailed that placed greater emphasis on civil society development, civic engagement and gender empowerment. Contrary to expectations, however, many of these programs have often adversely affected existing social movements. Most scholars attempting to explain these unintended outcomes have focused on the impact of NGO professionalization. Examining the Palestinian women's movement, this article addresses the inadequacy of this explanation and focuses on the political dimension of this discussion by illustrating how Western donors' lack of understanding of the Palestinian women's movement and its “embeddedness” in the broader political context served to weaken and undermine this movement. The influx of Western donor assistance in the post-Madrid, post-Oslo era, along with the greater emphasis on Western promoted gender empowerment, undermined the cohesiveness of the women's movement by exacerbating existing political polarization (that went beyond Islamist and secular divisions) and disempowering many grassroots activists. Effectively, many of these activists were transformed from active political participants involved in their organizations to the recipients of skills and services in need of awareness raising. Findings in this article also speak to current regional developments, especially in light of the current Arab uprisings and the promise of greater Western involvement to empower women in the region.     

Making Milk and Money: Contemporary Mothers' Orientations to Breastfeeding and Work

In most Western industrial nations, gains have been made in women's educational and occupational opportunities as part of a larger gender revolution. At the same time, contemporary mothering expectations have expanded and intensified, especially the renewed focus on breastfeeding as the “optimal” choice for infant feeding. How do women perceive the simultaneous pursuit of these activities? Prior scholarship has identified tensions in cultural models of breastfeeding as well as in women's subjective experiences, emphasizing how breastfeeding is shaped and encountered through sociocultural context, especially ideologies that position work and mothering as incompatible. Building on this, I examine how the current generation of working mothers view working and breastfeeding. Through in‐depth interviews with 32 U.S. women, I show how women espouse distinctly different orientations to breastfeeding: instrumentalist, quasi‐maternalist, and pragmatist. I argue that these different orientations both reflect and reframe existing cultural models and discourses about contemporary women's relationships to work, mothering, and breastfeeding.     

Effects of ‘women empowerment’ on household food security in rural KwaZulu‐Natal province

Understanding the dimensions of ‘women's empowerment’ that influence food security among rural households is crucial to inform policy. This study uses the Household Food Insecurity Access Scale (HFIAS) to identify the food security status of 300 primary female‐headed households in Msinga, South Africa. Principal Component Analysis was then used to identify the various dimensions along which the rural women sampled were empowered. Finally, the Ordered Logit model was used to identify the dimensions of women's empowerment that influence their household food security status. It was found that households headed by women with higher levels of economic agency, physical capital empowerment, psychological empowerment and farm financial management skills empowerment were more likely to be food secure.     

Performing Beauty: Dove's “Real Beauty” Campaign

Dove, a popular beauty brand, impressed some in the advertising world with its unique “Campaign for Real Beauty” and made others cringe. But little is known about how real women respond. “Real” beauty according to Dove means various shapes and sizes—flaws and all—and is the key to rebranding, rebuilding women's self‐esteem, and redefining beauty standards. Drawing on interviews and focus groups with sixteen Canadian women and guided by social semiotics and dramaturgy, I examine Dove's presentation of beauty and women's reactions to it from a “beauty as performance” frame. This study examines processes of interpretation and finds that expressing beauty, the self, and a public image inextricably requires elements of performance.     

Are baby boomer women redefining retirement?

As the baby boomers enter later life, unprecedented numbers of women are retiring. The first generation of women to encounter retirement since its institutionalisation as an expected male life course transition in the mid‐20th century, these women are leaving the labour force at a time when the meanings associated with “retirement” are changing. Longer life expectancy, improved health outcomes, and transformations in work driven by globalisation have produced greater diversity in when, why, and how people exit the labour force. Many boomer women are disadvantaged in later life by their histories of discontinuous employment and care‐giving. Consequently, we argue, opportunities to engage in “retirement” projects of their own choosing are unequal across this population. This essay reviews qualitative studies in sociology that examine boomer women's experiences of retirement and is organised in terms of the three main approaches that inform this under‐studied field: critical/feminist gerontology, identity theory, and life course approaches. Based on our review, we posit the need for socially inclusive research, beyond the prevailing emphasis on White, middle‐class professional women; more studies examining the impact of earlier life course transitions on women's later years; and attention to the effects of “successful ageing” discourses on women's lived experiences.