development

Politics aimed at participation: A critical analysis of role of civil society and women groups affecting peace in Afghanistan

Many Afghans, and the international community, reckon the inclusion of civil society and women in the political processes of Afghanistan as crucial for the success of the ongoing peace talks. Paffenholz and Spurk, while emphasizing on the importance of civil society’s role in peace building, state ‘’There is also agreement that non-governmental peace initiatives are as needed as official or […]

July 29th, 2013|Development, Politics, Society|1 Comment|
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The violent cartographies of violence- the imaginative rape geography of Congo

A few years ago if you’d asked me about Congo I wouldn’t have known very much about it. I knew where it was located on the world map… the geographical world map. As for the social, political, cultural, economical world map, I didn’t quite know where to place it. My interest in violence against women around the world, however, brought […]

May 15th, 2013|Development, Politics, Society|0 Comments|
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Reflections from Rio+20 part 1: “Women working in development organizations are not allowed to be feminists”

In this post, Caitlin Fisher talks about the Rio+20 conference held in June 2012. She talks about the status quo she experienced in the discourse and retells a meeting with a development professional she met on a bus. This post is the first one out of two. The second one can be found here.   This past June I attended […]

August 10th, 2012|Development, Environment|0 Comments|
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“How can these women pay back their loans when they lie on their mats all day?”

Bobby Macaulay is a former researcher at the Yunus Centre for Social Business and Health and an expert in social business and community development. In this piece he discusses, through reference to Mozambique, whether miocrofinance can or should alter societal values or practices and queries its ability to foster real societal change. In the summer of 2011 I was asked to go to Mozambique […]

January 16th, 2012|Development|1 Comment|
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Beyond micro-credit: an evolving microfinance

Microfinance is evolving and our understanding of it must too. Joanna Wilkin, drawing on her research and her experience working in microfinance for BRAC, argues that we need to reconceptualise microfinance and its priorities and to increase and extend access to financial tools to those previously ignored by the formal financial system, whilst keeping the role of governance, regulation and […]

November 29th, 2011|Development, Politics|1 Comment|
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Findings from the Third Survey on Chinese Women’s Social Status

Yang Shen, a PhD student at the Gender Institute, discusses the Third Survey on Chinese Women’s Social Status. According to the survey, the status of women has improved in the last 10 years. However, the discrepancies between urban and rural women and between men and women are still substantive. Hence, China still has a long way to go in order […]

November 3rd, 2011|Development, Society|6 Comments|
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Does the World Bank need an expanded notion of institutions to take gender into account?

Josephine Tsui, a gender consultant for theIDLgroup, reviews the 2012 World Bank World Development Report on Gender Equality and Development arguing that, while its recognition of the importance of gender equality independently of its positive economic effects represents a step forward, its narrow definition of institutions keeps it from taking into account the gendered nature of markets, households, or the […]

October 20th, 2011|Development, Environment, Politics|0 Comments|
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Sex and Development

Dr. Gwendolyn Beetham discusses some recent episodes of gendered power in global governance institutions, arguing that the Dominique Strauss-Kahn scandal and other well-publicized incidents should be seen less as unfortunate but separate incidents than as evidence for continuing structural inequalities. This summer was a lively one for those interested in the intersection of sex and development. The world’s media watched […]

October 17th, 2011|Development, Politics|0 Comments|
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