Since gender entered the development discourse in the Seventies, African countries have increasingly taken the concept on board in policy and practice. This concern may be due to either one or a combination of the following factors: the ideological positioning of African countries, demands by their donors and development partners, and demands by organised local groups and NGOs. Gender in the development discourse ought to transform power relations between men and women and shift them to social relations that reflect their equal access to productive resources, opportunities and social and material benefits. The result of such actions should be an achievement of comparable status of women and men. This volume, initiated by OSSREA, seeks to examine in more depth, issues regarding the gender-power imbalance in sub-Saharan African countries, with a specific focus on the eastern and southern African regions. The chapters in this book present research that examines and analyses the effectiveness and efficiency of gender mainstreaming policies, strategies and projects developed and implemented by national and international actors. The themes inter-weave with each other although they address gender issues in specific countries and specific contexts. This can be explained by the shared colonial and post-colonial heritage of African countries. It is useful, therefore, to view the structure of the book as a spiral of inter-connected issues that address similar themes, approaching them from different levels. Purely for ease of reading, the contributions have been organised into three parts, with over arching themes that at first glance may seem not to fit well together. A theme that runs through all the chapters is the persistence of patriarchal values and attitudes in Africa and its constraining effect on the achievement of gender equity and equality.

Feminism has re-shaped the way we think about equality, power relations and social change. Recent feminist scholarship has provided new theoretical frameworks, methodologies and empirical analyses of how gender and feminism are situated within the development process. Global Perspectives on Gender and Space: Engaging Feminism and Development draws upon this framework to explore the effects of globalization on development in diverse geographical contexts. It explores how women’s and men’s lives are gendered in specific spaces as well as across multiple landscapes. Traveling from South Asia to sub-Saharan Africa to North America and the Caribbean, the contributions illustrate the link between gender and global development, including economic livelihoods, policy measures and environmental change. Divided into three sections, Global Perspectives on Gender and Space showcases the following issues: One) the impact of neoliberal policies on transnational migration, public services and microfinance programs; Two) feminist and participatory methodologies employed in the evaluation of land use, women’s cooperatives and liberation struggles and Three) gendered approaches to climate change, natural disasters and conservation the global South. A feminist lens is the common thread throughout these sections that weaves gender into the very fabric of everyday life, providing a common link between varied spaces around the globe by mapping gendered patterns of power and social change. This timely volume provides geographic comparisons and case studies to give empirically informed insights on processes and practices relevant to feminism and development. It illustrates ways to empower individuals and communities through transnational struggles and grassroots organizations, while emphasizing human rights and gender equity, and will be of interest to those studying Geography, Development Studies, International Relations and Gender Studies.

This book provides a timely contribution to the field of gender and development in the face of the looming failure of international development targets, the deepening HIV/AIDS pandemic and the increased incidence of civil conflict in Sub-Saharan Africa.

This book investigates the barriers to women’s economic empowerment in the Global South. Drawing on evidence from a wide range of countries, the book outlines important lessons and practical solutions for promoting gender equality. Despite global progress in closing gender gaps in education and health, women’s economic empowerment has lagged behind, with little evidence that economic growth promotes gender equality. International Development Research Centre’s (IDRC) Growth and Economic Opportunities for Women (GrOW) programme was set up to provide policy lessons, insights, and concrete solutions that could lead to advances in gender equality, particularly on the role of institutions and macroeconomic growth, barriers to labour market access for women, and the impact of women’s care responsibilities. This book showcases rigorous and multi-disciplinary research emerging from this ground-breaking programme, covering topics such as the school-to-work transition, child marriage, unpaid domestic work and childcare, labour market segregation, and the power of social and cultural norms that prevent women from fully participating in better paid sectors of the economy. With a range of rich case studies from Burkina Faso, Democratic Republic of the Congo, Ethiopia, Ghana, India, Kenya, Nepal, Rwanda, Sri Lanka, Tanzania, and Uganda, this book is perfect for students, researchers, practitioners, and policymakers working on women’s economic empowerment and gender equality in the Global South.

The term climate change is used to denote any significant but extended change in the measures of climate. The changes could be due to natural variability or as a result of human activities, such as the burning of fossil fuels to produce energy, deforestation, industrial processes, and some agricultural practices. Such activities release large amounts of carbon dioxide and other greenhouse gases into the atmosphere that hang like a blanket around the earth, thus trapping energy in the atmosphere and causing it to warm up. This results increasingly in climate variability, which is characterised by extreme seasonal, annual, temporal and non-spatial variability in temperature, vagaries of precipitation (rainfall patterns and amounts) and/or wind patterns occurring over a prolonged period of time. The last decade (2001 - 2010) has been the warmest on record; with the average temperatures reaching 0.46∞C, above the 1961 - 1990 mean, and 0.21∞C warmer than the 1991 - 2000 period. It has been proved that the African continent is warming up faster, all year-round, than the global avera≥ a trend that is likely to continue. By the year 2100, it is predicted that temperature changes will fall into ranges of about 1.4∞C to nearly 5.8∞C increase in mean surface temperature compared to 1990, and the mean sea level will rise between 10cm to 90 cm (AMCEN 2011). The interior of semiarid margins of the Sahara and central southern Africa will be the most affected by such warming (AMCEN 2011). To tackle the phenomenon of climate change effectively, human societies have put in place a combination of mitigation and adaptation mechanisms and strategies. Whereas mitigation aims at avoiding or lessening the impacts of the unmanageable, the goal of adaptation is to manage the unavoidable. That men and women are affected differently by climate change suggests that they also differ in terms of the adaptation mechanisms they employ. Despite the existence of gender-based differences in the effects of climate change and in adaptation and coping strategies, studies on the gender differential impacts of climate change and variability on women in general and pastoralist women in particular in sub-Saharan Africa are limited. This volume offers insights and knowledge that pastoralist women developed on climate change adaptation through their experiences in their households and communities and thereby tries to narrow this gap.

This volume re-centres African women scholars in the discourse on African women and peacebuilding, combining theoretical reflections with case studies in a range of African countries. The chapters outline the history of African women’s engagement in peacebuilding, introducing new and neglected themes such as youth, disability, and religious peacebuilding, and laying the foundations for new theoretical insights. Providing case studies from across Africa, the contributors highlights the achievements and challenges characterising women’s contributions to peacebuilding on the continent. This book will be of interest to students and scholars of peacebuilding, African security and gender.

A cross-sectoral overview of social and political development policies and practices and their gender outcomes in Nigeria, this volume describes the status of women and men under the colonial and post-colonial policy regimes, unearthing the gender relations and gender (in)equality outcomes.