Democratic Governance, Women's Rights and Gender Equality / Gouvernance démocratique, droits des femmes et l'égalité des sexes

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    Transforming gender relations - insights from IDRC research
    (International Development Research Centre, 2019)
    A gender-transformative approach to research requires an understanding of contexts and the intersections between gender and other social identities, such as race, age, and sexual orientation, and other intersectional aspects that impact people’s choices. This paper describes IDRC’s experience supporting gender-transformative research over the last decade and provides lessons for researchers and practitioners. The cases presented here illustrate gender transformative research in action. They examined the root causes and structural barriers that contribute to gender inequalities, in terms of both opportunities and outcomes. Whose knowledge is captured and, in turn, who gets to shape the issue, are critical questions.
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    Solutions pour l’égalité des sexes
    (Centre de recherches pour le développement international, 2019) IDRC
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    Consultation report / Democratic Governance, Women's Rights and Gender Equality : Building Partnerships for a New Global Research Initiative; a two-day international consultation hosted by Women's Rights and Citizenship (WRC) Program, International Development Research Centre (IDRC), Ottawa, ON, Canada, December 1-2, 2009
    (2010)
    Background papers provided the framework for discussions of research priorities to inform the development of IDRC’s global research initiative on Democratic Governance, Women’s Rights and Gender Equality. When discussing women’s rights, conceptions of governance must include all sites of gender inequality, including the family and informal centres of power. The realities of women’s lives and the various ways in which they assert their citizenship need to be understood. Conference participants included academics from international and Canadian universities, researchers, civil society activists, and representatives of multilateral, bilateral and donor agencies working in the field of democratic governance, women’s rights and gender equality.
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    Democratic governance, women's rights and gender equality : synthesis report
    (IDRC, Ottawa, ON, CA, 2010) International Development Research Centre (IDRC)
    This report provides an introduction to five regional papers (West Africa, Eastern and Southern Africa, the Middle East and North Africa, South Asia, and Latin America and the Caribbean) produced as part of the research initiative “Democratic Governance, Women’s Rights and Gender Equality.” While a variety of legal instruments commit the international community and individual states to uphold women’s rights, the commitments are not adequately acknowledged in national laws or practice. IDRC and the UK Department for International Development (DFID) commissioned a series of background papers to provide global data and analysis on how democratic structures are impacting women’s lives.
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    Understanding the gendered legacies of armed conflict : women‘s rights and lives during armed conflict and transition periods and governance
    (Feinstein International Center, Tufts University, Boston, MA, US, 2010) Mazurana, Dyan
    The paper reviews existing literature on women in the immediate post-conflict transition period, identifying areas that scholars, activists, and policy-makers have defined as critically important topics pertaining to governance and women’s inclusion. These include: a) women‘s participation in formal peace processes; b) women‘s participation in drafting and ratifying constitutions; c) addressing the motivations and demands of women in revolutionary armed groups, and assessing possible links with women‘s rights movements in the transition periods; and d) women and transitional justice, particularly women‘s role, representation and experiences of justice, accountability and redress in truth-telling commissions, national and international tribunals, and reparation programs.
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    Women's political participation
    (Institute of Public Policy, Auckland University of Technology, Auckland, NZ, 2010) Waring, Marilyn
    Numbers do not necessarily translate into legislative or budgetary gains for women’s rights in development. Region by region, this incisive paper examines election results and outcomes for women. It considers women’s political participation - including mobilization around issues, NGO and informal activity for advancing women’s rights, and political advocacy - in looking for explanations of outcomes. It engages the “critical mass” hypothesis to ascertain whether one third of the parliamentary seats in the regions under examination have delivered critical changes for women’s rights in terms of legislative or resource allocation outcomes. This paper points to further and emerging research areas which demand attention, because silence pervades the subject area.
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    Gender governance and democracy : Southern and Eastern Africa
    (Department of Political Studies, University of Witwatersrand, Johannesburg, ZA, 2010) Meintjes, Sheila
    This paper addresses gender, governance and democracy in Eastern and Southern Africa following the democratic turn of the 1980s. It explores the gendered nature of power and authority in these post-colonial states and the kinds of gender governance practices instituted in the region in response to local, national and international demands for gender justice. While women’s representation and participation in governance increased, women are still among the poorest citizens, with the least opportunity for education and employment and statistically, the most likely to be subject to violent abuse and infected or affected by HIV/AIDS. Although women-friendly policies have been instigated, decision-making remains male dominated.
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    Democratic governance and women's rights in West Africa
    (ABANTU for Development, Accra, GH, 2010) Mensah-Kutin, Rose
    The fragility of the region in terms of history, religions, and fragmentation along the lines of Anglophone and Francophone, as well as the endemic nature of coup d’états and conflicts, are significant to the evolution of governance structures and (lack of) women’s rights promotion. A comparative framework is developed in this paper, placing West African sub-region countries in a historical context to enable exploration of relevant questions regarding governance, and to locate their meaning in women’s lives. The paper emphasizes the lack of extant literature related to women and governance, and the challenges in creating democratic political institutions that are committed to women’s rights
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    Democratic governance and women's rights in South Asia
    (Centre for Women's Studies, New Delhi, IN, 2010) Kazi, Seema
    The paper emphasizes the importance of gender equality as a core guiding principle of democratic governance. It examines trends in women’s participation in governance bodies in each national context (India, Pakistan, Bangladesh, Sri Lanka and Nepal) and highlights cross-national examples of collaborative activism. The advantages and limits of reserved quotas for women’s political presence are analysed and summed up. The inclusion of women in political institutions is an important yet insufficient condition for challenging the political status quo; class disparities flowing from socio-economic inequality must be addressed simultaneously.
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    Democratic governance and women's rights in the Middle East and North Africa (MENA)
    (Department of Politics, Princeton University, Princeton, NJ, US, 2010) Jamal, Amaney A.
    The international donor community has not adequately dealt with the issue of Islamic jurisprudence and its overwhelming influence on the status of women. Personal status issues (including citizenship and lack of civil and political rights) legitimated by conservative and Islamic traditional interpretations, remain a key obstacle for women. The conundrum of women’s rights in the Arab world is that the subject is located between the priorities of the donor community and the authoritarian regimes that need to continue to appease the conservative and traditional Islamic sectors in society. This has resulted in strategies that offer cosmetic gestures to the donor community while simultaneously reinforcing patriarchal norms and dictates.
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    Gobernabilidad democrática, genero y derechos de las mujeres en América Latina y el Caribe
    (Centro de Documentación y Estudios (CDE-Paraguay), Asunción, PY, 2010) Bareiro, Line; Torres, Isabel
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    Women's access to justice : texts and contexts
    (Faculty of Law, University of Windsor, Windsor, ON, CA, 2010) Bahdi, Reem
    This paper identifies key issues related to women’s democratic governance, women’s rights and the rule of law. It discusses barriers that women face in accessing justice, the roles possible for NGOs in the realization of women’s rights, and the potential for reinforcing roles that women in positions of power can play in promoting women’s rights. Social, political and economic inequality inevitably replicate themselves as substantive, procedural and social barriers to access to justice. Case studies were drawn from a wide geographic range with regard to women's rights to democratic development and to equal benefit and protection of the law.